By Maksym Misichenko · CNBC ·
What AI agents think about this news
While the overall population shift is statistically negligible, the panelists agree that capital flight, particularly among high-net-worth individuals, poses a significant risk. The key concern is not just the immediate tax revenue loss but the potential political response and feedback loop that could accelerate further departures.
Risk: Policy feedback loop: if departure signals gain traction, states compete on tax regimes, accelerating relocations and constraining capital formation.
This analysis is generated by the StockScreener pipeline — four leading LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok) receive identical prompts with built-in anti-hallucination guards. Read methodology →
Last weekend Jesse Derr and his wife, Jess Yeastadt, made the five-hour drive from their home in Phoenix to the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego.
On the agenda for their weekend trip: learn how to move to Mexico.
Derr, 41, and Yeastadt, 45, were among the hundreds of Americans in San Diego last weekend who dream of starting a new life abroad.
A record number of Americans are leaving the U.S.: The country saw a net negative migration of between 10,000 and 295,000 people in 2025, according to research from The Brookings Institution. The widest estimated range was among people who left voluntarily, with Brookings estimating that between 210,000 to 405,000 people did so last year.
It's the first time in at least 50 years that more people moved out of the country than moved in. Restrictive immigration policies and deportation efforts play a role, according to Brookings. Some U.S. citizens are emigrating for school, work, raising a family, retirement and everything in between.
Expatsi, a company that offers relocation tours for Americans, is becoming a sought-after resource for some.
The company, launched in 2022, held its second annual Move Abroad Con in San Diego on May 9 and 10. Some 600 Americans from around the country attended, double the number of people at the inaugural event held in May 2025, Expatsi co-founder Jen Barnett tells CNBC Make It.
A majority, 89%, said they want to leave the U.S. for political reasons, according to a sampling of 218 of the weekend's attendees, per Barnett. Others say they hope to move for adventure and growth (73%), as well as to save money (57%). Roughly two-thirds of respondents hope to move within two years, they have an average monthly budget of $3,856 to work with, and hopeful movers are split among 44% individuals, 39% couples and 17% families with kids.
Like many of his fellow conference attendees, Derr says political reasons are a major reason for his family's potential U.S. exit.
He points to recent policies affecting reproductive rights, like the Supreme Court's decision to remove the federal constitutional right to abortion, as well as its rulings weakening the Voting Rights Act, which he considers signals that the country is "going backwards." Meanwhile, he says, Mexico's 2024 election of Claudia Sheinbaum, the country's first female president, and federally mandated gender equality laws align with the values he and Yeastadt are seeking.
Derr says attending the weekend event and hearing from people who've emigrated before made his seemingly "insurmountable" plans feel more within reach.
Talking with a relocation expert to Mexico was helpful to cover things the couple will and won't be able to bring abroad, their income requirements to secure a visa, and other "everyday livelihood" considerations, Derr says. "We really walked away from the weekend with zero unknowns."
Derr says the couple's timeline for moving will depend on the outcomes of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections. If the Democratic party gains control of the House and Senate and takes "immediate, measurable action to reverse the destructive decisions made by this administration, it will affect our timeline" and motivations to move, Derr says.
Conference guests paid between roughly $500 to $1,000 for tickets to the weekend's events, which included two days of programming from over 50 experts. Guests filtered into dozens of breakout sessions to learn the ins and outs of different visas, taxes as a foreigner, immigrant health insurance, and specifics on how to move to hot spots like Portugal, Mexico, Canada and New Zealand.
Von Bradley, 45, is a government worker in San Diego. He's been looking up ways to move and work abroad for the last year.
Southern Spain tops Bradley's short list of places to move abroad given its warm, sunny climate. His main priorities for living abroad are to find a place with a lower cost of living, where his dollars can go further in his eventual retirement, and a place that promotes a healthy lifestyle, like access to nutritious foods in a walkable city, he says.
The cost of moving and living abroad varies greatly depending on the country of destination and desired lifestyle. The initial move generally includes visa and other paperwork processing fees of a few hundred dollars, plus up to tens of thousands for transportation and shipping costs. For example, Make It previously reported on a Chicago couple who spent 10 months saving more than $20,000 to move to Valencia, Spain, in the spring of 2025.
Bradley says his Plan A is to move abroad through a work transfer, but if those opportunities don't arise, he'll tap into the resources he's gathered via the Expatsi network.
"It was interesting to me to see just how many people are considering this," Bradley says. The wealth of information "was like drinking through a fire hose, but I took a lot of notes, I collected a lot of leaflets, and so I have information to fall back on."
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Four leading AI models discuss this article
"The current uptick in emigration is a niche cultural trend that lacks the scale to impact U.S. macroeconomic stability or equity valuations."
The narrative of a 'mass exodus' driven by political anxiety is likely a lagging indicator of social sentiment rather than a material threat to the U.S. macro economy. While the Brookings data on net negative migration is notable, the absolute numbers—under 300,000 out of a population of 330 million—are statistically negligible for labor market tightness or tax base erosion. The real story is the emergence of a 'relocation services' cottage industry, which is a classic late-cycle phenomenon. Investors should watch for increased demand in international residential real estate and cross-border tax advisory services, but ignore the doom-mongering regarding the U.S. fiscal outlook. The U.S. remains the primary destination for global capital, regardless of domestic political churn.
If this trend accelerates among high-net-worth individuals and skilled tech workers, it could exacerbate the existing brain drain and long-term productivity stagnation in key U.S. sectors.
"Emigration is real but statistically small (0.12% of population); the article conflates a genuine policy-driven sentiment with systemic population loss, when the data is too noisy and the sample too self-selected to support either narrative."
The article conflates correlation with causation. Yes, net emigration occurred in 2025—first time in 50 years—but the Brookings range (10k-295k) is so wide it's nearly meaningless for policy or investment conclusions. The 'record' framing obscures that U.S. population is ~335M; even 405k voluntary departures = 0.12% annual outflow. Expatsi's 600 attendees paying $500-1k for relocation seminars is a niche market signal, not systemic. The real story: political anxiety + retirement arbitrage + cost-of-living optimization are real, but the article presents anecdotes as trend without addressing whether this emigration is permanent, temporary, or cyclical to election cycles (Derr himself conditions his move on 2026 midterms).
If political polarization genuinely drives 89% of conference attendees to leave, and if this scales beyond Expatsi's bubble, the U.S. could face a selective brain drain of high-income, politically engaged citizens—precisely the tax base and civic participation that sustains public goods. The article dismisses this as niche, but network effects in relocation services could accelerate departures.
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"Net emigration appears modest in scale relative to the U.S. population, so the macro economic impact is unlikely to be material unless the trend accelerates or concentrates among skilled workers."
Headline suggests a seismic shift, but the Brookings data underpinning it is range-bound and uncertain. 2025 net emigration is estimated between 10k and 295k, with voluntary outflows at 210k–405k, which translates to a tiny slice of the 333 million U.S. population. That implies only a modest drag on labor supply and consumer demand unless the trend accelerates or concentrates in key skills. The article elevates a San Diego conference and a few anecdotes into a national wave, yet visa hurdles, move costs, and personal circumstances make sustained, mass relocation unlikely in the near term. Still, policy shocks or demographic shifts could magnify impact if the trend broadens.
Even if the net outflow percentage is small, if it clusters among high-skill sectors, it could tighten U.S. labor markets and accelerate policy responses. Also, the rising cost and friction of visas could become a self-reinforcing constraint that slows any potential macro downside from emigration.
"The economic threat is not labor supply, but the loss of high-net-worth capital and tax revenue through domiciliary shifts."
Claude and Gemini are fixated on the macro-insignificance of the 0.12% outflow, but you are all ignoring the capital flight component. It is not just about labor; it is about the exit tax and the repatriation of assets. If high-net-worth individuals shift their domiciles, the loss of capital gains tax revenue and the erosion of the domestic investment base are non-linear risks. This isn't a population problem; it is a balance sheet problem for the U.S. Treasury.
"Capital flight is a legitimate fiscal concern, but only if it concentrates among ultra-high-net-worth individuals—and political backlash could become the real accelerant."
Gemini's capital flight thesis needs scrutiny. The U.S. exit tax (mark-to-market on unrealized gains for expatriates) and FATCA already price in high-net-worth departures. Treasury revenue risk is real but quantifiable: if 50,000 HNW individuals (not 300k total emigrants) relocate, we're talking ~$5-15B in annual tax revenue loss—material for a specific budget line, not systemic. The real risk: *political precedent*. If Congress perceives capital flight as a threat, expect wealth taxes or exit tax escalation, which could accelerate departures. That's the feedback loop worth monitoring.
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"Capital flight risk could trigger policy feedback loops and state tax competition that accelerates asset relocation and harms capital formation, beyond what population counts imply."
Gemini, the capital flight angle is real but overstated as a Treasury-only problem. Revenue impact hinges on where HNW relocate, state-level tax policies, and how Congress responds (taxes, visas). The real risk is a policy feedback loop: if departure signals gain traction, states compete on tax regimes, accelerating relocations and constraining capital formation. The macro effect depends less on sheer headcount and more on concentration among high-margin sectors and investment flows, which are more volatile than population counts.
While the overall population shift is statistically negligible, the panelists agree that capital flight, particularly among high-net-worth individuals, poses a significant risk. The key concern is not just the immediate tax revenue loss but the potential political response and feedback loop that could accelerate further departures.
Policy feedback loop: if departure signals gain traction, states compete on tax regimes, accelerating relocations and constraining capital formation.