As America approaches its 250th birthday, the “nation of immigrants” may want to reconsider its nickname.
In 2025, net migration in the U.S. turned negative — with the loss of some 150,000 people by some estimates — a trend not seen since the Great Depression. Further declines are expected in 2026 and 2027, Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank has found.
While the U.S. data does not capture outbound emigration, many of its citizens are reportedly turning up in Europe and bordering countries — for education, housing and even long-term care needs. In 2025, more Americans moved to Germany and Ireland than the other way around, a change attributed to “a life away from the rat race at home” by London’s I Paper . The Czech Republic, Spain and Netherlands have reported similar highs.
“In America, you must work hard to earn anything. To start with nothing and make a fortune is very rare,” Amy Kujacznski, a mother-of-two who left Portland, Ore., with her husband for a quieter life near Madrid, Spain, told I paper.
The U.S. government is also dealing with a backlog of Americans renouncing their citizenship, with embassies in London, Sydney and most Canadian major cities reporting wait-lists stretching into months, the Guardian reported in April. One in five Americans said in a November Gallup poll that they would like to leave the country, twice as many as 10 years ago.
Between four to nine million Americans live abroad, a figure that is likely an undercount due to people flag-poling with tourist visas, travellers who straddle borders and students with long-term visas being left out of the count, according to the Wall Street Journa l. The paper noted that newer emigres are ordinary citizens seeking better housing opportunities, telecommuting or choosing to retire somewhere cheaper.
Elderly Americans are also filling up nursing homes in Mexico because it is cheaper, according to the newspaper. The number of American expats residing in Portugal has increased by 500 per cent since the pandemic. Close to 58 per cent of foreign buyers in the country are from the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. is short 10 million homes, White House economists estimated this year.
The net loss is also partially attributed to aggressive immigration policies under the Trump administration, which tightened visa restrictions for dozens of countries and ramped up deportations soon after taking power. Brookings estimates that only 2.6 million people immigrated to the U.S. in 2025, a sharp decline from the 5.8 million who entered in 2023.
“In President Trump’s first year back in office, nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations,” the Department of Homeland Security touted in January. Brookings, meanwhile, estimates between 200,000 to 400,000 voluntary exits last year.
While the Biden administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings during the final months of his term led to declines that accelerated under Donald Trump’s second term, that alone does not account for the full picture, experts say.
“Although the full data won’t be in for months, we can assess that the cuts to illegal entries are likely less than half of the total cuts to immigration on a monthly basis. Put differently, the cut to legal entries was 2.5 times as large,” the Cato Institute estimated in April.
The decline was felt across all major cities in the U.S. in 2025.
“Over the past year, all 56 of the nation’s major metro areas (those with populations over one million) saw immigration declines, and as a result, all but one showed slower population growth, a shift from growth to decline, or an even greater population decline than the previous year,” William H. Frey, a senior fellow at Brookings, wrote earlier this year.
Even at its reduced levels, immigration accounted for 75 per cent of the U.S. population increase last year, according to Brookings. The change comes at a time when the U.S. population of 350 million is aging and fertility rates are at a decline. The ratio of working-age people (18-64) to those over 65 has fallen from 5.7 in 1970 to 3.4 in 2024, U.S. Census Bureau figures show. If trends persist, the ratio will fall to 2.7 by 2040.
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