They Fled Trump’s America. Now They Regret It

[SVPete]

They Fled Trump’s America. Now They Regret It

https://www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it/

In the autumn of 2024, Annie was ready for something new. She was living in the southern United States when her husband received an unexpected job offer that would move them to a town just outside London. They were in their twenties with no kids. “We wanted to take a risk,” she says.

While researching their new destination on Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram, Annie found Americans eager to explain how enchanting life in the British suburbs could be—all the benefits of a small town, just a short train ride away from one of the biggest cities in the world. The more she read, the sunnier her expectations about the UK’s health care system, social culture, and European transportation systems became.

They moved before the end of the year. But the reality of life in the UK was dramatically different to what she’d imagined. “There are huge misconceptions about access to quality health care, standard of living … the quality of life is significantly lower than in the US,” she says, citing the challenges she experienced with the National Health Service’s maternity care—having moved while pregnant with her first child—as well as the lack of disposable income in Britain, thanks to lower salaries. “Things in the UK that are considered luxury items are very common” in America, like a dishwasher and dryer, she adds.

Annie says she experienced a high amount of anti-American sentiment straight away. “I found it particularly surprising how people feel so comfortable mocking my accent and culture, even in a workplace environment,” she says. “The UK is very much a place of ‘it is what it is,’ but as Americans we are taught to always improve and strive for better things.” Annie and her husband now have an exit plan for summer next year, the earliest their employers would allow them to relocate back home.
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For left-leaning Americans concerned about Trump’s reelection, relocation to Europe was presented as a lifeboat: Some claim you can live gentler, freer, and, most of all, morally lighter. Celebrities, including Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, and Rosie O’Donnell, all fled the US for political reasons. Courtney Love announced she was applying for UK citizenship in early 2025, describing the political climate at home as “frightening.” Digital nomad visas introduced after the pandemic in countries like Spain, Greece, and Portugal have made the jump logistically easier.

The number of US migrants doubled in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the previous year. ...

Private data also reflects the political climate is a major factor. The expatriation company, Expats, released a report earlier this year in which 71 percent of 58,000 respondents “cited the political climate in the United States as a reason for wanting to relocate.” But while Trump 2.0 has more than fulfilled the worst nightmares of many Americans who left, online posts reflect a growing number of them are quietly—and at times apologetically—plotting a move back home, if they haven’t already returned.
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“Something I had taken for granted is the American outgoingness and default to action, where the question is ‘how can we collaborate?’” she explains. “Generally speaking, I also found that the American work style, for better or for worse, moves much faster and can get to a yes or no in less time.”
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“Finding work was so hard, and the endless bureaucracy had grown worse since I’d left,” he tells WIRED. “I missed the friendlier people, freedom of speech, and ease of daily life” in the US. He adds, “If you aren’t born and raised there, and don’t look German, you’ll never be fully accepted.”

“I thought that ‘British politeness’ existed as it does in movies,” Annie says, “but unfortunately, the reality is that present-day British culture is very individualistic, as well as without the sense of charity and helpfulness that many parts of American culture value.” She says she had negative experiences with the NHS maternal care, compared to the smooth experience of her private health insurance in the US, and didn’t expect it to cost her anything: “I pay huge amounts of taxes and an immigration surcharge to access the NHS services—so no, the health care is not free here.” She also expected train travel to be low cost, based on what she’d read about Europe (despite the extortionate train prices and terrible service quality being one of the biggest political conversations in the UK).
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These posts are usually met with a huge amount of backlash. Commenters are quick to imply that the poster must be right-wing and privileged, in for a nasty shock if they did return home. Ironically, many times, they parrot the right-wing notion that they probably aren’t trying hard enough to assimilate into their new country. When one person recently said they badly missed their community of friends in a “blue city in a blue state” and were considering moving back, the majority of top comments agreed the user was “insane.”