ourari
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Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/15/how-to-leave-the-usa
All the links in the text refer to other New Yorker content, so I've decided not to include the links in the descriptions.
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/15/how-to-leave-the-usa
All the links in the text refer to other New Yorker content, so I've decided not to include the links in the descriptions.
TL;DR: Read up about the Dutch American Friendship Treaty and check out G.T.F.O. Tours. And be mindful: Europe has some of the same problems and the U.S. government has been crystal clear about wanting regime change here. It might not be your forever-home.
I am not affiliated with anyone mentioned here. I'm just a Dutch guy worried about my fellow humans. Hope this helps you find the refuge you need.
hotrodny
TL;DR
TheFastpaws
Sadly I'm stuck in the states waiting for ICE to kill me because they stopped letting peeps like me get passports at all.
HollerinAtTheVoid
Wait wait wait…..so the first person votes Republican her whole life, shit gets bad, so she bails instead of fixing the rot she’s created.
As Eminem would say….”Fuck you Debi!”
Mithi
"voted Republican by default" ... yeah, that is a problem Debbi
Drachiel
27 pages ?Nope... Let me guess... TL;DR "trump did/said another pile of crap" ?
itrytoonlysaypositivethings
Not quite. It's more about the specifics of how to move to the Netherlands using the DAFT program, and the specific situations and lives of some people who did or are in the process of doing it.
Drachiel
Ok thanks for the sum-up (I'm so increasingly sick of anything related to that braindead orange shitstain, those days, that jus "U.S." in a title and my brain-ublock just goes "fuck that")
ulmflb
This whole timeline is turning into a Norman Spinrad novel.
ghettosoak
I moved from the US to Switzerland 16 years ago with a couple bucks and a few boxes. If you’re gonna take the plunge, be ready to integrate. Learn the language and the customs. Start early, keep at it. Don’t give the assholes any more reason to hate on immigrants, or Americans.
MMVB
Yeah well, great but we already have a massive housing problem here so yeah, no.
ourari
This is mentioned in the article.
ourari
Related subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmerExit/
SedatedPossum
r/USAyonara would be the superior sub name.
Meandme2
To many Americans coming to my country. Go away . go back to your country /s
Meandme2
BTW you're welcome
itrytoonlysaypositivethings
The Netherlands is happy to have you, but a word of caution: the housing market is crazy right now, and likely will be for the next decade. Low supply, high prices, and extremely short decision windows.
Wolfshead009
Likely still better than the US housing market.
ourari
No, it's much worse. Very small, very densely populated, and there's very little growth in housing stock due to a self-made environmental problem.
ourari
Yeah, you're right. They describe how immigrants deal with this in the article.
ionlyregisteredtosavelinks
Please do not come here with your bullshit.
LitigiousWhelk
I can't help thinking they look like the "all millennial couples look like this"-meme.
phonecallformisterhorrible
Yeah but if we leave, those fuckers win. I am going to stay and be a giant pain in the ass
GeneralPrower
Moving to Europe sounds appealing, but every time I find a country I like, they pass an invasive internet surveillance law.
Also the tinfoil hat part of my brain worries that Trump is insane enough to try and wage war on Europe to win Putin's favor.
KoalaOnTheJuice
Old Europe: https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1MTh4aTVvb254OG9sbTA3MjEwZjlpZDZpNnI0Z2FhN21hdzlwdG02MiZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/CaRrbLumDIbew/200w.webp
ThePostPenultStraw
Geez, 60% of this article was personal bio on these people. Good on them, but the title of the article is how to leave the USA so perhaps focus on that?
AtmaDarkwolf
When a TLDR version is def warranted.
ourari
Well, it's the New Yorker, so... An extreme summary of the New Yorker piece can be found in this article: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/12/more-american-nationals-move-to-the-netherlands-this-year/
awholelotofnothin
When you strip the human face and information out of the narrative, you give MAGA an open pass to think of expats as liberal monsters, not people who served their country, not people concerned about grocery prices. The point is, regular humans are deciding the US is unliveable because MAGA hate and Trump has destroyed it.
mikeatike
After the first paragraph had nothing to do with the title, I assumed this was AI slop and stopped reading.
ziph3326
I said the same thing about a video on here and immediately got a bunch of negative comments.
mikeatike
Yeah, that happens when you suspect something highly upvoted is AI. People get big mad.
I don't know if this post is AI or not, but if the story is real there was definitely some middle school level word count padding involved.
vizeroy42
Many online articles are cheaply word padded nowerdays - just to make you scroll by more ads.
ExitThroughThePanaderia
I wouldn't consider going to Europe because the racism I experienced there was worse than the racism i've experienced in America.
I don't have many options of where to go. In the final analysis i'm better off here.
ourari
Where in Europe, specifically?
itrytoonlysaypositivethings
I don't know if you need to hear this, but I read some of your other comments. You seem to voice a lot of negative and defeatist opinions. Is that the person you want to be?
WoTLert
All of Europe is not the same thing. I'm sorry you had a bad experience over here, truly. But as someone living in (a certain part of) Europe I can tell you there are better places than where you were when you had that bad experience.
tidepool
Disableds are trapped here. No country, most especially within the British commonwealth, will let you in. Our best bet is when they start sending us off to the concentration camp in Utah is to fly into Canada and immediately seek asylum. Thats it. Good luck to my fellow gimps.
spicepoet
Don't forget to get a converter for your powerchair's charger. Mine is in my go bag.
Ulthirm
yeahp thats my problem. Amazon disabled me and now I most likely won't meet the reqs to escape, and ALSO live in Utah constantly on the edge of homelessness :)
graehall
Trump and his cronies, outraged that people live happy lives in Europe, are now actively working at trying to break up the EU. Fuck them
Jewdakris
If they eliminate the things that Americans like about the EU then they think we'll stop complaining about not having them. Their entire plan is to make the entire world a shithole with no socialized medicine, education or safety net.
Relictivity
They’re not happy until everyone in the world is as miserable as them.
Neurisko
They want the world to be an oligarchy with him as one of the oligarchs controlling everything. The misery is just a side effect.
graehall
Literally, they're offended that places in the world exist where there's some sort of happiness and equality and people care about each other and tax money goes back toward the people instead of just the oligarchs. They want to take over and ruin the planet for everyone. And it's so fucking tedious and frustrating. We could be doing so much better but no we've gotta fight fascists again, this time powered by techbros and their lying AI
goodbyeitwasfunwhileitlasted
Check out your ancestry. I found out I have a great grandparent who was born on Canadian soil and had a Canadian birth certificate. Because of that, I'm able to apply for Canadian citizenship. Many countries have ways to get citizenship through ancestry, and it can be easier than trying to get a work/investment visa, and citizenship gives you the right to work. Interestingly, living abroad can help with student loans through the foreign earned tax credit as well.
Jewdakris
I think the real problem is that there's a large percentage of us here whose grandparents fled here from countries that, let's just say there was a reason they got out then and there hasn't been a reason to really go back since. The Eastern European block doesn't really look like an escape right now.
goodbyeitwasfunwhileitlasted
That's fair, though if it happens to be a country that's in the EU, you get the right to live/work anywhere in the EU, which offers many decent countries to choose from.
WhiskyBravo
I looked into Italy bc my great grandparents were Italian. No bueno there, they have changed a lot of those laws, need to be a direct descendant.
goodbyeitwasfunwhileitlasted
A lot of citizenship laws aren't retroactive, so the laws that were active when you were born are what apply to you. Not all countries are like that though.
FaeVikingPrincess
my ancestry goes a bit too far back me thinks. Does having ancestors from the Netherlands in the 16th century count?
SavageDrums
Mercantile class?
FaeVikingPrincess
Dutch West India Company.
tidepool
Right like mine all came over on the Mayflower or during the revolution. Sir John O’Sullivan of Ireland is my 7th great grandfather but I can’t prove it because he disowned my 5th great grandmother because my 6th great grandfather didn’t get permission to marry her (Irish) mother while they were in America. That’s it, the best I’ve got.
FaeVikingPrincess
Yeah, my ancestor that first arrived in the Americas was Hendrick van Dyck. Which if my research is to believe is the origin of the name Van Dyke in the US. Which if that is true there could be a possibility of me being distantly related to Dick Van Dyke.
IHaveGreatKittenRecipes
Yeah mine are Mayflower and Natives. Unless one of the Canadian tribes wants to claim a random half breed Choctaw, I think I'm stuck doing it the slow way.
friendsofsandwiches
sad thing is, we NEED people like this in the midterms.
tidepool
They can still vote as long as they’re citizens because they still have to pay taxes from overseas. Their votes still count.
Eldis
Elections (that are very likely rigged, the very least gerrymandered in a manner that makes it life-threatening for a massive portion of registered democrats to vote) are unlikely to save The US. I hope for the best, but you need get real: fascism doesn't care about votes. If the midterms end up with Democrat landslide the current regime is going to pull off some insane PR campaigns followed by Supereme Court (6/9 are GOP chosen traitors) cancelling the election results.
PersonalityFire
I don't disagree with what you've said in the way that you've framed it, nor their willingness to do that sort of thing. But I also don't think people realize just how fucking difficult it would be for them to pull off such a thing. And they've demonstrated they're only vaguely capable of going after the lowest-hanging fruit possible. They lack the courage and the intelligence to adequately stave off 50M+ existentially pissed off voters.
Eldis
Difficult? They destroyed The US healthcare (which will result in millions, if not tens of millions of deaths just like taking down CDC did) and sent out Gestapo to oust anyone who looks brown, and the only response from citizens was peaceful protests. I'm sorry, but until there are any kind of consequences of the attrocities they've already done they will keep pushing without fear.
PersonalityFire
And yet, those gestures haven't seriously disrupted enough Americans' way of life. Expanded ACA subsidies were always at the mercy of Congress, and something people don't want to admit is that immigration enforcement is squarely under the Executive since DHS was formed. Things within their grasp. States administer elections; they're going to hit a wall- hard- and Trump at least is too dumb/proud to know when it happens. 2026 is going to be a lootfest because they know they're gonna lose it.
Eldis
yeah, i dont think we can continue a conversation in good faith when you say "those gestures" and "haven't seriously disrupted ... way of life"
Those aren't just "gestures", they're fascist governance, and the attrocities have already lead in thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the ACA takedown alone will result in millions of dead Americans, and tens of millions of Americans in medical debt.
tidepool
The supreme court has no power to do that, stop fear mongering. Everyone must show up and vote. Everyone. No sitting it out because, “they’re just going to rig it and it’s gerrymandered anyway.” Doesn’t matter. Gerrymandering only matters because Republicans show up to vote in midterms and Dems don’t. GO VOTE.
Eldis
Bringing up "SC has no power to do that!" is delusional considering the regime does illegal shit 24/7 on a scale likely never before seen in The US, including the SC constantly making rulings that aren't constitutional or otherwise lawful. Stop believing in the lie that lawfulness will have anything to do with what GOP and their sycophants are going to do.