It is difficult to get a definitive count of how many Americans are ‘expats’ and living outside the United States. However, most articles I’ve read seem to converge on a figure of about 9 million. That is equivalent to the entire population of New York City or, in terms closer to home, about 9 times the population of Montana. It is like the entire populations of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado moving out of the country.
These people are scattered across well over 100 different countries. The largest American expat population is in Mexico. Again, definitive figures are hard to come by, but the figure seems to be around 1.5 million Americans who have chosen to make Mexico their home. They are scattered throughout the country but there are robust expat populations in a number of Mexican cities including Ensenada, Puerto Vallarta, San Miguel de Allende, and Monterey to name a few.
People move overseas for multiple reasons. Given the globalization of the economy, many people work for international companies and are assigned to overseas offices or projects. I was living in Kuwait because the engineering consulting company I worked for won a contract with the Kuwaiti government to do a detailed study of Kuwait Bay prior to the construction of a large desalinization plant. Kuwait Bay has a large shrimping industry and the government wanted to ensure they were not going to adversely impact this industry by discharging effluent from the desalinization plant into the bay. We had a staff of 15 to 20 people who lived in Kuwait for a year and a half while we did this study.
When I was managing programs associated with the U-2 surveillance aircraft, I had people scattered all over the world wherever U-2s were operating. Some of those were relatively short-term assignments, but in some cases, such as in Korea, we had people stationed there for years.
The other big contingent of American expats are those that choose to retire overseas, often times, driven by financial concerns. There are many places in the world where retirees, who are often on a relatively fixed income, can live a very nice life including having access to high quality healthcare for far less than an equivalent life style would cost them in the United States.
And then there are people like me who are thinking about moving overseas just for the hell of it – just for the adventure and the quality of life. There are many places in the world where the ‘quality of life’ is far more important than the rat race mentality that seems to have taken over life in the US. In the US, a ‘good life’ seems to be measured by how much money you can accumulate and how many possessions you have. I know from my experience in Europe, a ‘good life’ there seems to revolve around how much time you can spend with family and friends and doing the things you enjoy. I have heard that the same is true in places like Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama.
Most Americans living abroad choose to retain their US citizenship. However, a growing number of expats are looking to renounce their US citizenship or establish dual citizenship and get a second passport. One of the big reasons some people are considering renouncing their US citizenship is because of the US tax laws. The US is one of the few countries in the world which taxes your worldwide income. For example, if I were to buy a condo/home in Portugal (or anywhere else) and rent it out during tourist season, even though that rent would get paid in Euros and deposited into an overseas bank, that income would have to be reported to the US IRS as income and, as such, would be subject to US taxes. There are things like the Foreign Earned Income credit and other things to try to mitigate having to pay double taxes (in this case, Portugal and the US) but the reporting requirements and complications add a layer of bureaucracy that some people are not willing to deal with. Their solution is to become a citizen of a new adopted country where the reporting requirements are not so onerous.
While I am not contemplating renouncing my US citizenship, I certainly wouldn’t mind having a second passport. I kind of like that idea. The fact is, during part of my career when I was traveling extensively, I actually had two valid US passports – it’s legal. I was traveling so much that sometimes I would have to send my passport to a consulate/embassy to get a visa and I still needed a valid passport to travel on while that was happening. So, I was able to have two valid US passports. Although, having passports from two different countries seems more appealing these days for any one of a number of reasons. But, alas, that will have to wait. First, I have to find somewhere over the pond to park my butt for a while. And right now, that could be just about anywhere – although North Korea is probably not on the short list!