Americans Are Leaving: The Numbers, Not the Anecdotes

The movement is real and it is measurable, and Portugal is one of the clearest cases in the record: US citizens holding a valid Portuguese residence permit went from 2,888 at the end of 2017 to 19,258 at the end of 2024. That is a rise of 566.8 percent in seven years, published by the Portuguese authorities themselves.

What follows is the data, with the year and the source attached to every figure. No projections, no anecdotes about a couple who bought a farmhouse.

In this article:

• 1. How many Americans live outside the United States?
• 1. How many Americans live in Portugal, year by year?
• 1. Do the surveys measure leaving, or wanting to leave?
• 1. What the renunciation numbers actually say
• 1. Where a family of Portuguese descent sits in these numbers
• 1. Frequently asked questions
• 1. Conclusion

How many Americans live outside the United States?

Nobody knows precisely, and that is not a rhetorical opening. The US government does not count its citizens abroad: the State Department confirms that Americans are under no obligation to register their presence in another country and that no comprehensive lists exist.

For years the working figure was 9 million, an estimate the State Department used from 2016 without publishing a methodology. In June 2024 it stopped using that number altogether, citing the difficulty of obtaining robust data.

The most careful public estimate comes from the Federal Voting Assistance Program, which put the overseas American population at 4.4 million in 2022, spread across 185 countries, of whom about 2.8 million were of voting age. The same analysis found growth of 42 percent between 2010 and 2022, an increase of a little under 1.3 million people.

The Association of Americans Resident Overseas estimated at least 5.4 million in November 2023 and revised that upward to 5.5 million in October 2024.

Europe is where the growth concentrates. The Federal Voting Assistance Program counted 1,168,505 American citizens in Europe in 2022, the largest regional bloc after North America, up 47 percent since 2010.

How many Americans live in Portugal, year by year?

Here the record is unusually clean, because Portugal counts residence permits and publishes the count. The series below comes from the annual immigration reports of the Portuguese authorities.

The multiplier is 6.67 over seven years. The flow behind it is equally plain: 4,941 new residence permits were granted to US citizens in 2024, against 614 in 2017.

Two cautions belong with those numbers. First, they are a small share of a much larger movement into Portugal: the country went from 421,711 foreign residents at the end of 2017 to 1,543,697 at the end of 2024, which puts Americans at 1.25 percent of the foreign resident population in 2024. Second, the Portuguese totals themselves have been revised — the 2023 figure of 1,044,606 was later restated at 1,293,463 — so anyone citing a single year in isolation should expect it to move.

One methodological note, because it circulates wrongly: PORDATA, the statistics portal most often quoted for Portugal, cannot be used to count Americans, since it does not list the United States as a separate nationality.

Do the surveys measure leaving, or wanting to leave?

They measure wanting, and the distinction matters more than any single percentage.

Gallup found that about 20 percent of American adults said in 2025 that they would like to move permanently to another country. The record in that series was 21 percent in 2024, double the 10 percent recorded in 2011. Among American women aged 15 to 44, the figure was 44 percent in 2024 and 40 percent in 2025, against 10 percent in 2014. The resulting gender gap in 2025 was 21 percentage points, women at 40 percent against men at 19 percent — the largest Gallup has ever recorded in any country in its World Poll. In the same year, 4 percent of Americans who approved of the country's leadership wanted to emigrate, against 29 percent of those who disapproved, a gap of 25 points.

Gallup states expressly that its question measures desire to emigrate, not intention, and that not everyone who wants to move does.

Other series point the same direction. Monmouth University found 34 percent of Americans in February 2024 saying they would like to settle in another country, against 10 percent in January 1974, with 51 percent among those under 35. The Harris Poll put at 42 percent the share of Americans who have considered or plan to move abroad, rising to 63 percent among Generation Z.

Desire is not departure. The actions that can actually be counted are elsewhere: residence permits, as above, and citizenship applications, below.

What the renunciation numbers actually say

Every quarter the Federal Register publishes the list of individuals who have lost US citizenship. Read it carefully: the list expressly includes long-term permanent residents who gave up a green card, treated as though they were citizens who lost citizenship, under section 6039G of the Internal Revenue Code. It is not a clean count of renouncing citizens.

The annual totals, counted directly from those quarterly notices, run as follows: 231 in 2008; 742 in 2009; 1,533 in 2010; 1,781 in 2011; 943 in 2012; 3,000 in 2013; 3,415 in 2014; 4,279 in 2015; 5,409 in 2016; 5,132 in 2017; 3,974 in 2018; 2,071 in 2019; 6,708 in 2020, the highest of the whole series; 2,426 in 2021; 3,815 in 2022; 3,259 in 2023; 4,819 in 2024; and 4,889 in 2025, the second highest annual total on record. The first two quarters of 2026 already carried 3,243 names, more than the whole of 2023.

Between 2008 and 2025 the published figure multiplied by 21.2. The series is also irregular: the median publication delay is 35 days after the quarter ends, but it has ranged from 19 to 526 days, and whole quarters are missing between 1999 and 2005.

Two details are routinely reported wrongly, and both matter if you are reading older articles.

The first is the fee. The consular fee for processing a request for a Certificate of Loss of Nationality was reduced from 2,350 dollars to 450 dollars, a cut of 80 percent, by a final rule published on 13 March 2026 and effective on 13 April 2026. The fee had been introduced at 450 dollars in 2010 and raised to 2,350 dollars in 2014. Anyone who paid the higher amount before the change was not refunded the 1,900 dollar difference, the State Department having taken the position that the earlier charge was not erroneous. The old 2,350 dollar figure is still quoted widely.

The second is the reason for the cut. It did not come from a favourable settlement for the so-called accidental Americans. L'Association des Américains Accidentels lost in the federal district court in Washington DC, which upheld the 2,350 dollar fee (656 F. Supp. 3d 165, D.D.C. 2023), and the appeal remained pending.

For scale, the State Department projected 4,661 requests a year for processing a Certificate of Loss of Nationality, based on demand in fiscal year 2024. The procedure requires personal appearance before a US diplomatic or consular officer in a foreign country, across two interviews, and the certificate is approved by the Department in Washington.

We set these figures out because they are part of the picture, not because they are a suggestion. Nothing in this article recommends giving up any nationality, and acquiring a second citizenship is a separate question from losing a first one.

One assumption that travels with these numbers is worth naming, because the figures do not support it. Acquiring a Portuguese citizenship does not by itself create a Portuguese tax bill: Portugal taxes people on where they live rather than on the passport they hold, and the American rule, which follows citizenship, is the exception rather than the norm worldwide. Tax residence in Portugal is defined by Portuguese law and assessed case by case, which puts it with an accountant rather than with this firm.

Where a family of Portuguese descent sits in these numbers

The relevant series here is not emigration at all. It is applications by descent, filed by people who never moved.

Ireland publishes the clearest figures. Applications to the Foreign Births Register from residents of the United States went from 2,714 in 2021 to 11,601 in 2024, with 9,726 in the first half of 2025 alone, and 18,910 across the whole of 2025 — a rise of 63 percent over 2024 and a record since digital records began in 2013.

Italy moved in the other direction, restricting citizenship by descent to two generations by a decree of 28 March 2025 converted into law on 23 May 2025, a restriction the Italian Constitutional Court upheld in a ruling of 30 April 2026. The Italian government justified the change by the growth of Italian citizens resident abroad, from about 4.6 million at the end of 2014 to 6.4 million at the end of 2024.

Portugal sits between the two. There were 515,334 nationality applications pending on 30 June 2025, of which 15 percent came from children of Portuguese citizens born abroad and 12 percent from grandchildren. The Portuguese registry authority does not publish the nationality or country of residence of applicants, so there is no official count of American applicants and anyone who quotes one is estimating.

The direction of Portuguese law over recent years has been towards more demanding conditions, with a concrete cut in May 2026. The route through a Portuguese grandparent still requires no residence in Portugal, but since 19 May 2026 it also requires a formal test of language, culture, history and national symbols, together with a solemn declaration of adherence to the democratic rule of law (Lei n.º 37/81, article 1(1)(d) and article 1(3), as amended). The route through a Portuguese parent was not changed. Separately, an American who moves to Portugal and applies later on the basis of residence now needs ten years instead of five.

The population this reaches is large. The American Community Survey recorded 1,370,146 people of Portuguese ancestry in the United States in 2024. California leads with 308,988, Massachusetts follows with 253,608, and Florida is third with 101,563, ahead of Rhode Island, which contradicts the traditional geography of the community. Rhode Island still has the highest concentration, 76,961 people, or 6.99 percent of the state.

Frequently asked questions

Which figure should I trust for Americans living abroad? The Federal Voting Assistance Program figure of 4.4 million for 2022 is the one with a published methodology. The 9 million estimate has none and was abandoned by the State Department in June 2024.

Does the rise in Portugal mean the numbers keep climbing? The published series stops at 19,258 for the end of 2024. No official Portuguese report has yet given a figure for 2025, and we do not extrapolate one.

Does claiming Portuguese citizenship mean giving up US citizenship? That is a different question from the renunciation figures above, which count people leaving the American system rather than people joining another. We address it in a dedicated article, linked below.

Is any of this a route you can buy? No. Citizenship through a Portuguese parent or grandparent is an inherited right established by descent and proved with civil records. It is not a purchase programme and no investment substitutes for the family record.

Conclusion

The data supports a modest claim rather than a dramatic one. More Americans live abroad than a decade ago, the growth is concentrated in Europe, and Portugal's American resident population multiplied by 6.67 between 2017 and 2024. Survey interest in leaving is at record levels, but surveys measure desire, and Gallup says so itself.

For a reader of Portuguese descent who has no plan to move, none of this is the point. The point is that the right passes through the family record, and Portuguese law moved in May 2026. At Fluxia Law our core work is the step families discover late: an American divorce, marriage or birth that Portugal never recorded, and which has to be brought into the Portuguese record before any application can stand on it.

Read also

• Do I Qualify for Portuguese Citizenship Through My Grandparents?
• Portugal's New Nationality Law: What Actually Changed in 2026
• Dual Citizenship With Portugal: Do I Have to Give Up My US Passport?