Last weekend, Jesse Darr and his wife, Jess Yerstad, drove five hours from their home in Phoenix to the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego.
The topic of the weekend trip is to learn how to get to Mexico.
Derr, 41, and Jjestad, 45, were among hundreds of Americans in San Diego last weekend dreaming of starting a new life abroad.
Americans are leaving the United States in record numbers. According to research from the Brookings Institution, the country had between 10,000 and 295,000 net negative immigrants in 2025. The widest range of estimates is for people who retired voluntarily, with Brookings estimating that between 210,000 and 405,000 people retired last year.
Brookings said this is the first time in at least 50 years that more people are leaving the country than entering the country. Restrictive immigration policies and deportation efforts are to blame. Some U.S. citizens immigrate to study, work, raise a family, retire, and everything in between.
Expatsi is a company that provides relocation tours for Americans and has become a popular resource for some.
The company, founded in 2022, held its second annual Move Abroad Con in San Diego on May 9th and 10th. About 600 Americans from across the country participated, double the number from the first event held in May 2025, Expatsi co-founder Jen Barnett told CNBC Make It.
Of the 218 weekend participants sampled, the majority (89%) said they wanted to leave the United States for political reasons, Barnett said. Others say they want to move for adventure and growth (73%) or to save money (57%). About two-thirds of respondents want to move within two years, with an average monthly budget of $3,856, and 44% of respondents are individuals, 39% are couples, and 17% are families with children.
Like many other conference attendees, Dar said political reasons are the main reason families may flee the United States.
He points to recent policies impacting reproductive rights, such as the Supreme Court’s decision to strip the federal constitution of abortion rights and weaken the Voting Rights Act, which he sees as a sign that the country is “going backwards.” Meanwhile, Mexico will elect Claudia Sheinbaum, the country’s first female president, in 2024, and federally mandated gender equality laws align with the values he and Oestad are seeking, he said.
Dare said attending weekend events and hearing the stories of people who have moved before her made her seemingly “insurmountable” plan feel more within reach.
Talking to a Mexico migration expert helped the couple cover what they can and cannot bring out of the country, income requirements to secure a visa, and other “day-to-day” considerations, Dare said. “I ended the weekend not really knowing anything.”
Dare said the couple’s relocation schedule will depend on the outcome of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections. If Democrats win a majority in the House and Senate and take “immediate and measurable action to reverse the devastating decisions this administration has made, that will impact our timeline,” Darr said.
Conference attendees paid approximately $500 to $1,000 for tickets to the weekend event, which included a two-day program with more than 50 experts. Guests attended dozens of breakout sessions and learned more about different visas, taxes as a foreigner, immigrant health insurance, and how to travel to popular destinations such as Portugal, Mexico, Canada, and New Zealand.
Von Bradley, 45, is a government employee in San Diego. He has been exploring ways to move and work abroad for the past year.
At the top of Mr. Bradley’s list of potential destinations to move abroad is southern Spain, known for its warm, sunny climate. The main priorities when living abroad, he says, are finding a place with a low cost of living that you can use for your eventual retirement, and a place that promotes a healthy lifestyle, with walkable cities and nutritious food.
The costs of moving and living abroad vary greatly depending on the country you’re traveling to and the lifestyle you desire. Your first move typically includes several hundred dollars in visa and other paperwork fees, plus up to tens of thousands of dollars in travel and shipping costs. For example, Make It previously reported on a Chicago couple who spent 10 months saving more than $20,000 to move to Valencia, Spain in the spring of 2025.
Mr Bradley said Plan A is to move overseas through a transfer, but if that opportunity doesn’t materialise, he plans to use the resources he has amassed through Expatsi’s network.
“It was interesting to see how many people were considering this,” Bradley says. The abundance of information “is like drinking from a firehose, but I took a lot of notes and collected a lot of flyers, so I have information to fall back on.”
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