Kevin and Jessica Cellura had only 48 hours in December to make a huge family decision.
The couple, who work as a teacher, had to decide whether to accept a job offer to teach in Morocco and leave Asheville in North Carolina with their two younger children.
But the cells claim that their decision was facilitated by the results of the presidential election performed just a few weeks earlier.
“Let’s get away from chaos … I feel that America we knew when we were children is disappearing very quickly,” Jessica Cellura told CNN.
Cellura are part of a growing stampede of Americans who move or make great efforts to move abroad – or to obtain the rights of citizenship that would allow them to do so.
Tax lawyers and immigration consultants have told CNN that they have registered an increase in requests from Americans seeking help to sail the complex network of guidelines needed to move since Donald Trump’s electoral victory.
Jessica, 40, and Kevin, 52, told CNN that they are non -affiliated voters. In last year’s presidential elections, they voted for Democrat Kamala Harris, although Kevin voted in the Republican Party in the 1990s.
His problems with the Trump second administration go far beyond the usual political discussions and fierce disputes.
“I feel that the government we have is not based on reality. It is based on advertising,” said Kevin Cellura, citing the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Trump’s repeated US capitol and false allegations that former President Joe Biden had framed the previous presidential election.
Trump’s rehably provided the “spark” that the couple needed to fulfill an old desire to move abroad, Kevin said. They will teach a school in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, which follows the American model of education. They have airplane tickets only to August 10.
President Donald Trump’s reelection in November 2024 convinced the couple Kevin and Jessica Cellura of North Carolina to start the process of moving to Morocco. (Jessica Cellura)
Official UK, Ireland and Canada data reveal an increase in the number of Americans who have asked to become citizens in recent months.
More than 1,900 people ordered a British passport during the first quarter of 2025, the largest number since the UK’s interior ministry began to maintain records in 2004. Also in Ireland, about 4,700 people residing in the United States requested the Irish citizenship based on their ancestry during the same period, according to the country’s Ministry of Foreign and trade – the highest quarterly value in a decade.
It is impossible to know personal stories behind thousands of data and to what extent did politics play a role – if it played any. Often people can only require citizenship after several years living in a country.
Dina Modi, supervisor of immigration cases at Immigration Advice Service, a British company that provides legal assistance to people who want to move from and to the UK, says that its clients rarely move for a single reason, such as politics. In part, the recent place of Americans seeking British passports to changes in the UK’s fiscal and immigration legislation.
According to Modi, most people simply need options. They have no concrete plans to move, but they want to have the possibility of doing so quickly. Other immigration consultants have witnessed the same impetus, telling CNN that some Americans see double citizenship as a kind of insurance against what they consider to be a political scenario in deterioration in their country.
Celluras, however, do not hesitate to leave. “I won’t be an easy target. I will think about our departure strategy,” Jessica recalls, after the November votes are cleared.
“Political fire”
Before the elections, David Lesperance estimates that he received a maximum of two requests for information per week from Americans who wanted to move. Now, as director of Lesperance & Associates, a tax consulting company and immigration, even receives five a day.
“People who come to me tend to be those who feel aimed,” he said, saying that their clients tend to be rich, with the means to move abroad.
In the days of Trump’s executive order in January, which restricted medical care for the gender for young people, Lesperance said he received seven requests for parents with a trans. For these families, he said, America represents a “political fire zone” and “manage to smell the smoke more than the average heterosexual man with a Maga Hat.”
Melvin Warshaw, an international fiscal lawyer who sometimes works with Lesperance, said he has also received more requests for information from members of the LGBTQ+ community since the elections. Another group of its customers is those who care about the fact that America is “quickly approaching an oligarchy or autocracy.”
Fundamentally, both groups believe that “their rights are being private if they continue to live in the US,” according to Warshaw.
Comedian Rosie O’Donnell is an example of a prominent. Rosie O’Donnell, who for almost two decades exchanged public jokes with Trump, moved to Ireland in January with her non-binary son and is trying to obtain citizenship based on her ancestry.
“When it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights in the United States, it will be when we consider it to return,” he explained in a March publication on Tiktok.
“Ideological Civil War”
Erik Lindsay did not leave America because of Trump itself, but found that he could no longer support the country’s deep political divisions.
The 50 -year -old screenwriter and novelist said the coronavirus pandemic was the “catalyst” for his change from Manhattan Beach, California, to Italy in 2020 – a time in America he compared to an “ideological civil war” where people who died “became politicized.”
The screenwriter and novelist Erik Lindsay photographed walking in Capri, Italy, in 2021, after moving Manhattan Beach, California. (Erik Lindsay)
Lindsay never voted for Trump, but remembers the violent reaction he received after publishing a message to his Instagram account right after the 2016 elections, begging his anti-Trump friends to keep calm and had a long-term vision of American history. “It became poisonous,” he said.
Lindsay has recently become Italian citizen – although just before the change of rules. Italy, like the United Kingdom, began to tighten the rules on who can request passports and visas. In May, Rome promulgated a law that eliminates the possibility of obtaining citizenship through the great -grandparents.
Lindsay was lucky with her timing. Now you can choose to live in Italy, or between Italy and America, to your beauty. But life seems lighter in Italy.
“It’s impossible to have any nuance in a politics conversation with someone who is American,” said Lindsay. “Here you can.”
Sam Hudson and Hanna Ziady contributed to the report.
