“Once I was in Germany and had some distance from the situation in the U.S., I felt perhaps I had overreacted.”
That’s a man identified as Josh, who moved to Berlin in 2023 to get ahead of a second Trump term. He has since packed up and come home. He is one of several Americans who told Wired magazine this week that their political escape to Europe didn’t turn out the way they pictured it.
Most of them asked Wired not to use their full names, citing fear of backlash from their own side.
The internet told them Europe was a social paradise. Turns out the trains are awful, the health care isn’t free, and people can be really mean. https://t.co/Hs4uzWMxxO
— WIRED (@WIRED) October 20, 2026
“The health care is not free here”
A woman identified as Annie moved to Britain after social media sold her on an idyllic life there. Instead she found that “the quality of life is significantly lower than in the US,” according to Breitbart’s account of the Wired piece.
Then there’s Britain’s government health system, so often held up as a model for America. “I pay huge amounts of taxes and an immigration surcharge to access the NHS services,” she said. “So no, the health care is not free here.”
She also said coworkers mocked her accent.
Jobs, red tape and missing America
Josh already spoke German and had friends there. He still found job hunting very hard and the bureaucracy worse than he remembered. He said Germans will never fully accept someone who wasn’t born there, and he missed friendlier people, free speech and the ease of daily life back home. He’s happier now that he’s back.
Sarah Wood González, a journalist and consultant, spent three years in Spain and Edinburgh before returning to New York. She missed Americans’ outgoing nature and their “default to action,” and said American work moves faster and gets to a decision sooner.
Kate Glavan, an influencer who often posts about left-wing causes, moved from New York to London in late 2024. Brands she had worked with didn’t want her for British audiences, and she announced her return to New York earlier this year.
And then there’s the New York art director who moved to Poland to escape right-wing populism, only to find conservatism even more popular there. He told Wired: “What is happening in the US is also happening everywhere now.”
The numbers behind the move
The move was real enough. Breitbart, citing Wired, reported that the number of American migrants to Spain roughly doubled in the first quarter of 2025, and that Britain saw a major surge in residency applications.
Daniel Di Martino, an economist at the Manhattan Institute who was born in Venezuela, told Fox News Digital that an average Greek salary would be near the poverty line in America, and that even an average Dane earns much less than an average American.
Not every American abroad regrets the move, and Wired’s stories are a handful of anecdotes, not a survey.
The bottom line
For years, the left sold Europe as the grown-up version of America: free health care, gentle politics, a better way to live. A few of the people who bought that pitch went and tried it, and the bill came due in taxes, surcharges, red tape and paychecks that don’t stretch.
What they missed is telling. Free speech. Friendly neighbors. A culture that gets things done. Those aren’t accidents. They come from a country built on liberty, opportunity and self-reliance, the very country they ran from.
Call it buyer’s remorse for Trump Derangement Syndrome. The cure, it turns out, was a one-way ticket back home.
Sources
- Report: Expats Who Fled to Europe Because of Trump Regret the Move – Breitbart
- Americans Who Moved To Europe Share Their Immediate Regret, Horror – Daily Caller
- On Second Thought: Anti-Trumpers Who Fled to Europe Now Regret It – KTRH
- They Fled Trump’s America. Now They Regret It – Wired (original report)