Last weekend Jesse Derr and his wife, Jess Yeastadt, made the five-hour drive from their home in Phoenix to the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego.
On the agenda for their weekend trip: learn how to move to Mexico.
Derr, 41, and Yeastadt, 45, were among hundreds of Americans in San Diego last weekend dreaming of starting a new life abroad.
A record number of Americans are leaving the US: The country saw an illegal migration of between 10,000 and 295,000 people by 2025, according to a study from the Brookings Institution. The widest range measured was among people who traveled voluntarily, with Brookings estimating that between 210,000 and 405,000 people did so last year.
For the first time in at least 50 years, more people have moved out of the country than into it. Restrictive immigration policies and deportation efforts play a role, according to Brookings. Some US citizens migrate for school, work, raising a family, retirement and everything in between.
Expatsi, a travel agency for Americans, is becoming a sought-after resource.
The company, founded in 2022, hosted the second annual Move Abroad Con in San Diego on May 9 and 10. Some 600 Americans from across the country attended, double the number of people at the opening ceremony held in May 2025, Expatsi founder Jen Barnett tells CNBC Yenza.
The majority, 89%, said they wanted to leave the US for political reasons, according to a sample of 218 people who attended over the weekend, according to Barnett. Others said they hoped to move for adventure and growth (73%), and to save money (57%). Nearly two-thirds of respondents hope to move within two years, have an average monthly budget of $3,856 to work with, and hopeful movers are split between 44% individuals, 39% couples and 17% families with children.
Like many who came with him to the conference, Derr says political reasons are the main reason his family left the US.
He points to recent policies affecting reproductive rights, such as the Supreme Court’s decision to remove the federal constitutional right to abortion, and its rulings that weaken the Voting Rights Act, which he sees as signs that the country is “going backwards.” Meanwhile, he says, Mexico’s 2024 election of Claudia Sheinbaum, the country’s first female president, and federally mandated gender equality laws align with the values he and Yeastadt seek.
Derr says attending a weekend event and hearing from people who have moved in the past made his seemingly “insurmountable” plans feel more attainable.
Talking to Mexico immigration experts was helpful to cover what the couple would be able to bring abroad, their income requirements to get a visa, and other “day-to-day living” considerations, Derr said. “We really went away on the weekend with unknown things.”
Derr says the timeline for the couple’s departure will depend on the results of the 2026 US midterm elections. If the Democratic Party gains control of the House and Senate and takes “quick, measurable steps to reverse the damaging decisions made by this administration, it will affect our timeline” and galvanize the movement, Derr said.
Conference visitors paid between $500 and $1,000 for tickets to the weekend events, which included two days of programming from more than 50 experts. Visitors are treated to several breakout sessions to learn about the ins and outs of different visas, taxes as a foreigner, immigration health insurance, and information on how to move to tropical destinations like Portugal, Mexico, Canada, and New Zealand.
Von Bradley, 45, is a public employee in San Diego. He has been looking for ways to move to work abroad for the past year.
Southern Spain tops Bradley’s short list of places to move abroad given its warm, sunny climate. Most important to him living abroad is finding a place with a low cost of living, where his dollars can go toward his eventual retirement, and a place that promotes a healthy lifestyle, such as finding nutritious food in a traveling city, he says.
The cost of moving and living abroad varies greatly depending on the country of destination and the lifestyle you want. The first move usually includes visa and other paperwork processing costs of several hundred dollars, and tens of thousands in travel and transportation costs. For example, Make It previously reported on a Chicago couple who spent 10 months saving up more than $20,000 to move to Valencia, Spain, in the spring of 2025.
Bradley says his Plan A is to move abroad through a job transfer, but if those opportunities don’t arise, he’ll use the resources he’s gathered through the Expatsi network.
“It made me happy to see how many people are considering this,” Bradley said. The wealth of knowledge “was like drinking from a fire hose, but I took a lot of notes, collected a lot of pamphlets, so I have information to go back to.”
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