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I'm American and moved to Europe (Switzerland) 17-years ago. Sometimes I laugh to myself when I think how whatmy long-dead immigrant grandfather (from Vilnius to Midwest USA) would think of my reverse move.

Growing up we always thought my grandparents were the weirdest people. They roasted and ate whole chickens, not cut up chicken parts from the grocery store. They drank tea and ate weird Russian tea cake cookies. They made their own sausage. They hunted ducks and deer. They ate raw beef.

Since moving to Europe I buy a lot of my food from neighborhood farms, roast whole chickens, make tartare, make cheese and sausage... hunting and fishing isn't so easy here though - I can do that when I visit relatives in the USA though.

Ironically enough, Vilnius is now a very beautiful, safe and high quality of life city that is a better place to live than, probably, quite a lot of American cities..

How times have changed..

I'm moving from California to Portugal this week. I get to retire much earlier with low-cost healthcare and a cost of living lower relative to CA, and the Portuguese people I've met have all been wonderful. The food is great too!

I'd rather be on the side that supports Ukraine, clean energy, and stable trade agreements. I don't feel safe in the US anymore.

I know a guy that worked for good UK salary (fintech) that moved to Portugal(Lisbon) almost a decade ago. It seems to be a lovely place, he also happily tell me how much he manage to save and how early he will be able to retire. He got many friends there too, but mostly expats.

If I'm to believe my Portuguese friends however, the extreme influx of digital nomad types have really changed Lisbon. There's almost no authentic Portuguese thing there anymore, just thing LARPING as it. The rent is too high for any local young Portuguese to pay for, while the landlords are super happy for these influx of wealthy expats, so the young either move out of the city or move all together.

In a very utopia like set up, there's something depressing about that reality.

When I asked about to my expat friend living there, he acknowledged it, shrugged, and said "don't hate the playa, hate the game".

Anyway, enjoy the game!

Many of us hate you behind the facade though because you are driving up costs so wildly
Couldn't agree more. If you have any pointers (to web sites) that were helpful to you as you were making your decision or preparations, please do post them.

Also, did you consider any other countries that you later struck from your list?

Are you going to have a Portuguese salary or an American one?
My uncle moved from Germany to Portugal for the same reason. He loves it and the main pain point is healthcare - low-cost, but in his 70s he travels back to Germany for health issues due to quality. It's unpopular opinion in Portugal and everyone will tell you how nice the hospitals are, zero wait times and no hidden expenses. May be my uncle was unlucky, but minor heart issue wasn't properly diagnosed for about a year there, and required a single visit in Germany to get it under control.
I think this is probably useless information considering that legal restrictions largely limit the ability of people to move from one to the other.

Speaking as an American that “accidentally” moved to the EU a decade ago, my impression is still that ambitious EU citizens, particularly those in tech or finance, would move to the US in a second if it was possible to.

That said, I don’t personally plan on moving back anytime soon, although I do miss certain aspects of the American identity and experience constantly.

Yeah, given that it's much easier to get a visa to work in the EU (albeit still not easy) than in the US, the default position ceteris paribus would be that more people would move from the US to Europe than vice versa.

The fact that wasn't the case before just goes to show how big an impact the economic disparity has.

Define “ambitious”. I consider myself extremely ambitious, and what you are saying may have been true 20 years ago, I doubt it’s the case today.

FWIW I’m from Sweden but live in Switzerland. I work all over the world(currently in Rotterdam).

There is no way I would move to the dysfunction across the Atlantic.

What aspects and experiences do you miss? Which country did you move to? I know I romanticize moving to Europe so would love to hear some balance.
I suspect there are a lot of American hegemony trends that look like this. The US is burning good will and soft power that took centuries to accumulate in days or hours. This was a long term trend but the current American government is really stepping on the gas.

The american century is over, but I'm not sure what comes next will be better, we will see.

Agreed. The US, as a result of basically a conservative tantrum for 60 years, has undone most of the progress after the WWs.
My kid moved from the US to Vienna for work. Loves it, says there is no reason to come back...I know a few more folks whose kids left after Uni to work in the EU and have no plans on returning. For a young person who values working to live more than living to work, the EU is very attractive.
It's an infinitely higher quality of life if you're not in the 90th income percentile in the US already. You'll never make that much, but you'll never have half the worries we do here for lower income people.
In my niece's (relatively rural) US high school class several students decided to attend university in Europe with no family ties to the countries in question. It was pretty common in my generation to see, as you note, kids moving to Berlin etc after their studies, but this strikes me as relatively new. Anecdata that seems supported in some of the public numbers [0].

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/07/21/reco...

If you look up the graph this is a 20 years old trend .

One thinks of course about Eastern Europe which had a decent economic growth. Compare to many American HN Readers thinking, "Europe" in General tried to make a place better for living. What it means is of course very dependent on person, but consider thinks like better health care, no war (that's the EU for), better indro, but also economics but to certain percentage it worked out!

Though I can't say about American but health care and guns are still a problem. Compare to Europe which hadn't a start up 20 years ago and "Europe" tries to fix t.

lava_pidgeon says >"Though I can't say about American but health care and guns are still a problem. Compare to Europe which hadn't a start up 20 years ago and "Europe" tries to fix t."<

What? health care is great in Europe and, if you want a gun, just register as a "hunter" in whatever country and take to Joe Biden's advice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-mztxHgYQo

Non-music(but less fun) version:

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=joe+bid...

Stay on for timely warnings how "Americans could be killed by a drone."

I moved to Berlin a few years ago. Anecdotally, my friends and family back home are jealous.
I am jealous of the lifestyle of most of Europe, but not the rigid labour markets and lower salaries. I wish we had more people-oriented cities in North America, though. I don't want to be anti-automobile, but the hostility to the "15 minute city" idea was quite depressing to me.
My good friends moved to Germany before they had their kid. They are extremely happy with their decision.

Everyone I'm aware of who moved because of Trump/Republicans are happy with their choice.

Is a green card the equivalent to a first time residence permit in Europe? It's notoriously hard to get a green card: it'll take 3 years for a normal skilled worker who's already in the US and that's assuming nothing goes wrong in the process, and something always does. Plus many visa categories don't even have a path to a green card. "Long term stay visas issued" might be a better comparison.
While each EU country has its own immigration rules, there is an EU-level route for the highly skilled workers, called the EU Blue Card:

* https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union)

Each EU country has its own rules about immigration.

A green card is probably equivalent to a permanent residence permit, those vary quite a bit between countries, and skills. Some countries might give a permanent residence in as few as 3 years, I believe quite a few have the 4 years threshold. Depending on what skills you have or how much you invest in the country you are moving to this timeline also shortens.

It's not that hard to get a temporary residence permit somewhere in the EU if you're well-employed. Every country has its own rules and some are more lax than others, but there are plenty of e.g. "tech worker" visas you can get. You often don't need a job to officially sponsor you.
Just depends where and where you're from. Even though it's the EU each country has its own rules.
Surprisingly, the vote on limiting Switzerland's population to 10 million may actually pass. Usually votes for things that will hurt the economy don't come close to passing but right now the limit is a few percent ahead.
"A good economy" means different things to different people.

Expensive houses and low wages, vs appreciating assets and low labour costs.

how would that even work? mandatory contraception or something?
>the vote on limiting Switzerland's population to 10 million

google searches 10 minutes after it passes: what is EU ‎guillotine clause

Doesn't include another large group - repatriating Europeans.

Our friends went back to Germany last year after 20 years in USA (permanent residents, didn't naturalize).

My family plans similar move as well in a few years, mostly blocked by my postgraduate program and exact location to return to. There are other scenarios where we'd move right away, like if my spouse gets laid off.

The community note gives more information on the comparison
IMO metrics are not well represented when looking into chart, eg european resident/student permits are not the same as green cards, they had to include students in us as well. another thing is the use of eu+uk+switzerland would it not be better to use eea instead (think about iceland and norway)?

it is an interesting stat, but it might be good to understand the diff among US folks getting passports vs residence permits vs studying

If they can work remotely and keep their American salaries then they can live like Emperors here.

If not, I imagine they will get tired of the low salaries and high taxes and move back to the US. It might be better here for artist types etc. who can benefit more from the social welfare systems than they have to pay in. But for engineers, it makes little sense - you are the one who has to pay for the party.

Fairly steady trends since 2000 with a drop during covid, America becoming less popular for Europeans and Americans
Aside from the authoritarian problems, the US is also clearly sliding into some kind of severe economic recession. I'm just envious of people who have that ability, really.
Notice that a lot of the graphs count people from the Americas. Not USA.
I, for one, welcome our new American fellows.
Americans enjoying their huge American salaries while working remotely from poor European countries
the inflow to the US is historically low, and this increase of US to EU immigrants is a very good thing imo - the US should be more US, the EU more EU, China more China etc etc.
I've been pulling it off, but I have dual citizenship with EU/USA but still get paid in the US because it saves me 2k a month in taxes. There are also workarounds in avoiding paying the higher EU taxes.
Almost all of these are 1st or 2nd gen European diaspora, or the spouses of such people, who 1. still have financial ties to the European country from which they originate through inheritance of assets from their parents/grandparents 2. have citizenship through descent.

The amount of "unaffiliated" Americans who move to Europe is probably negligible.

I had an issue at work, stuck all night on the phone trying to get a license activated. The first fellow I talked to was Australian, great guy. Really helpful, patient. He discovered the issue was indeed on their end.

I took a nap at my desk for an hour (the license was needed on an airgapped system sneaker-netted over via an encrypted drive so I couldn't do this from home and the deadline had arrived).

Woke up and called back, different fellow, European. Every answer, in perfect english, was about 3 words long on average in a very dismissive tone.

I'd rather move to Australia.