At his meeting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin last week, the US president Donald Trump mentioned comedian Rosie O’Donnell, his long-standing nemesis, who moved to Dublin in January, just days before the inauguration. “Did you know you have Rosie O’Donnell? Do you know who she is? ... you’re better off not knowing,” Trump asked the Taoiseach.
Trump has targeted O’Donnell with sexist insults over many years and Maga supporters were delighting last week at news of her move, celebrating her “self-deportation”. Her reasons? A poem on O’Donnell’s Substack says, “Until home is safe again, For all Americans, Not just white Christian males, Who rule with such cruelty, This is where we will be.”
And she’s not the only one. An increasing number of American professionals and academics are considering a move to Europe amid the autocratic chaos of the Trump administration.
As each day brings more yo-yoing tariff announcements, news of rollercoaster stock market prices, an increase in the cost of groceries or falling consumer confidence, the sense of impending doom is growing. In just two months there have been sweeping lay-offs of federal employees, the gutting of regulatory bodies that protect people and environment from harm, funding cuts and arrests at academic institutions and the sidelining of some independent media.
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Irish recruitment companies, universities, estate agents and American business groups I’ve spoken to are noticing an uptick in the number of queries from those looking to leave the US for a better life in Europe.
Patti Shields, president of Democrats Abroad Ireland, says she receives approximately 10 emails a week from Americans asking for information on living abroad, up from once every three to five months.
“In November and December, people were thinking ‘maybe I’ll move to Europe’, but since January now it’s ‘how do I go about it? How much money do I need?’,” she said.
Uprooting your life, family and job is not taken lightly. Reasons for the move range from political and economic insecurity to a fear of violence or a significant decrease in advancement opportunities in their field. “Many people I talk to are scared of political retribution,” says Shields.
For “Trumpugees” such as O’Donnell, Ireland is an appealing choice as it’s a politically and economically stable English-speaking country in Europe, or because they have cultural links or family or friends who live here. Data from Google analytics suggests users in the US have searched for numerous relocation destinations in Europe, with Ireland among the most sought-after.
Professionals – friends, college buddies and former colleagues – who have contacted me through social media to inquire about moving here work in financial markets, biotechnology, education, HR, health technology, academia or government agencies. Some of those who work for multinationals in the US are exploring transferring to Ireland or other offices in Europe or the UK. They live in both red and blue states: Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington DC, New York, Pennsylvania, and California. Shields noted a few queries from Silicon Valley – the land of the Trump-loving Broligarchs – and from Los Angeles, where fires and natural disasters due to climate change have further eroded a sense of security.
We’ve had so many queries that together Shields and I have set up a secure online space where individuals can share information. It includes the names and contact details of recruiters and estate agents and a list of suggested neighbourhoods and schools.
Most of those contacting us already have Irish citizenship through parents, grandparents or marriage and can move quickly. In general, visitors from the US can come without a visa for 90 days for tourism or business purposes, while some want to use Ireland as a base from which to apply for long-stay visas in Spain, Portugal or Greece, says Shields.
Kathleen James-Chakraborty, an academic from the United States who has been based in Ireland for nearly 20 years, believes there is the potential for a significant brain drain from the US to Europe. Historically, academic funding and resources are much better in the US, but when you can get European funding, especially in the humanities and social science, it can far exceed what is available in the States, she says. However, Ireland’s funding for these areas is ery low by the standards of such countries as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
As Fintan O’Toole wrote in these pages recently, “the idiot wind now howling through the US offers Ireland a transformative windfall”, there is a significant opportunity for Ireland to increase its research capacity to attract academics. “This is the second opportunity we have been gifted in less than a decade to attract absolutely top people, including our own who went abroad,” agrees James-Chakraborty.
“Top scientists are very expensive, as they typically require large laboratories. If Ireland allocated the money to try to attract top talent in the humanities and social sciences”, she believes it would pay off.
Since last summer she noticed a surge in the number of applications from US academics to at least one EU funding body awarding professorships. Many applicants had no obvious ties to the European country to which they were applying. Even before the election, “there were people who were willing to walk away from good jobs simply to be in Europe.” Since the election, this sentiment has only increased, and the academics she spoke to rightly predicted that funding would be slashed and that colleagues would be threatened.
America’s top universities face critical cuts to government funding due to their handling of pro-Palestinian student protests on campus which have been labelled anti-Semitism by the Trump administration. At least 60 are under investigation by the department of education. Columbia University in New York had $400 million (€368 million) of federal funding cut. Trump’s proxies have also threatened to bar Georgetown Law alumni from consideration for fellowships, internships or full-time employment in the office of the US attorney for Washington because they say that Georgetown “continues to teach and promote DEI”. .
As is typical in times of political and economic turmoil, those who have money, means and contacts are the first to leave. But who would have thought that Ireland, a young country long associated with economic and political migrants fleeing colonial oppression and poverty, would be one of the places that harbours Americans fleeing the oldest continuous democracy in the world?
Margaret E Ward is a leadership consultant and a New Yorker who has been living in Dublin for almost 30 years
