Where America Is No Longer Safe – and Families Quietly Say Goodbye

The number is alarming and yet barely discussed: Forty percent of US women between the ages of 15-44 are considering emigrating, according to Gallup. This makes this age group twice as ready to leave as the population average – precisely those who give life, start families, and want to shape the future. The reasons are many, but one stands out: gun violence.

The chart shows how the desire of Americans to permanently move abroad has changed since 2009 – strongly depending on whether they support or oppose the sitting government. Since 2017, this migration interest has become markedly more political. People who oppose the government now express the desire to leave the country permanently far more often. Especially under Donald Trump, this share among opponents of the government at times rose to over 25 percent. During the presidency of Joe Biden, the figure remained overall stable, but below the peak level. In 2025, under Trump’s second term, the intention to emigrate among opponents of the government reaches a new high of 29 percent. At the same time, it stands at only four percent among supporters of the Trump administration. The data clearly show how deeply political polarization now shapes even the most personal decisions about the future.

In 2025, the Gun Violence Archive recorded more mass shootings than there are days in the year. Seventy-five times, schools became crime scenes. That a mother like Renee Nicole Good is shot dead in her car – by ICE officers, in the middle of a city like Minneapolis – is no longer an isolated case. It is the point at which even committed Americans say: We have to leave. For our children. For ourselves.

Families who are grappling with this include Emma from Colorado, the mother of two small children, with Irish-American dual citizenship. She is thinking about Europe – since the shooting in Evergreen, since Aurora, since the feeling that the cultural tone in the country has become more aggressive. A couple on the West Coast – he a veteran, she a professor – also reported how fear in the United States is omnipresent, but in Europe simply disappears. The children there are allowed more. Everyday life is freer, more attentive, more humane.

The data show that especially young women in the United States are increasingly expressing the desire to leave the country permanently. While the migration desire among young men between 2008 and 2024 developed relatively steadily and most recently stood at 27 percent, it rose sharply among young women (15-44 years) – reaching 40 percent in 2024. This places the figure for US women well above the average of other OECD countries. The increase began particularly after 2016 and reached new highs during the first Trump presidency and again from 2022 onward. The numbers point to a growing sense of social alienation, especially among young women whose life prospects and rights are increasingly perceived as being under threat in the United States.

Many of these considerations remain unspoken, almost shamefaced. No one wants to leave everything behind. But the thought that one’s own son might one day not return alive from school becomes stronger than homesickness. Imani Bashir left the United States in 2015 after Sandra Bland died in police custody. She did not want to raise her son in a country that does not protect Black children. Today she lives again in Washington – not out of conviction, but because of a sick father. She says: “Not a day goes by that I am not afraid – of the government, of a madman who attacks a school.”

For many Americans, it is becoming increasingly difficult to remain calm amid all the violence. For a long time, they comforted themselves with statistics, probabilities, the hope that things would improve. But after the attack on her former university in Brown, she too began googling European study programs for her daughters. Just for a few days – but something was different. A quiet crack in her faith in her own country. Maybe nothing will come of it. Maybe it will. But the mere fact that this thought no longer seems far-fetched says everything about the state of America.