Number of Americans applying for UK citizenship hits record levels
Some 8,790 Americans sought citizenship in the UK, either through registration or naturalisation in 2025, according to Home Office data published Thursday.
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/number-of-americans-applying-for-uk-citizenship-hits-record-levels-403620/Open linkView original on lemmy.nz551
Comments137
Seems like trading one shitty situation for another, UK's government is fucked too, isn't it?
I mean, you don't just get shot on the street legally, and we don't have ICE (yet), and not everything is a complete scam... But maybe in 20 years we'll be there. Hopefully the UK takes a different route, and I doubt the "infrastructure" is there to go full "legal slavery and for profit prisons" British MAGA to begin with.
You say that, but there's stuff like Brexit and now this age verification bullshit: I'm not convinced Britain is that far behind.
No dude, you have IP cameras rolled out alread, you're primed for the AI surveillance state by 2029. You're also just as deep in Israel's blackmail book and they probably have most of your state secrets (which is why the prosecutions, they don't care about the kids). Less violent, same destination.
Does a UK passport allow you to live in other parts of the Commonwealth than just British Isles?
I don't think so, sadly, but I'm not entirely sure. I'm leaning towards no. A EU passport is more flexible, and one can move to Spain and become a national somewhat quickly and then idk settle in Germany or Finland if you want to. Ofc if SHTF in Europe that's a different story, but I guess you could in theory move to French Guyana, lol.
Move to Spain and settle in Germany or Finland?
Are you some sort of sadist?
Warum nicht?
Not inherently. Many of them do offer favorable visa terms (easier work requirements, longer stays, etc).
A UK national can live in Gibraltar, but that's because it's UK territory.
It doesn’t allow residence in the “British Isles”. It would however allow residence in Ireland.
Well that's at least what the right wing media wants you to believe.
Actually things are looking pretty good for the UK. Even Reform seems to have peaked in voter share and is on the way down. The most recent by-election is a race between greens and labour with Reform nowhere near those two.
There's a subreeddit "GoodNewsUK" which is a pretty good reality check.
Yup. Andrew and the diplomat are in trouble for leaking intelligence to Epstein not the kids. The UK is still all in on Orwellian AI surveillance and still Israel's #2 bitch.
I believe it's spelled "innit"
It's not good with all the bollocks they're currently doing but wait until the current PM hands the next election to Nigel Farage and Reform (Republican-lite). It will get a lot worse then.
Like most US folks, I wish I had job flexibility and the money to just up and emigrate. Alas most have no choice but to stay.
I gave up my career and started over in something entirely different at a paltry salary, but I got out.
I totally understand your decision, but historically emigration is FILLED with stories of even professionals like doctors and engineers needing to accept very low paid wage work and re-credentialing in exchange for a longer term reset in a better country.
Again, I absolutely get it - but that's not the same thing as "no choice".
You still have to have the money to move, be healthy enough to be accepted by the new country, etc. For many many people there is no choice. None. Often those that need it most.
Not blaming anyone that has the agency to leave. But it is what it is.
Can confirm, I cut my salary in half to escape
i think doctors and scientists would have an easier intergrating than othe rprofessionals, givien how they arnt making a complete change in thier career, just "relocation", plus the benefits of being one these groups.
limited for those that dont have a spouse, PHD, MD, or some kind of niche speciality that isnt demand in other country. or you are unable to apply for grad school in those countries.
My only option is arguably worse than the US. Only positive is that I could go to the beach more.
I know people who's parents immigrated to the US from Mexico. Their parents worked under-the-table jobs and hard blue collar jobs so their children could have a better life than them. Those same children are grown up now and applying for Mexican citizenship just in case.
Ngl if China was an actual democracy, I would probably about trying to keep Chinese citizenship...
but unfortunately there's a CCP problem there and I hate them so that's not an option for me.
My mom came from the UK. Even though I was born in the US, it was long enough ago that I also have British Citizenship by default (even though I’ve only ever spent 4 weeks of my life there on vacations). Filed the paperwork and got my British passport last year just in case….
Brexit is a deal breaker for me. Any thoughts I've ever had about moving to UK for any reason went out the window when Brexit happened.
Plus they're only half a step behind on the bigotry, surveillance, and fascism anyway.
They have always been fascist and they are way ahead in laws restricting rights.
I think the guy that was pretending to be pro-genocide and watching his friends be arrested for protesting Israel about summed it up for me. Genocide okay, anti-genocide not okay in the UK.
I think though they are less racist. They have that going for them.
They're so Racist that during the whole Brexit shitshow racism towards other Europeans became pretty overt at all levels.
Also having lived in Britain and with friends which unlike me didn't look like the locals, I heard lots of stories from them about being discriminated against in Britain and even have one myself (you could tell I was not a local if I spoke, since my accent wasn't any of the local ones).
Whilst Britain is good at image management, what's under that carefully cultivated image is quite a lot darker.
Waiting for Joanne Rowling to have a Kirk moment.
Any time now.
While that's true, they at least don't have rampant gun violence or a government para-military gunning people down in the streets
Having lived in Britain during the time of the Referendum and seen all of that shitshow first hand, I would say that Brexit is the product of British Politics having been taken over by the local version of MAGA (so, less loud and obnoxious, more posh sleaze).
This was to the point that they even had a Trump lookalike called Boris Johnson.
Isn't the UK also having it's own right wing problems?
Just like everywhere else.
Oh, they're 10 or 20 years ahead of the rest of Europe: over a decade ago the local equivalent of MAGA whilst taking over their rightmost main party ended up causing Brexit and in government with an absolute parliamentary majority (and, remember, Britain is not a presidential system).
In most of Europe the Far-Right is not in power, much less fucking their country up with something as bad as Brexit.
You know the US is a real shthole when people decide to move to the UK, which also is a shthole lol
I left the US for the UK well before Trump 1 and am still here. I can confidently assure you that you have no idea what you're talking about.
While it's far from perfect (nowhere is), our quality of life here is far better, and interactions with the authorities and law enforcement are far less brutal than they were in the US. And people here are friendlier. But then, I'm not living in London, which is crawling with driven, greedy assholes.
The problem with getting your info from headlines is that you don't know which sources are serving an agenda rather than reporting actual news. One thing that is wrong with the UK is that its media is just as fucked as that in the US. With the exception of a few publications (the wishy-washy LibDem Guardian, the conservative contrarian Private Eye), it's all billionaire's bullshit. And 90% of podcasters are semiliterate knobheads who just make shit up.
Having said all that, it does rain a lot, and despite massive gains over the past few decades, the food still could do with further improvement. But when I return to the US for visits, even in progressive bubbles where my friends and family live, I'm always glad to come back here. Especially when the Greens just decisibely defeated Farage in a by-election and made Starmer look like the wanker that he is.
You will keep being fed beans on toast until morale improves.
Why the fuck would anyone want to go to the UK? It is Trumpland, but with a accent.
Because most Americans can only speak English. And Australia is really far away.
If only there was someplace closer
I think people don't like the cold.
I've got good news and bad news
isn't Australia just as bad if not worse?
They just banned corporations from donating to politicians. So. Maybe not really. They also don't have a trump.
but they do have a Murdoch...
and a NSW...
Hey man... Murdoch is fair play....but this was meant to be a clean fight, no need to hit below the belt. They're ashamed enough about it, don't gotta rub it in their face all the time....
I'm getting the popcorn, because murdoch's kids are fighting about newscorp and who is gonna control it. I think lachlan is in the lead atm?
I'm sure whoever ends up in charge it'll definitely be an improvement......🙄
Heavy on the /S here
It's somewhat telling that you comment implies that everyone else has an accent and you don't :)
Especially when Ireland is right there!
I'm in England and feel you're on the money there. Their economy is booming with lots of US companies utilising their tax efficient policies.
You get the best of both worlds and hey, Americans are always saying they're Irish so they're going back to their motherland
yeah, I did a gene test and it turns out I'm 0.000001% irish. I may as well move there! (/s)
Céad míle fáilte!
Ireland has shitty phd programs
Having lived there, I agree that Britain is the most Fascist nation in Europe after Belarous and Russia, though theirs is the Posh Aristocratic version, so it's not as loud and obvious as "strongman" Fascism.
We haven't gone anywhere near being Trump land yet. And the Trump party (Reform) just got wrecked in an election yesterday.
Ironically the only reform supporter I encountered is my brother who now lives in Australia.
He doesn't like immigrants, we're English.. .. umm
You seem to somehow have missed the whole Brexit shitshow, including the Tory party becoming openly Anti-Immigrant, Racist and ultra-nationalist with massive national delusions of grandeur (made oh so painfully obvious when the pranced into the EU exit negotiation loudly proclaiming they held all the cards, ultimatilly showing that they did not and not getting the things they wanted the most).
(And lets not forget Britain's very own version of Trump: Boris Johnson)
You also seem to have missed the insane Civil Society Surveillance levels as disclosed in the Snowden Revelations and the recent legislation forcing Britons to ID themselves on the Internet, which is now being further tightenned with proposed restrictions to VPN use.
And lets not forget the anti-Demonstration legislation of the last decade as well as the anti-Terrorism legislation and how it was recently used to arrest anti-Genocide demonstrators as "Terrorism Supporters".
This is not normal in Democracy.
I've lived in multiple countries in Europe, including Britain, and in my view the UK is the most Fascist country in Europe after Belarous and Russia, it's just that British politicians don't play the loud and obnoxious strongman role like Trump or Orban, they play the posh vaguelly aristocratic type who rather than fight the Justice System subverts it to make it a tool to punish those of the riff-raff who are a bit more uppity, hence things like using anti-Terrorism legislation to crack down on those who demonstrate against His Majesty's Government's active support of Genocide.
Granted, given how far the Overtoon Window is to the Right in Britain, I can understand that whilst those outside see the present day Tories as a Far-Right party, for those inside that kind of politics is now so normalized that it's hard for most to recognize just how Far-Right the present day Tories are both in broader European terms and even in historical British terms, so they only see the even-more-Far-Right insane nutters of Reform as Far-Right.
Mind you in my experience the shift to and normalization of the Far-Right is one of the things Britain is ahead of the rest of Europe in: I'm seing happening were I am now the kind of thing I saw happen in Britain over a decade ago.
Luckily Americans don't speak any foreign languages so rest of Europe is safe.
The ones who can afford to move are the ones that statistically be more likely to speak more than one language. Learning German myself to add to my pile.
Guten tag!
Mein leben!
Please tell me this was a Wolfenstein 3D reference. lol
Schutzstaffel!
Yuusss. lol
Guten morgen.
Scheisse!
Einen großen schwarzen Kaffee, bitte.
It's the only sentence I know and, honestly, it seems to work well in most situations.
Das ist nicht kaffe...
Do you always end up with filter coffee when saying this?
Shouldn't that be 'Kaffees'? or "Eine grosse schwarze Kafee"?
My German is getting quite rusty, but I think I remember enough of the grammar...
The noun "Kaffee" is masculine, so normally, the nominative form would be "der Kaffee" or "ein Kaffee". However, in OP's sentence, it would be a direct object, making it use the accusative form of "den/einen Kaffee". Then, the adjective will take the same ending as the article here (though the rules are weird and complex, so that's not always the case).
Thus, "Einen grossen, schwarzen Kaffee" should be correct.
Yes learn the language, come here and then watch it turn into a populist shit hole too. It's T minus two years...
Or gets the ones who do speak at least one foreign language, which aren't going to be the close-minded kind that thinks everything that matters starts and stops with America, so that's also good.
This is actually pretty funny. "Who speaks my language and where can i go?"
This is 100% even though for all other languages the question would be “whose language do I speak…”!
Not really. Thankfully it takes a bit of brains to make the move, so the world gets the USAs best.
feking imigints takin er jerbs
And because this is the Internet /s
Well I did immigrate here like five years ago. But I kept my US job. I've just become a weird hermit. It's great.
How does that work? Aren't you still paying quite a bit of US taxes, and then also paying UK taxes?
The two have a taxation agreement, you only pay tax in one of them. So far, so good.
Bluuudy yanks takin me job...
Trig's aunt had more Yanks than Eisenhower.
Coming back home eh?
I'm not sure that would actually be a step in the right direction.
They've been showing their ass a lot lately.
Trust me the Americans leaving the country are not the Trumpers. Now is the time to steal the brain drain for yourself.
Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the original comment is talking about how the UK is pretty fascist and dystopian as well.
That was indeed my point.
If you really have a reason to find out, it'd be worth coming here and seeing for yourself. And make sure to see more than London. There's a lot more to the UK than the metropolis.
I think the laws the government are passing around online Id requirements and trying to force companies to break encryption so they can have pervasive surveillance powers are very dystopian and the main thing I'm talking about. I'm sure the people and cities are very nice though, I've never been
What about an exchange program? Maybe right wingers fear for their lives in the U.K.
Lolz. The UK? The one that's about to install the Reform Party?
You idiots. You imbeciles. You're just rats jumping from one sinking ship onto another.
Reform are an absolute joke at the moment, from my understanding. I doubt they will be winning an election any time soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Seat_projections
Currently polling has Reform at a +112 seat majority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2026
Approval polling has Reform as the predominant choice.
It does seem to be a downward trajectory at least though. Let me cling to a little hope please :P. Perhaps the debates will swing it in Polanski's favour; he is the only one who lays out a reasonable plan for working folks.
I hope the wider British public wakes up before the election. But, pretty much all of the mainstream media encourages their base instincts to blame immigrants at some level, rather than the wealthy. They are caught in a propaganda loop. Some of that influence is obvious (The Mail), some of it is very subtle (BBC, TheGuardian - editorship).
But I'm not overly optimistic. It took them way too long to realise the Tory leopards were eating their faces.
Americans coming over here is quite laughable. Good luck guys, you'd be better off somewhere that has a relatively young democracy and/or dictatorship in living memory (Germany and Spain look pretty good from where I'm sitting - but even Germany is a little bit O.o).
They're off their peak, as they're being forced to try and govern in the smattering of local elections they've already won. Also, Reform is getting larded up with Tory and New Labour refugees. The joke I've heard is "this may be the first boat to get sunk by the rats jumping on board".
The public is constantly being "woken up" by a hysterical national media. It is, if anything, too awake. Like a man on a coke bender who hasn't slept in days. They're incapable of supporting any kind of moderate liberal campaign for fear of these candidates being too nice to Muslims or Gays or KGB agents or pedophiles.
Germany is absolutely fucked. The AfD is polling on par with Reform, atm.
Spain is caught between a dozen different rocks and hard places. I'd say they at least have some nice HSR, but two derailments in as many months is fucking bleak. All of Europe is once again staring down the barrel of "Oops, all out of money", thanks to their inability to tax billionaires or nationalize critical industries. It's going to be a repeat of 2010 if the US economy repeats 2008.
I came to the UK over a decade ago. It's much better than the US. Not all that bad. The fascist media has been loudly broadcasting propaganda about decline, but
Nothing subtle about the BBC, it's had 14 years of Tory appointments to senior positions, and Starmer has done nothing to correct the imbalance. The Guardian has always been centrist-- for example when they bought into the "Corbyn is antisemitic" lies and jumped on the Labour Together bandwagon, but even before that, they've always had a big representation of old SDP hands and other non-Tory anti-socialists. I fully expect they'll be turning their guns on the Greens, now, trying to keep dead-duck Starmer afloat a bit longer.
Polanski is starting to fall out with his party. He, a committed zionist, while his party wants to pass a resolution defining zionism as apartheid. It’ll probably end in tears before the next general election.
Here's a paraphrased quote from Zack Polanski: "Zionism is Racism"
What are you even talking about? Israel owns all the other major parties, except the greens! That quote is 100% more than any leader of any UK party has ever said regarding Israel or Gaza.
Three very different sources on this:
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/polanski-indicates-support-for-greens-zionism-is-racism-motion/
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-green-zack-polanski-zionism-is-racism-motion/
https://news.sky.com/story/israel-not-committing-genocide-in-gaza-but-casualties-and-destruction-are-utterly-appalling-says-uk-government-13427380
He told LBC last week that Zionism wasn’t racist, and that it was just Netanyahu making it racist.
When pressed, he refused to declare Zionism racist in that interview. That's quite different from saying zionism isn't racist; he just wouldn't say that it was. Also, he's kind of right isn't he? From a nuanced perspective, it's Netanyahu and his party that have largely created the fascism at the heart of Israel, so I appreciate his point. But, I suppose theoretically, the fact he went to reflect before changing his position, could indicate a needed to gain permission from the person he is owned by before changing his stance.
This week he has said specifically, that zionism is racism under pressure from his party. I don't see that as the act of a committed zionist, but then again is it just verbal buttering? He's seemingly willing to go so much further than Starmer, Badenoch or Farage in his anti-Israel speech. If he was owned by Netanyahu like so many politicians are, he wouldn't be able to say this freely surely? It also shows he's willing to go with consensus of his party which is also a good sign.
That said I've been fooled before by music to my ears; so it comes down to a matter of trust doesn't it? Do we trust him? There's no telling before reaching power. He's been transparent about his finances at least; and doesn't appear to have been bought like many other politicians. But whether or not he's a Trojan horse for the left, who has a hidden master, is impossible to see at this stage.
There's an out-of-context quote where Polanski is saying Zionism doesn't have to be inherently racist. And, back in the early days after 1948, there were indeed socialist Zionists who were committed to equality for Palestinians. But they were soon pushed aside by the hard-right faction. So I'd differ from Zach and would argue that this is inevitable in a colonialist, nationalist enterprise.
There's a resolution proposed for the upcoming Green conference declaring that Zionism is racism. I'll be voting for it.
The next general election is in 2028. Polls now have no predictive power that far into the future.
Also, the UK is riddled with push-polling.
We just had a by election yesterday
Can't really fully outrun the decline and sociopolitical chaos of the West if you just go to a different "province" of the West, but that's probably where they fit in the best so what other options do Americans have? They're not gonna go to China (when just learning French is almost an impossibility), they're not gonna go to the Gulf countries or idk Singapore (even though in the big cities I'm sure you can get your booze, and there are often softer laws for the pagans/polytheists/atheists/whatever and harsher laws for the local Muslims)... It doesn't seem like they have more appealing choices and America keeps falling down the stairs so it's kinda now or never.
Right, so why leave at all? Just moving from the frying pan to the fire.
Maybe you get two good decades before you have to run away again? Ideally, people stay and try to rebuild and whatnot but I understand their decision too.
Why UK though? They want to be in the next populist shit hole?
They speak English in populist shit hole?
I can tell you, Americans who immigrate to Canada bring the stupid with them. It's like, "nice country, glad I moved here, how can we fuck it up like the USA?"
They're gonna be disappointed when british police arrests them for wrongthink on twitter
Well... at least they aren't getting shot and killed by the police.
Imagine.
USonians immigrating into the UK.
Let's hope they respect the tea.
Yorkshire Tea all the way.
I hope the UK treats the Americans the way Americans have treated immigrants.
But let's be honest, they won't care because they're white so the media won't tell the rubes to hate the white immigrants.
Reminds me of the ending of The Day After Tomorrow when US citizens had to cross the border into Mexico and seek asylum there because of (oh the irony) climate change. Would be nice schadenfraude to see.
Oh I will hate on the loud self centred Yanks if I ever have the misfortune to encounter one...
Where are all the racists who claim that they aren't racist for wanting to deport black and brown people? You know? All those reform voters who insist its not a race thing? Why arent they kicking off about all of the americans trying to come over?
Probably not the people who are affected the most by their government.
Remigration!
The situation over there is as bad as here. Fascism isnt confined to the americas
Send them back. They left without cleaning up their mess, that's not how we're raised.
The ones leaving were likely against creating this mess, and it's unfair to apply a group punishment to someone based on where they were born.
Fight for your country??? Nope, immigrate to an another country.
The USA does not forbid dual citizenship so expats still have the same right to vote.
Fight how? Please be specific.
Meanwhile that's about how many came into the US DAILY during Biden's presidency.
Farage's Britain is similar-enough to Trump's America that it's "golden", but it's still less-collapsed than the US, so it's preferable, right??
England's monarchism, its class-religion ( rooted in monarchism, so it's short-term irremoveable ), & its framing-games ( Brexit was a result of 1 such ) make it the most-similar to the US, except for the "patriotism" indoctrination that is normal in schools in the US..
it's a "good" fit
it'll have consequences for England, of course, as all population-composition-changes do..
..helping Farage's mission..
You can transplant the body, even the life, but you aren't changing the religion, & the US's religion PRODUCED the US's current-condition, exactly the same as all our countries are in the process of distilling our own national-corruption-essences into authority-institutions, as quickly as we can, because we haven't got spine-enough to filter-out DarkTriad from authority, in ANY of our countries..
Note the numbers, though: nearly 9k asking citizenship in the UK from the US..
https://blog.hireahelper.com/2025-texas-migration-report/ over 0.26-MILLION moved to texas in the year before 2025-Oct.
Yes, the drasticness of the change is different, but when you've got nearly 2 orders of magnitude difference between the opportunism vs the fleeing, then you're seeing significant evidence of national-nature.
As a US citizen told me, years ago: "you're welcome in Texas only as long as you're leaving: don't try settling there, no matter where you're from, you AREN'T welcome there", & over the years that has become more & more validated.
Use 'em & lose 'em, right?
I "wonder" if that paradigm, in-play for workers from other-states, also is in-play for immigrant farm-workers??
/s
That the people with-means are escaping, is natural:
aren't the oligarchs making certain that they've got their isolation, their coddling, & their security, including bunkers, ready & operating, for the butchering-down of the "masses"?
Why wouldn't we who can afford to leave impending-hell zones do-so, with our families?
It's the same principle..
We aren't as causing-of-the-problem as the oligarchs are, but we're still accommodating of the root-problem, & saving ourselves, leaving others to eat the coming atrocities, same as always..
That woke socialist convict, the root-guru of the Christians, Yesua benJoseph, he got in there with the people who were about-to-be-stoned-to-death, with the convicts, with the crushed, the destitute, etc, & fought for their-validity & their-rights..
No wonder he was exterminated by the privilege-conservatives of his time.
( he was conservative-of-LivingWorth, conservative-of-LivingPotential, & conservative-of-LivingOpportunity, so pretending, as the privilege-conservatives do, that THEY ALONE "own" the meaning of "conservative" is false, & always has been: they just conserve different things.
As a delightful Jewish mind on a TLC TV-show, last-century or so, identified: when benJoseph got violent on the commercial-operation of the Temple, that was an incredibly Jewish thing to do! .. he was being conservative, just of the essence of Judaism, instead of its forms .. & that difference is important.
All the false-framing in the world isn't going to go-away for no reason: it has to be force-displaced! )
_ /\ _
Farage holds no office and his party has 8 MPs. Almost half of them hadn't run as Reform candidates, but instead jumped ship from the Conservatives. By comparison, Labour has 404 MPs. The fasc-friendly media would love to market Reform's success in 2028 as inevitable, but it's just as likely that they'll do well in the 2026 mid-terms (which are for local government positions), then fall on their faces in 2028 once people see how fanatical and incompetent they are when they're in office.
Also, there's a (small) chance that Labour will unwedge its collective head and pass much-needed laws reforming foreign funding of election campaigns and transparency of party donations. If they do so, Farage will be fucked.
Sorry it took so-long for me to reply: I've still got something like 700 notifications to get through..
I said Farage's Britain, & the recent elections there have demonstrated that his-party's the one mopping-up.
That is what I meant.
His kind's Britain, & that's increasing.
It is normal in times of stressful-change, for the population to go reactionary.
That's just human nature.
The younger ones, the more woke ones, go the other way, but the whole political-process selects-for DarkTriad types, & .. that has consequences.
Starmer's apparently willing to sacrifice Britain for sake of his-ruling-his-party..
That's a problem..
That helps Farage's mission gain traction..
Which itself is part of the whole multidimensional-mess..
_ /\ _
I'm guessing none of these Americans are trans.
By making the move they would by definition be trans.
Transatlantic.
As bad as it is, it would still be an improvement compared to the US for them.
I mostly agree, but if my sister were fleeing the fascism here in the US I would recommend she pick a safer place, since the trajectory of the UK, while different from ours, still doesn't look great.