Tim Hennigan and Peter Atlas are tired of the political divisiveness, unstable international relations, and Teslas parked in front of the White House. Most of all, they are fed up with President Trump. The Charlestown couple is in the final stages of obtaining Irish citizenship and recently moved to their new home in Ireland, where they will wait out the current administration.
“This is not just four years of a president that we don’t happen to like,” Hennigan said. “This is a different regime, and it’s time to leave. For years, I saw progress with race equality, women’s equality, and gay equality. Now, I think maybe we’ve already lived through the pinnacle of equality, at least in this country.”
Atlas, a retired school teacher, and Hennigan, a travel adviser who can work remotely, are concerned about their rights as a gay married couple. Despite recently completing a 20-month renovation of their Boston home, they have decided to uproot.
The couple are among the growing number of Americans seeking dual citizenship through ancestry or golden visa programs. Rules vary by country, but a golden visa allows individuals to qualify for residency or citizenship in exchange for an investment in real estate. They obtained ancestry through Hennigan’s Irish roots. Google searches in the United States for dual citizenship hit a five-year high the week of the November presidential election and grew again the week of the inauguration. However, the number of those taking the next step has been more telling than quick Google searches.
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Because obtaining dual citizenship can be time-consuming and expensive, it’s been primarily limited to people with free time or disposable income. Those going the golden visa route must spend hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on their country of choice. Even those who get dual citizenship through ancestry often report spending a few thousand dollars for help with research or hiring experts to assist in navigating the maze of paperwork required.
At Astons, a firm that helps people obtain second citizenship through real estate investment, inquiries from US residents about dual citizenship spiked more than 100 percent following the November election. It’s the first time in the company’s 30-year history that there has been an influx of calls from the United States. Previously, much of their business was made up of residents of Asia and the Middle East.
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“A big portion of our business since November has been Americans, and we didn’t even look at the US as a market for us until 2023,” said Denis Kravchenko, business development director of Astons. “One of my American clients who is in the process of obtaining a golden visa from Portugal told me, ‘I’m afraid that a civil war might emerge. Can we speed up the process so I have a place to go?’ These are the kinds of things we never heard before.”
At American Ancestors on Newbury Street (formerly the New England Historic Genealogical Society), interest in dual citizenship started growing during the pandemic in 2020 and has been consistent since.
“Most of the time, people who come to us are looking for dual citizenship because they want to honor their ancestors,” said Sarah Dery, director of research and library services. “But it seems that the turmoil in the current government is adding to that fire. For me, I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that it would be really interesting to get dual citizenship, but since January, I’ve had the urge to look into it more.”
Because there is no central database tracking Americans pursuing dual citizenship and no government agency overseeing or collecting information on citizens with dual citizenship, there are no exact numbers of US residents holding two passports. Americans are allowed to hold dual citizenship in 63 countries, each with its own rules for citizenship and residency. The Association of Americans Resident Overseas estimates that approximately 5.5 million US citizens live abroad, but they don’t necessarily need dual citizenship to do so. Americans also don’t need to renounce their US citizenship to obtain a second passport. Paul Stein, an immigration law attorney based in New York, said he has more paying clients than ever seeking help to obtain a second passport.
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“Some of these people are mixed-race couples or same-sex couples that perceive a threat to their future in the US,” he said. “In the past, I would maybe hear from one or two people a month about dual citizenship. Now it’s about four or five a week.”
Hennigan and Atlas began looking into Irish citizenship during the first Trump administration. Rich Welch, a biotech executive in Somerville, started working on his Italian citizenship three years ago with plans to retire to Europe when he’s ready. His college-age sons will also become Italian citizens, allowing them to study and work in Europe. For Welch, dual citizenship wasn’t about escaping political turmoil, but he said he’s thankful he has a Plan B.
You hear the phrase “Plan B” often when talking to people about dual citizenship. If obtaining dual citizenship was a distant goal, it was moved to the front burner after Nov. 5 and offers an assurance for those who are concerned about political instability in the United States.
Mike Yepes, an administrative manager at Boston Medical Center, is exploring dual citizenship to make travel between the United States and Colombia easier. He anticipates making the trip more frequently to care for aging family members living in Medellín, but he also feels that having a Plan B isn’t a bad thing.
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“I don’t think anyone has ever complained about having two passports,” he said. “If the situation in the US becomes difficult, there’s an option for me.”
While the second Trump administration has driven interest in dual citizenship, it was COVID-19 that brought it to the forefront of people’s minds. Suddenly, work for many no longer meant being tethered to an office.
“Lots of people ended up with jobs they could take with them anywhere,” said Jennifer Stevens, executive editor of International Living magazine. “So during COVID, people were often going to Mexico for six months or Costa Rica for six months, or Panama for six months on a tourist visa. For the people who really liked the lifestyle, the next step was exploring something more permanent.”
Stevens said she heard stories of people looking into a second passport during Trump’s first term but said more people are now taking the next step and doing more research.
“This is me editorializing, but I think this time it feels different,” she said. “I think we are seeing the beginning of a bigger trend of people exploring their options. People want a Plan B in place if things go south for them.”
Not everyone is on board with fleeing the United States until Trump is out of office. Even TV host Bill Maher, a moderate Democrat, has been critical of the movement, saying, “We don’t need quitters. We need people to stay and fix it.
“Maybe the problem isn’t that America isn’t worth defending,” Maher said. “Maybe the problem is that lots of people today are entitled whiners with no perspective and no idea how good they have it.”
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But dissenters have yet to slow the tide of interest in dual residency. Irish broadcaster RTÉ reported that Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs has seen a 50 percent increase in the number of Americans seeking Irish passports, with some explicitly citing Trump as the reason for their departure. On TikTok, a new channel offering dual citizen advice called Escape the USA has amassed nearly 20,000 followers in just a few months.
Obtaining dual residency through investment, popularly known as a golden visa, can be quicker than the ancestry route, but it requires large sums of cash to invest in either real estate or business, depending on the country. Citizenship for Malta requires a donation of $820,000 to the country’s National Development and Social Fund. Americans looking for a coveted EU passport are currently buying real estate in Portugal and Greece. Spain is phasing out its golden visa program next month due to concerns that the influx of new arrivals was driving up housing prices.
Basil Mohr-Elzeki of the migration investment firm Henley & Partners, which helps people obtain golden visas in countries around the world, said the number of inquiries from Americans has quadrupled since 2018.
“If I were to estimate, I would say that 80 percent of the inquiries are politically, emotionally driven,” he said. “The other 20 percent is for retirement, lifestyle, or people looking for fewer travel restrictions.”
But as demand for second citizenship increases, so does the wait time for consulate appointments. The Trump administration’s firings and layoffs at the National Archives have also made it more challenging for people to access the paperwork necessary to obtain their genealogy citizenship.
“If you need to obtain immigration records from the National Archives, it’s challenging,” said Dery of American Ancestors. “They don’t have a staff anymore, so that wait time, where it may have been six to eight weeks before, is now much longer, which is unfortunate, particularly for genealogists and people that are trying to get dual citizenship or apply to a lineage society. Obtaining these vital records from government officials is an important part of our everyday job.”
Christopher Muther can be reached at christopher.muther@globe.com. Follow him @Chris_Muther and Instagram @chris_muther.