Your disaffected lips say "Canada," but your feet say "Mexico" ... or "stay"

After the 2004 reelection of George W. Bush, the 2020 election of Joe Biden and the 2016 election of Donald Trump, Google search interest in moving to Canada spiked. It happened again in June, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark abortion rights ruling Roe v. Wade. According to recent Gallup polls, as many as 15 percent of Americans say they want to leave the country permanently, and even more say they would consider expatriating under the right circumstances.

But only a small fraction of Americans have actually taken the plunge, data shows. And an even tinier minority leave the United States for political reasons, according to migration scholar Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels. …

By almost any metric, Mexico is the top destination for Americans leaving the country. But there’s an unusual reason for that, which becomes apparent when you slice Mexico’s American population by age.

Typically, migrants from America are young adults — think students, Mormon missionaries and Marines — or middle-aged professionals. But American Mexicans are neither: Two-thirds are under 18 — children, in other words.