A IMGlobalWealth.news Editorial Report
The second passport is no longer necessarily the endgame. For a growing number of internationally mobile families, the strategy is evolving towards multiple residences, citizenships and jurisdictions: a Plan B backed increasingly by a Plan C.
The shift is visible in the United States. US Treasury records contained 1,462 names in the first quarter of 2026 and another 1,781 in the second, taking the first-half total to 3,243. The second-quarter figure was also 68% higher than the equivalent period of 2025.
But those numbers need careful interpretation. The IRS publication does not count citizenship renunciations alone. It includes individuals losing US citizenship as well as certain long-term residents who relinquish their status and are treated as former citizens under the relevant tax provisions. Nor does the quarter necessarily represent the precise date on which someone expatriated; it records information received by the Treasury.
“Wealthy families are increasingly spreading jurisdictional risk rather than relying on a single country”
That makes the wider trend more significant than expatriation itself.
Americans have become the largest source market for residence and citizenship planning at Henley & Partners, whose applications from US nationals doubled in 2025. Nearly half were directed towards European programmes, while more than a quarter targeted Latin America and the Caribbean. Significantly, only 7% came from Americans already living overseas, suggesting that much of the demand is for optionality rather than immediate emigration.
By the first half of 2026, the firm was receiving applications from 86 nationalities across 47 residence and citizenship programmes, with more than 28% of applicants already living outside their country of nationality. The figures are proprietary company data rather than a measure of the entire market, but they point towards a broader diversification of mobility rights.
Global movement itself is expanding. United Nations data show that 304 million people were living outside their country of birth in 2024, almost double the 154 million recorded in 1990.
Meanwhile, formally giving up US nationality has become cheaper. From 13 April 2026, the State Department reduced the administrative fee for a Certificate of Loss of Nationality from $2,350 to $450.
Yet outright expatriation remains the far end of the spectrum. The more important development may be happening before anyone leaves: wealthy families increasingly treating residence and citizenship rights as they would investments, spreading jurisdictional risk rather than relying on a single country.
Plan B, in other words, is becoming a portfolio.
