The company that helps Americans move abroad
“In 2016, we started to look into the idea of going abroad because of the stressful political climate and the positive aspects of the experience,” Jen Barnett confided to the magazine Forbes. Their first choice fell on Vancouver, but the couple did not like it there. No matter, in 2020, the two Americans decided to try the adventure again, but this time by preparing. They started by identifying what was important to them as “climate, culture, human rights”then they did some research to find countries that matched their criteria. “The end result was a list of the top 10 countries to consider, and we developed a ten-year plan to visit all of them,” explains Jen Barnett. The following year, Jen and Brett finally fell in love with Mérida, a city on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula: “We knew we had found this place and we didn’t want to wait another nine years to emigrate.” It was there that they decided to take advantage of their research and found a company to support their compatriots on the path to expatriation.
Today, Expatsi offers an online test to determine your future destination. And above all, the company organizes preparatory trips. The couple has just returned from their first edition with 30 Americans in cities and villages in Portugal and Spain. It is not just about discovering tourist spots, but also about immersing themselves in the most practical aspects of daily life, such as shopping and public transportation, and familiarizing themselves with local procedures related to immigration or real estate thanks to seminars organized on site. Jen Barnett also advises always doing “a reconnaissance trip if possible at the best time of the year and at the worst”.
While the couple had been prompted to consider expatriation by Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, the renewed interest always corresponds, according to them, to moments of political crisis in the United States: “We knew there was a need for Expatsi after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (and struck down the law allowing abortion) and our web traffic started to increase,” notes the founder. More than 40% of customers find their country “too divided, too conservative” or too expensive.
