5 Popular Expat Destinations Americans Should Think Twice about in 2026: Mexico, Canada, Brazil, the UK, and Spain

Americans move to these five countries by the tens of thousands, but I wouldn't base my own family in any of them. I left the US almost 10 years ago, I've lived in more than 15 countries, and I've helped hundreds of families plant flags worldwide. In this video, you'll learn the downsides of five super popular expat destinations, and also why they may fit your goals anyway. The last one, by the way, may be the one you consider the perfect destination. Let's get into it.

Number five: Mexico. More American citizens live in Mexico than in any other country on Earth, somewhere around 1.6 million of us. Granted, most are Mexican-American dual citizens, but even so. As of this month, every phone line in the country has to be tied to a biometric identity, or the line goes dead. That's roughly 127 million numbers covering prepaid, postpaid, physical SIMs, and eSIMs, with no carve-out for foreign residents. Possibly you, in this case.

The mechanism is the CURP Biométrica. Mexico has had a national population registry code for decades, and the biometric version adds a photograph, an electronic signature, fingerprints, and biometric records filed in a central government database. It's becoming the credential you present for banking access, for healthcare, and for government business. And your phone number is now downstream of it.

You may not think this is a big deal, but the phone mandate is just the visible edge of a much larger buildout. In 2025, Mexico's Congress fast-tracked a package that amended its telecommunications and intelligence laws and created a central intelligence platform linking federal, state, and municipal forces with live access to public and private databases. Banks, hospitals, property registries: all now compelled to share citizen files with security agencies. On the ground, private contractors have built more than 188 command centers across 26 states, wiring together camera grids, license plate readers, and drone feeds. In Chihuahua, just south of New Mexico, an AI-driven system called Plataforma Centinela merges thousands of public cameras with helicopters and drones to track movement across the region. Originally this was designed to counter the cartels, and civil groups call it an uncontrolled system of mass social control. This in a country that already deployed Pegasus spyware against its own journalists.

You might say: come on, Washington collects all of this already. Sure, the US government collects plenty, but it does not condition your phone number on a face scan filed with the interior ministry, then deactivate the line if you decline. If your reason for leaving the US is privacy, sovereignty, and a smaller state, Mexico is moving the other way. We don't underwrite a jurisdiction on where it is today; we underwrite it on where it's heading.

But let me defend Mexico, too. The economic solvency route gets you temporary residency by showing monthly income of about $4,400 or savings around $73,000. No investment required, and it converts to permanent residency after four years, or show a higher amount and qualify directly for permanent residency at retirement age. And if you marry a Mexican citizen or have a child born there, naturalization opens at 2 years instead of five. As a residency flag, Mexico is easy to plant. As the place I base my family and my data in 2026, I'd pass.

Small aside here: every country in this video is somebody's right answer. None of this is to say Mexico or the next four aren't the perfect fit for you. If you're weighing several options, go to freedomfiles.co/begin: 10 questions, 90 seconds, and you get a custom report on the countries that fit your goals best.

Number four: Canada. For such a beautiful country, it pains me to say this, but Canada is not what it used to be. Top combined marginal tax rates tick past 50%, up to 55% in some provinces, which means most Canadians work for months each year before earning a dollar for themselves; May, June, July, even August if you extrapolate those numbers onto a calendar. Then there's the climate. Most of Canada gives you 4 to 6 months of winter, and I'm from North Dakota, pretty much Canada, so I know the toll a six-month winter takes on a population. If you're choosing where to spend the next decade of your life, climate is a significant deal.

And relative to the size of the country, Canadians are probably the nationality I meet most outside their own borders. That should tell you something. The people who grew up there, who have family there, who know the country best, are leaving in droves for business-friendly and tax-friendly jurisdictions that want their capital: Panama, Paraguay. When the locals with options are heading for the exits, that's not the direction you want to be swimming.

And here's the note I think people underestimate about Canada: it doesn't let you leave cheaply. The country levies a departure tax on the way out. If you cease to be a tax resident, the government treats your worldwide portfolio as sold at market value that day and bills you on the unrealized gains. There's different treatment for American citizens whose tax residency spans the United States and Canada, but this is how the system works. So the price of Canada isn't just the 53 or 55% while you're there. It's also a toll on the exit if you ever change your mind, and the longer you wait, the larger the bill. Add it up: high rates while you're in, a toll when you leave, and 6 months of winter in between. I'd think hardest about moving to Canada, however much you dislike American politics, which is usually the draw, since it's culturally similar, although very different.

Number three took Canada's playbook and digitized it: Brazil. Brazil has completely overhauled its tax code in the last few years. It ended almost 30 years of tax-free dividends: distributions above $10,000 in a month from one company to one person now face a 10% withholding tax, dividends sent abroad face a 10% tax regardless of amount or destination, and there's a new 10% personal income tax on total income above $250,000, which used to be exempt. Brazil has the largest concentration of private wealth in Latin America, the biggest population, an estimated 433,000 millionaires, and this was a direct attack on them.

And the tax code is only half of it. The bigger threat is in how you pay for things on a daily basis. Underneath the tax code is the reporting layer, which is where Pix comes in. Almost every payment in Brazil, and you'll see this the moment you visit, is now made on this government-built instant payments system, and since 2025, banks, fintechs, and payment platforms report transactions to the tax authority. A cash economy, which most of Latin America has to some degree, gives you positive friction in both directions, a lot of soft freedom, as we call it. Brazil removed that friction, and the reporting rails came with it.

If that's all fine with you, here's how you get in. The VIPER investor visa gets you residency with a property purchase of 1 million reais, about $200,000, and about 30% less than that in the North and Northeast. There's also a retirement visa requiring proof of about $2,500 a month in pension or retirement income, and a digital nomad visa at about $2,000 a month in active income. Some of the most accessible numbers and residency routes anywhere. But spend your 183 days in Brazil and you become a tax resident.

Also worth mentioning: if you love Brazil and want to minimize your time on the ground given those taxes, any child born on Brazilian soil is Brazilian at birth, the parents get permanent residency on that basis, and naturalization opens after just one year of residency. One of the most generous family provisions anywhere, even by Latin America's standards. So Brazil makes it easy to arrive. The question is what you're arriving into, and in 2026 the answer is probably the most sophisticated tax surveillance net in the Americas.

By the way, if breakdowns like this are useful, subscribe and turn on notifications. These next two countries are the ones I expect the most pushback on, so comment below what you think.

Number two: the United Kingdom. In 2025, Britain ended a tax regime that had been in place for more than 200 years, one of the longest-lasting in the world, and replaced it with essentially nothing. The non-dom rules let long-term residents pay UK tax on their UK income and left their foreign income outside the net. For two centuries, that one feature made London the default city for global wealth. Its replacement gives new arrivals four years of relief, then taxes them on worldwide income and gains like everybody else.

Walk through the incentive list for a wealthy American considering Britain. The tax regime that made the country make sense: abolished. The Tier 1 investor visa: closed in 2022, never reopened. There is no investment residency route into the United Kingdom today. No tax advantage, no investor visa. What's left is the gray weather.

And the money noticed. The UK is projected to have lost about 16,500 millionaires in 2025, after almost 11,000 left the year before, with something like $92 billion in investable assets attached. The UK now has its fewest job-creating, economy-stimulating millionaire residents since the Great Recession almost 20 years ago. In the same stretch, net migration peaked above 900,000 in a single year, overwhelmingly economic migrants and refugees rather than investors. Whatever you think about immigration policy, the sequencing tells you what Britain chose. Politically, this is a country on its seventh prime minister in a decade. This is not a base you plan a 20-year structure around. I'll put it plainly: the UK is the only country on this list with no incentive left to offer. The other four at least give you something to look forward to.

Which brings us to number one, and maybe the biggest surprise: Spain. This is the one that will cost me some subscribers; I already know. We help clients move to Spain every single month, and I know why. I've spent a lot of time there, and it ranks fourth in the world in our Expat Almanac, at the link below. On food, on climate, on healthcare, on the day-to-day experience of being alive, Spain has almost no rival. But it's also, for an American, one of the worst places in Europe to structure your affairs. Both of those things can be correct at the same time.

Spain ended its golden visa in 2025. You could once buy a €500,000 property and get an immediate residence permit with no required presence or tax residency. Gone. And the legislature has floated going further: a proposed 100% tax, yes, 100%, on property purchases by non-EU buyers. Let that sink in. Whether or not it ever becomes law, and it probably won't, a country that proposes doubling the price of your house purchase is telling you how it feels about you and your capital.

That leaves two ways in: the non-lucrative visa and the digital nomad visa, and both expect you in the country for more than 183 days a year. Cross 183 days in Spain, or create substantial ties even without touching 6 months, and you become a Spanish tax resident on worldwide income. That fact is the issue, because the only routes into Spain are now the routes that make you a Spanish taxpayer. It's also why my wife and I do not currently live in Spain.

Here's what Spanish tax residency looks like in numbers. Income tax marginal rates rise past 50% in a few regions, including Barcelona and Valencia. Then come regional wealth taxes, an annual charge on assets you may have already paid tax on, wherever they're located in the world. Above that, a national solidarity tax between 0 and 3.5% on net worth above €3 million; Madrid and Andalucía give you a full credit for the wealth tax. Then there is Modelo 720, the declaration of everything you own outside Spain, with a penalty regime so aggressive the European Court of Justice struck part of it down. They can tax the income you earn, tax the assets you've already paid tax on, and require you to itemize every account you own on the other side of the world so they can tax that too.

The Beckham Law is the exception, and it works for the right profile; we help with this special tax regime and others. A flat 24% on Spanish-source employment income up to €600,000, with foreign income and foreign assets generally exempt, and no Modelo 720. It lasts the year you arrive plus five more, and then it ends, and you wake up a full Spanish taxpayer with everything you own on the table. Compared with Europe's other special tax regimes, 6 years is short, and worse, too short to build a life on, especially against a 10-year citizenship timeline. And behind all of it stands one of the most aggressive tax authorities on Earth, backed by a brutal bureaucracy. If you think the IRS is aggressive, Hacienda is worse.

There's one profile Spain fits better than any other country in Europe, though. If you were born a citizen of a Latin American country or the Philippines, Spain naturalizes you after 2 years of legal residency. Two years of presence, roughly another year of processing, and you have one of the strongest passports in the world. An American with no Ibero-American tie waits 10 years for that same passport, paying Spanish worldwide tax rates the whole way, unless the Beckham regime applies.

So here's how I would use Spain. A US passport gets you 90 days in any 180 across the Schengen Area; under that line, there's no Spanish tax residency and no Modelo 720. Otherwise, it can be a nice 5-to-6-year play if you qualify for the Beckham Law. And if you don't mind paying a bit more tax, well, a lot more tax, Spain can be a tremendous relocation option by quality-of-life standards. I know some of you will defend Spain to the death, so my comments are open.

So where does this leave you? If you want a second citizenship for your children and no long-term base, Mexico and Brazil are both excellent options, and I'd use either one tomorrow. Canada and the UK: no, for really any reason. And if you were born a Latin American citizen, or you couldn't give a rat's ankle about taxes, Spain is an incredible option; like I said, it ranks fourth in our Expat Almanac. But if you aim to minimize your taxes, Spain is only workable short term. Six years, no más.

If you're deciding between these routes and more, go to freedomfiles.co/begin. If you already know your program and you're ready to start planning, book a call with our residency and citizenship experts and we'll get you moving, or investing. Avoiding the wrong countries is half the equation. The other half is where you, your money, and your family should go instead, and that's on your screen now: the five emerging markets where our American clients are increasingly investing right now. Talk to you soon, and thanks for watching.