Those people who threatened to move away after Donald Trump was elected president? Looks like at least some of them made good on their promise.
According to new migration figures acquired by The Financial Times, the number of American residents who chose to move to New Zealand has risen considerably in the last two years.
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In 2017, 2,127 U.S. residents moved to New Zealand, with net migration growing 65%. The FT reports that 17,000 U.S. citizens “registered an interest in studying, working, or investing in New Zealand on its government’s immigration website” in November 2016, which was a 13-fold increase from November before.
That sum doesn’t include high-profile figures like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and comedian Billy Crystal who had joked about moving to New Zealand if Trump won the presidency. But New Zealand has managed to attract some Silicon Valley elite.
Net migration by U.K. residents to New Zealand has also grown in the years following the referendum to leave the EU, with 6,371 residents moving to New Zealand in 2017. That number is close to double the 3,614 who moved to New Zealand the year before the Brexit vote.
While the number of British and American residents moving to New Zealand increased last year, overall net migration to New Zealand from all nations slipped slightly from 70,588 in 2016 to 70,016 in 2017.
