Lea Landaverde has been creating her exit strategy from the U.S. from the moment Donald Trump won the Presidential Election in 2024. Just a few weeks ago, she visited the consulate general of El Salvador in Las Vegas to start the process to get her dual citizenship in her parents’ home country. Landaverde says Trump’s onslaught of anti-immigrant policy changes, attacks against LGBTQ communities, and threats against women’s rights have renewed her urgency to leave the country.
“It’s been a month since he’s been in office and with all the executive orders, everything feels like it's falling apart. My wife and I think about our safety first. When Trump was elected, I told my parents that all my siblings and I need dual citizenship,” Landaverde tells Refinery29 Somos. “What happens if I can’t protect my rights here? Because I’m queer, Latina, and a woman, as a triple minority, it freaks me out.”
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Landaverde is one of many Latinas across the U.S. who are considering a temporary or permanent move out of the country due to concerns with how the Trump administration’s policies are affecting the economy, their careers, their rights, and livelihoods.
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"Everything feels like it's falling apart."
Lea Landaverde
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As a personal finance educator and founder of Riqueza, a culturally relevant financial education platform, Landaverde says her business has already taken a major blow. Her regular programming has slowed to a halt as Trump’s cuts to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have translated to funding freezes for DEI programs at universities and corporate companies. While Landaverde will prioritize her dual-citizenship exit plan for herself and her family, she says her goal is to continue pushing for financial equity for underrepresented communities, even if she needs to make an interim move from her home in Texas, a Republican state, to a Democratic state.
“The wealth divide is widening in real time. Financial education is a form of resistance, it’s a form of activism, so it feels like you’re fighting against the grain when you’re telling people to protect their wealth, to save for emergencies, to create a security fund to protect our families and make these transition moves,” Landaverde says. “This combined with an exit strategy and dual citizenship, you can make moves confidently and not out of scarcity.”
Natalia* has also personally experienced headwinds in her field as a DEI consultant for U.S.-based and international companies. After living abroad for more than six years, she returned to the U.S. in 2024, but with Trump now in office, she questions if she made the right decision.
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"With an exit strategy and dual citizenship, you can make moves confidently and not out of scarcity."
Lea Landaverde
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“For me, it's evident that DEI is just a scapegoat. The government is targeting civil rights. They're targeting racial equity and trying to dismantle decades of grassroots work for disabled communities, for people of color, for Black communities, and for Indigenous peoples. I think it's all alarming,” Natalia says. “It's all terrifying, not only because of what that means right now at this moment, but the impact this will have on generations to come.”
Natalia’s already a dual citizen of the U.S. and Dominican Republic, and while she has enjoyed studying and working abroad throughout her career, the limitations of income-based visas and working visas — and how they rarely translate to direct pathways to citizenship — means it’s always a matter of time before she needs to return home. Now that she has settled back in the U.S. Natalia’s evaluating how to persevere during this challenging climate for DEI.
“I left the U.S. for Trump's first term for fear of security as a Latina and understanding that this hateful rhetoric would influence the overall climate of many areas within the U.S.,” Natalia shares. “This time around, my thoughts of having to leave are equally tied to my safety as a Latina but also my professional career, as it seems less safe for me to share with any law enforcement member, for example border patrol, what I actually work in now that there are ‘DEI watchlists’ that continue expanding.”
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"My thoughts of having to leave are equally tied to my safety as a Latina but also my professional career, as it seems less safe for me to share with any law enforcement member, for example border patrol, what I actually work in now that there are ‘DEI watchlists’ that continue expanding."
Natalia
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Nancy Diaz, who’s Mexican American and originally from Arizona, also left during Trump’s first term. Having experienced a layoff, burnout, and a breakup at the time, she says Trump’s hateful rhetoric only added insult to injury and made her decision to buy a one-way ticket to Australia, where she remains, in 2019 all the more easier. Despite feeling some guilt in moving away from her family in the U.S., she recognized that her move was fueled by her desire for safety and stability, much like what her parents sought in the U.S. when they left Mexico decades ago.
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“We don't really reach for the stars or set goals that we could easily achieve because of things like marianismo and machismo in our cultures, because they might require putting the family second or putting a partner second,” she says.” I have a better life over here, it's just an easier life, and you can relax more, you can feel safe. It’s important to reset our nervous system when our past generations have been through so much, so the really healing thing for us is to be able to make very different decisions that are going to help the next generation.”
Diaz is now a permanent resident in Australia, where she works remotely as a therapist for women of color. She says she’s able to sponsor other family members who may want to move to Australia. But in the meantime, halfway across the globe, she worries for her family.
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"I have a better life over here, it's just an easier life, and you can relax more, you can feel safe."
Nancy Diaz
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She recalled a 2019 mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in which more than 20 people were killed minutes after the gunman shared a hate-filled manifesto stating his attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” At the time, critics were quick to draw comparisons to Trump’s repeated use of incendiary words like “invasion,” “criminal,” and “animal” when speaking about immigrants inside and outside of the U.S.
“For weeks afterwards, I wanted to tell my parents and family living in Phoenix to not go to Walmart, and then I was like, that's so silly. They live in a city that has a lot of immigrants and it doesn't matter where they go or where they live, they could also be targeted. So that was the kind of thing that I was really scared would happen when he was elected,” Diaz says.
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Despite his ephemeral denouncements against hate, Trump continues to use xenophobic language in his second term, including in one of his latest executive orders to “protect the American people against invasion.” As a result, Americans continue to suffer the consequences of hurtful rhetoric that emboldens violence against immigrant families. In February, 11-year-old American Jocelynn Rojo Carranza was driven to suicide after being tormented by classmates who threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on her so that her relatives would be deported.
Stefanie Gonzalez, a personal finance advocate and move strategist, now lives in Portugal after living outside of the U.S. since leaving Texas in 2018. She cites several similar concerns over safety, gun violence, and heightened racial inequality as reasons why she wouldn’t move back to the U.S. with her husband and two young children.
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"If we returned to the U.S. because we wanted to grow our business faster or bigger, and we put that need over the safety part, and it didn't work out, and something happened, we would never forgive ourselves."
Stefanie Gonzalez
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“When we think about why we moved here [to Portugal] — safety, healthcare, school for the kids, our lifestyle, building a viable business wherever we are — at the end of the day, the safety part always comes to the top,” Gonzalez says. “If we returned to the U.S. because we wanted to grow our business faster or bigger, and we put that need over the safety part, and it didn't work out, and something happened, we would never forgive ourselves.”
Gonzalez and her family put down roots in Portugal, where she’s now a relocation consultant alongside her husband through their firm Move Me To Portugal, about two years ago. For anyone planning to leave the U.S., Gonzalez emphasizes the importance of considering tax, financial, and livelihood implications when moving.
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“An exit strategy is a big deal, and getting really honest with yourself about what you want is important, because heaven forbid you go move to a country that does not tick your boxes,” Gonzalez advises. “It takes a lot of financial backing to get you to where you're going to go next. It takes a lot of emotional toll. You're literally uprooting everything. And it sounds so bougie, but if you’re going to make this decision, think about your ideal lifestyle design.”
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"America could’ve been great, but it honestly feels like we’re going backwards in time."
Lea Landaverde
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For starters, Gonzalez recommends that you have an emergency fund and have an understanding of the cost of living, the types of visa necessary to live or work there, and what you need in order to buy or rent property. Before making a big move, though, Gonzalez recommends speaking to a professional or a community of people who have already made a similar move.
Landaverde, the Texas-based personal finance educator, has already considered many of these points while she works with her parents to submit her documents for Salvadoran citizenship. Though her parents traveled thousands of miles by foot to flee El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s, the country as she knows it today is, to her, a safe-enough backup option. When she hears Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” she says it makes her want to cry.
“Make America great? I thought we were going in a good direction. Yet my ethnicity, my sexuality, and my identity as a woman is challenged almost every single day in a place where my parents sacrificed so much of their energy to be here and raise me here,” Landaverde says. “It feels faulty, it feels almost like a lie. America could’ve been great, but it honestly feels like we’re going backwards in time.”
*Surname omitted to protect identities.
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