Carys Cassidy, a 35-year-old transgender woman from Denver, cannot remember when she started thinking about leaving the United States. The thought of packing up and moving to Europe was always in her head, even as a child, and it only became stronger as she got older.
«When we talk about the cultural and political situation out here, and how divided things are, I think that existed before Donald Trump,» Cassidy told Newsweek. «I already felt that then. And also social mobility here is less than it is in Europe.»
«In the U.S., you’re pretty much expected to work and that’s all,» Cassidy said. «Then if you try to better yourself, you’re sort of penalized for that in some way, either with massive amounts of debt or you are forced to make cuts in your life, like housing or life experiences.»
Europe, to Cassidy, felt like a place to catch her breath and live the life she’d been dreaming of. She eventually realized she had a great-great-great-great-grandfather linking her to Luxembourg, a landlocked European nation of roughly 691,000 people.
She started digging online and found that some of her ancestors had moved from Luxembourg to the United States in the 1800s, going through Chicago and then spending time in Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas.
This long-lost ancestor gave Cassidy the right to claim Luxembourgish citizenship under the country’s law, which requires an unbroken male line of descent leading back to an ancestor born in Luxembourg in 1815 or later. Women can pass down citizenship if a child was born on or after January 1, 1969.
The paperwork, which took Cassidy one year to put together, was the hardest part of the process. Luxembourg does not require a language test or a trip to the country to obtain citizenship.
In March, Cassidy, who is transitioning, obtained her Luxembourgish citizenship and left the United States for Sweden. «I left right off because I was worried about the second Trump administration,» she said.
Applications Explode After Trump’s Return
An increasing number of Americans have sought citizenship in the tiny European country since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, as part of a wave of U.S. nationals trying to obtain «Plan B» passports in a time of political uncertainty.
In the first year of Trump’s second mandate, 3,574 Americans acquired Luxembourgish citizenship, the largest-ever cohort since the country began tracking data, according to the national register. The country’s Ministry of Justice recorded only 657 new Luxembourgish citizens in the U.S. that year—an apparent contradiction. But many of those whose citizenship was recorded in the national register last year were already technically considered Luxembourg citizens under the law.
The 657 new Luxembourgish citizens in the U.S. recorded by the ministry obtained citizenship through a voluntary application via naturalization, option or reclaiming.
The others were automatically citizens through the right of blood, if at least one parent was Luxembourgish at the time of their birth, or through the right of soil, if born in the country before April 1948.
Cassidy is among those who made a voluntary application, and even that smaller number—657—was 40 percent higher than a year earlier. Daniel Atz, a dual citizen of Luxembourg and the U.S. living in the Grand Duchy, has been observing this growing phenomenon through the citizenship advisory platform he founded after obtaining European citizenship himself.
‘It Changed My Life Completely’
Similarly to Cassidy, Atz, a Nebraska native, had long been fond of life in Europe and was trying to figure out a way to live there, when Luxembourg’s 2008 nationality law gave him an opportunity to do so. The law created a window for descendants of anyone who had a Luxembourg citizen ancestor living on January 1, 1900, to recover that citizenship.
A similar law passed in 2017 gave the same opportunity to descendants with a deadline of December 31, 2025.
Atz’s great-grandmother Marguerite Kruchten was born in Luxembourg but moved to Kansas after the First World War. In the process of reclaiming citizenship, which he obtained in 2014, Atz made a fortunate connection with his long-lost European family—meeting Annette, a cousin of his great-grandmother.
Atz found a second family in Luxembourg, referring to Annette as his «Luxembourgish grandmother» and speaking fondly of the time they spent together before her death.
«We became very close. I became so close with my family in Luxembourg, and they offered me a lot of support,» he told Newsweek.
«It changed my life, you know—changed my life completely,» he said of obtaining his Luxembourgish citizenship.
The Omaha-native was something of a pioneer. Now, he is helping a growing number of Americans obtain a Luxembourgish passport through his platform luxcitizenship.com. Atz, who has been helping his fellow citizens through this process for years, said he noticed an uptick when Trump was first elected.
«In 2016, there was a huge peak in Americans applying for citizenship in Luxembourg. A huge peak back then was like increasing from 200 over eight years to a few hundred in a year, so it stood out a little bit,» he said.
«Now, 900 Americans get Luxemburg citizenship every three months,» he added.
New government figures released in early October count 23,690 Luxembourg citizens living in the United States as of September 30—more than the 22,925 living in neighboring Germany. In the three months from June 30 to September 30, 952 «new» Luxembourgish citizens were living in the United States.
Atz has witnessed a significant increase in interest in his services since January 2024. «It really became accentuated 15 days before the last election,» he said. «Last year, we grew from two to 15 employees, to give you an idea of the scale. We had 900 Americans go through the Luxembourgish nationality process. And we only represent 15 percent of all the Americans doing it.»
Many of the people he helps navigate the process these days are part of the LGBTQ community, he said, who—like Cassidy—fear the tense political environment in the United States.
Americans Are Not Relocating in Droves
The surge in applications does not mean that Americans are relocating in droves to Luxembourg, far from it. For many, having a European passport is a «Plan B» in times of growing political and economic uncertainty. For others, a Luxembourgish passport is an entry ticket to the European Union.
«Let’s be clear, the vast majority of people are moving to other Schengen countries, and they’re not moving to Luxembourg,» Atz said. «I would probably say less than 5 percent have real plans to move there.»
That is partially because Luxembourg is one of the most expensive countries in Europe, with consumer prices running roughly 51 percent higher than the EU average, and one where newcomers «don’t have every different type of job available,» Atz said.
«The United States, on the other hand, is like a huge country where people can do tons of different things. So a lot of people start the process of looking into moving to Luxembourg and then realize it’s not going to work out for them in practical terms, so they end up choosing another country. Ultimately, more of our clients moved to Spain, Portugal and France,» Atz said.
Cassidy would like to establish herself in Luxembourg, but she was not sure that would work for her financially. When speaking with Newsweek, Cassidy was back in the United States and did not yet know where in Europe she would live.
«I am transitioning right now, so being back in the U.S. is a little terrifying in some ways,» she said.
‘The American in Me Is Hopeful’
As Americans at home rush to apply for second passports, especially European ones, many Americans living abroad are renouncing their U.S. citizenship, with numbers soaring over the past two years.
When asked if she would consider doing the same, Cassidy shook her head.
«A lot of terrible things have happened, but maybe the election next month is going to go well, and maybe—I don’t know, this is the American in me being hopeful,» she said. «But that’s very good because it also means hoping that things will turn around, that there’ll be a happy ending.»
Cassidy added that what happens in the U.S. over the final years of the Trump administration «is going to be pivotal.»
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Robinson and Shakeema Edwards.
