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New data from the U.K. government showed applications surged in the first three months of this year, which some analysts attributed to the political climate in the United States.
May 23, 2025, 1:34 p.m. ET
A record number of Americans applied for British citizenship in the first three months of this year, and for the right to live and work in Britain indefinitely, according to official data.
In the year to March, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship, the highest annual figure since records began in 2004, according to statistics released by Britain’s Home Office on Thursday.
More than 1,900 of those applications were made between January and March — the highest number for any quarter on record.
Immigration lawyers said they had received an increased number of inquiries from people in the United States about possibly relocating to Britain in the wake of President Trump’s re-election in November.
Muhunthan Paramesvaran, a senior immigration lawyer at Wilsons Solicitors in London, said that inquiries from Americans looking to settle in Britain had risen “in the immediate aftermath of the election and the various pronouncements that were made.”
“There’s definitely been an uptick in inquiries from U.S. nationals,” he said. “People who were already here may have been thinking, ‘I want the option of dual citizenship in the event that I don’t want to go back to the U.S.’”
