Will Uruguay Be the Next Casualty of US “Expats”?
How a Tragedy of the Commons approach to emigrating from the US is hitting the Latin American nation already
Elizabeth Silleck La Rue
8/12/20251 min read
When Executive Orders targeting the LGBTQ+ community started erupting out of the White House right on cue in January 2025, our client — planning to emigrate due to identity-based persecution — set their sights on Uruguay.
The small South American nation has been leading the way on gender equity and human rights since at least 2018, and has been topping LGBTQ+ — friendly lists across the internet for years now. For this client, it made sense, and they wasted no time making it happen.
“I have been in Uruguay since March with my teens. We are all in one or more of the targeted groups in the US and moved here with pattern recognition and an interest in survival,” they recounted.
As I wrote not long ago, I stand ten toes down on the assertion that people facing real persecution by the US government have every right to migrate, period. Pursuing safety and human rights, as a member of a marginalized group, is not the same as simply deciding you want to live abroad because you dislike your country’s political trajectory.
I can’t prove it, but I suspect that the public attention to Uruguay’s progressive nature has, perhaps unfortunately, placed it on the radar of those who may not really need to move, and have very little incentive or lived experience that would lead them to be conscientious about their impacts.
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