[thraxil]

As someone who did (US citizen now resident in the UK), it's a very difficult and expensive process. Most countries require you to have a visa sponsorship which basically means you are highly skilled enough that a company there is willing to pay a lot of fees and demonstrate to the government that they tried but couldn't find a local with your skillset. Once you've got that, it's also a lot of money on your part to get a visa, pay immigration lawyers, accountants, etc. You need money for that, a good chunk of cash up front for an apartment (first, last, security deposit, brokers fees, we had to add in a few months of rent up front because we didn't have a credit score in the UK), and a million other things. All made way more complicated because you probably don't have a bank account in the country, so everything is happening via international wire transfers.

It also happens that I don't have children or family members that need me to care for them, etc. It would get significantly harder if I had to deal with that (though I did move a cat internationally, which was not trivial).

The irony of course is that having the privilege for all that (cash reserves, highly employable skillset, etc) means that most of the problems in the US don't actually affect you as much as others. The people who are getting screwed the worst by the terrible systems in the US are in no position to extract themselves.