Americans are applying for Irish passports in record numbers.
18,910 applicants sought citizenship through the foreign birth register (FBR) in 2025. This is a record number for a single year
and it marks a 63 percent increase on the 11,601 who applied in 2024, the last year of president Joe Biden’s term. It is also more than double the 7,726 US citizens who sought an Irish passport in 2023, the Irish Times reported.
The FBR is for those who are seeking to claim Irish citizenship through a parent or grandparent born in Ireland.
Stated the Times report: "The number of US citizens seeking Irish passports has grown every year since 2015 with the exception of 2020 and 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2015, just 2,064 Americans applied for FBR status. The number increased to 5,399 at the start of (Donald) Trump’s first term in 2017 and overall 20,172 applied for Irish citizenship during that term.
Immigration lawyer Carol Sinnott, who is also chairperson of the Irish Immigration Lawyers Association, told the Times that the demand for Irish citizenship surged after Trump was re-elected in November 2024 and then peaked after his inauguration in January 2025.
"There has been a very steady stream of US applicants since then and we expect that trend to continue,” she said.
“A common thread among many of our US clients applying for citizenship is a desire to have a plan B or contingency plan for a safer and less hostile society should the need arise."
Separate to the political. situation in the U.S. is the fact that an Irish passport is a powerful document in that it allows the holder to live and work anywhere in the European Union.
