No, it’s not misspelled.
I know that immigration policy is a big issue in the United States. But have we ever had an emigration policy? Were (or are) there any laws prohibiting American citizens from leaving the country to become citizens somewhere else (leaving aside those who are fleeing the country to avoid prosecution for other illegal acts)?
The McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 prohibited communists, as defined in the act, from being issued or using a passport. Not a ban on emigration, but an obvious attempt to make foreign travel very difficult.
Communism obviously is an aspect of this. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Soviet Union recall how back then people in Warsaw Pact countries did not have the right to simply walk up to the local commissar and say, “Comrade, I’ve decided Marxism is working out for me. I’m going to give capitalist decadance a shot. Where do I sign up to go to America and become a citizen there? And if America’s full, I’ll take any of the Scandinavian countries as my second choice.”
So while clearly totalitarion dictatorships don’t let their citizens out, does it work both ways? If I decided that I wanted to go to live in Germany back in 1940 or the USSR back in 1960 or China in 1970 or Iran in 1980 would I have been able to openly declare my intent and go or would I have had to “defect”?
I don’t think anyone would have tried to stop you. People did go to Cuba and other countries, for temporary or permanent visits, to study, work, show solidarity, etc.
The FBI would have probably made a note in their files.
The only “defectors” that I can remember were several high-level NSA employees who vanished and then reappeared in Moscow, starring in a press conference. I don’t know what the NSA would have done if they had announced their intentions to move to the USSR.