Palestinians were emigrating at a fairly consistent rate in the pre-1948 period. Due mainly to worsening economic and political conditions at the turn of the 20th century, and most urgently, the onset of the First World War, Palestinians joined other communities from Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere in an outmigration that has not been understudied. Yet when it comes to those who left towns and villages that would later be brought under British sovereignty in the Mandate over Palestine, their stories have not been told. Using letters between family members and friends oceans and continents apart, personal diaries from residents of Jerusalem, and petitions and appeals for citizenship status written by Palestinian immigrants in Central America to British Field Commissioners in Palestine, this essay will argue that emigration, return, and the different processes of affiliation and/or alienation that naturally resulted were central for these people's lived experiences. The Palestinian-Mexican authors of the petitions and appeals of the mid-1920s, for example, were well versed in the new languages of international law, equality, and nationalism upon being denied Palestinian citizenship due to prolonged absence, a recent British regulatory law. As a work in micro-history, the essay will thus contribute to a larger appreciation of the processes of identity formation among individuals who were often unwillingly implicated in the politics of post-imperial, nation-centric dogmas. To be sure, emigrant narratives suggest the unique experience of Palestinians in the age of imperial transition, self-determined nation-states, Mandatory tutelage, and Zionism. The sources present the tales of individuals who left their homes as Ottoman subjects from the province of Palestine, who returned (if they could) as foreigners or British subjects, and then who grew increasingly disenfranchised as Palestinians. The range of reactions to these realities was wide: some were anxious about the creation of a nation-state that would be Palestinian (the religious and political implications were, for them, unsettling). Others longed for Ottoman-style rule and even welcomed the British Crown. Then there were those who demanded equality and recognition as Palestinian citizens from their homes in Mexico and Cuba. Unsurprisingly, many were ambivalent toward the ideas of nations, empires, or motherlands. In a time of continuous and unpredictable change, these emigrant stories evince the complexity and subjectivity of individual experience, raising compelling questions on the rise of nationalism, citizenship, political modernity, and transnational identity.