I just wanted to point out I loved the fact the op used expat to describe his status in the US and not immigrant. I’ve always hated we had two different words to describe the same thing.
I hate that. I call myself immigrant in my new country and I find it very snobish to call ourselves "expat".
In fact I did some tutoring to a school for poorer pupils, many of them second generation from the Philipines (so born in Hong Kong, where I immigrated, with two parents born in PH).
When I told them I was an immigrant they were dumbfounded "but then you re very lucky to have arrived here", I was like "not at all, immigration is a choice, you dont need to feel victim of it, we're not here by luck but by work and opportunity seizing".
Talking of immigrants as victims is like talking of africans as "subevolved" charity needing parasites: it hides most of the truth of it.
Every expat is an immigrant, every immigrant is an expat. You left for a reason, and it s always money or a girl.
I can't agree. they generally describe different situations and are used in different contexts. We have different "degree" words for all kinds of situations. I think it's people just trying to virtue signal on both sides though. People really overreact to what in the end is just a word.
You're not disagree-ing, the different "contexts" are what is the issue here. The only difference between immigrant and expat is how rich and privileged the individual is. In the past, it's been used to differentiate between white "expats" working in India, and Indian "immigrants" being used as slave labor in other countries. Whether or not its virtue-siganlling is for you to decide for yourself.
Are they the same? To me immigrant implies a newish arrival, probably with the intention of staying and integrating. Expat implies orientation towards the "fatherland" (patriae) to me, so someone who lives in a different country for a while (maybe a long while) but hasn't and has no intention of "going native". But maybe those are private definitions?
People who continue to say “expat” will justify it by saying “oh, they don’t plan to stay in the country long term”. But you can’t possibly know what a persons long term plans are just by looking at them. You can’t even tell with certainty if they came from a poor country or a rich one. All you can see is their skin colour. That’s what people base the “expat” tag on.
There are many cases where “expat" are sent to a different country by their company. They are there for a couple of years depending on the projects. I don't see how they can be called immigrant, and they certainly don't see themselves as such.
Maybe that's a cultural thing in your country but here we have Indian and Chinese expat, either working for large multinational companies or international organization. Nobody here is going to call an Asian or African working for WHO, or UN agencies on temporary basis an immigrant. Immigrant are people looking for permanent residency, and we btw do have a lot of British and American immigrants.
that might be an american thing? as a brown person when i was living in the UAE i was definitely an expat, since i had no intention of settling there (or indeed any particularly good option to).
Exactly, I think a lot of people just like to virtue signal and get angry at the term. I'm pretty neutral on it myself. Expats are people who leave their country but still consider themselves as wholy citizens of that country, immmigrants leave their country and want to build a new life in the new country and often keep their culture, but also adopt that of the new country; expats don't really want to do that.
Not from the meaning of the words however - "expat" describes your relationship to your former country, and "immigrant" describes your relationship to the country you are currently living in. So if you live in another country than you were born in, you're actually always both at the same time - i.e. an American expat living in Germany is an immigrant to Germany.
Are they? I have a couple of Russian expat friends on Switzerland and Germany. This might be my bubble and I appreciate your calling out a bias in who we think of as "foreign" but I'm not sure it's this clean cut
This is basically it. Legally it’s all immigrants, but colloquially “immigrants” are people looking for a better (richer) life while “expats” are in a place because they like it, not because their life conditions would be poorer at home.
I grew up an immigrant to Switzerland, now I’m an expat in South East Asia.
There's no contradiction with the parent though. You want to immigrate because your new country is nicer and you want to stay. You're an expat because your old country is nicer and you want to go back.
In my personal experience, expat is a term that's most frequently used to describe someone who is sent abroad by their firm, either on a temporary secondment or perhaps on an indefinite basis (c.f. "expat package" to describe a cost-of-living adjustment or other inducement).
That then shades into other meaning, which is one of someone living abroad that doesn't expect to stay, or retains a strong cultural connection with their home country, or doesn't mix with the local population (c.f. "expat ghetto" to describe a locale primarily inhabited or frequented by such people).
I don't know what the dictionary definition says, but I wouldn't say "immigrant" and "expat" mean the same thing to me.
Even by the rich-poor distinction what do you call the plentiful White retirees of seedy S.E Asian places like Pattaya, Thailand & Dumaguete, Philippines? Some call them sexpats but that's a different can of worms entirely.
They're by no means as rich as some of the Chinese visitors to those destinations.
More:
Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?
Surely any person going to work outside their country is an expatriate? But no, the word exclusively applies to white people
When is an immigrant not an immigrant? When they’re rich.
The British diaspora in the Gulf and Brunei are seen as useful – it’s only poor immigrants who are seen as a problem
I hate it when company policies talk about immigration to the US (or Western countries) and then talks about Expats when talking about locations in other part of the world.
