Edit: hold on. I have several colleagues who are foreign citizens in America on visas; and I’ve never heard of them being called expats. I feel like I only ever see that word when applied to Americans or British citizens moving to cheaper areas of the world.
> Think the difference is that an expat makes his wealth from outside that country he migrated to and Immigrant makes money from the country they migrated to.
None of this stuff is an official definition, but this seems to be how most people essentially mean the term, or rather what happens to be true when they use it.
I'm basically a permanent traveler. I might spend years at one location working remotely. Calling myself an immigrant really seems to lack some important distinctions that explain my situation compared to a visa worker.
Even when I'm technically an immigrant and an expat is just an expatriate, there's more nuance to how we use the terms. And to me it comes down to power: when my fun is over, I just buy a ticket home.
I’d say that you’re a migrant, but that brings a connotation of poverty and manual labor that’s probably not correct.
I don't agree that this is at all universal, I moved to a (marginally) more expensive country for a local job, and am still definitely considered an expat. And while it's not an official term, there are plenty of companies targetting people like me, "expat mortgages" and so on. For them they can target their market, for us it means that we know they'll be good enough speaking professional English.
> And to me it comes down to power: when my fun is over, I just buy a ticket home.
This rings more true however. I think if you still have some feeling of "I'm likely to go back some day", rather than putting effort in to learning the language, making local friends, and possibly putting down serious roots, that's more expat-like.
Me? I moved from the UK to Finland, and I'm definitely an immigrant. (As are most of the people living in the part of the city I'm in. Weird.)
The locals definitely refer to them as 'expat' or something along those lines in local vernacular.
And it's generally a Western thing, not just American or Anglosphere.
These people are completely unlike immigrants, there's almost no comparison.
If someone married a woman from Bali, moved in, was working as a manager in her Father's factory ... the term 'immigrant' might apply.
Most ex-pats are temporarily stationed, they are not there permanently, they work for international conglomerates, governments, news agencies, universities. The 'drop shipper' thing is a little specious but roughly in that category.
Alien - an immigrant(non US citizen) living inside USA
The USCIS, DHS and all other immigration related offices use the word 'Alien' to define an immigrant in USA who has not become a citizen yet.
It's definitely an 'anglosphere' term though that gets used for people from the US/UK/etc... living in other countries.
The only other language I speak well, Italian, doesn't really have an equivalent term.