2022 survey on the best place to move to for expats [pdf]
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There's a sort of stupid Twitter meme going around that whether someone is an "immigrant" or "expat" depends on their demographics (race, wealth, etc). It should be immediately obvious to an ordinary observer that this isn't true.
If someone from Zimbabwe moves to the US - they are an expat from Zimbabwe's POV and an immigrant from the US's POV. Vice-versa for someone going the other way.
The only difference I could find is that some sources consider expats not to have a long term intent to settle in the country. But this article contradicts that and explicitly talks about job prospects and the ease of settling in a new country. That sounds exactly like an immigrant to me.
An American who moves to Zimbabwe and plans to come back after a few years is an expat. If they change their mind, decide to stay and settle down indefinitely, they become an immigrant.
The article is aimed at people who are moving abroad for work, for a change of pace, for family reasons, and so on. Concerns about employment opportunities and housing (etc) apply to anyone who's going abroad for longer than a few weeks. Most people can't live off savings indefinitely.
More fundamentally, it seems a bit silly to define different words to describe essentially the same people with the exception of their long term plans years into the future. Those plans can change for many reasons.
In your example of someone who stays for 10 years and then moves home, do you think they planned to move home all along? Did they even know what they would do 10 years later as a 18-22yo coming to college? Most of us don't. They were seemingly immigrants for 10 years right up until the point they decided to move home..
I'm an American living in Tokyo. There's a fair number of American expats in Tokyo, usually high-level managers of international corporations. They socialize mainly with other expats at places like Tokyo American Club[0], don't learn Japanese beyond the basics, and send their kids to "international schools" where the curriculum is in English.
However, as an American immigrant in Tokyo, my social group and goals and so on are different. Immigrants learn Japanese, socialize largely either with locals or other immigrants, and their families may speak little (or no) English. Our needs involving banking, legal services, licensing (e.g. driver's license), and housing are different from expats -- they care about rent at high-end furnished apartments, I care about rent of normal apartments (short-term) and mortgage availability (long-term).
> I mean if this definition was applied consistently, I
> would be happy to use it. But when speaking about e.g
> H-1B visa holders working in the US and taking jobs or
> raising house prices, they are called immigrants
> not expats.