NGL, not asking for a friend. Given the current trends in US politics, it seems prudent to at least look into it.
Most of the online content on the topic seems to be by immigration attorneys hustling ultra rich people. I’m not ultra rich. I have a job in tech, could work remotely, also have enough assets to not desperately need money if the cost of living were low enough.
I am a native English speaker, fluent enough in Spanish to survive in a Spanish speaking country. I am old, male, cis, hetero, basically asexual at this point. I am outgoing, comfortable among strangers.
What’s good and bad about where you live? Would it be OK for a outsider, newcomer?
First of all, stop using word “expat” when you’re talking of immigrants but from “better countries”
Hard agree, expat as a term only exists because white people wanted to separate themselves from those they deem ”lesser immigrants”
I moved to Japan from Sweden, I only call my self an immigrant because that’s what I am
PewDiePie is that you?
I always understood that you refer to yourself and your fellow countrymen abroad as expats. You use the word immigrant when referring to others.
Yes, this is exactly how I would define it.
I also don’t think it imparts a general pro/anti integration with locals (not to say some assholes aren’t out there).
If I was thinking of immigrating elsewhere, I’d want to be near a few other people from my country who’ve been there longer than me, if only to make the transition easier and to get help with any issues specific to people from the same place.
That’s some old fashion ‘us versus them,’ kinda thinking.
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I always saw expats as something between immigrants and tourists. They aren’t trying to switch countries and they aren’t just on vacation. There’s plenty of good reasons for this category, like being sent somewhere by your employer. This naturally creates a community of foreigners who aren’t necessarily worried about fitting in as a new citizen or permanent resident would be.
But yeah, this idea that Western countries have expats instead of emigrants is weird.
I’d love to see countries mark “expat” as an option on forms…
Just as a trap to filter them all out.
It was literally in the last couple of weeks that I first came across this. I thought it just meant ‘a person living in a country in which isn’t their home country’ regardless of origin, etc. The only thing I thought of it is that it wasn’t necessarily permanent whereas immigrant to me had permanence. It’s wild that, to me, it seems to have come out of nowhere.