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Comment by ucaetano | Hacker News Reader

If you're poor, you're an immigrant.

If you're rich, you're an expat.

Reminds me of the Einstein quote:

> If I am proved correct,” he said, “the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew.

While this sounds true and everyone likes to harp on it, there's another consideration. An immigrant is somebody who intends to stay forever, an expat is someone who plans to go back home eventually.

There are also legal considerations. My US visa for example specifically says it's a non-immigrant visitor's work visa. Legally speaking, I'm an expat.

Culturally ... I like to call myself a dirty immigrant. Riles people up a bit :P

edit for background: I come from the border between Central and Eastern Europe. Some say Slovenia is one, some say another. In the UK I would most definitely be an evil evil immigrant. In the US nobody really cares as long as I'm not brown.

I've seen an awful lot of references to Eastern Europeans in short to medium-term stints in the UK as "migrant workers" and nearly as many characterisations of British retirees buying property in Spain as "expats"...

Same here, technically I'd be an expat in the country I currently live and work. But technically, an "illegal immigrant" from Mexico in the US is also an expat.

So I'm an immigrant, and my grandparents were immigrants and refugees.

" I come from the border between Central and Eastern Europe. Some say Slovenia is one, some say another."

Compulsory link, shirley? https://youtu.be/bwDrHqNZ9lo

My house is actually about 50 meters to the right of that river. So I guess I'm from the Balkans.

As far as I remember, you're in SF right now? Mind sharing what kind of Visa you're on? Croatian here, so wondering what kind of Visa I could get to work in US except a H-1B.

Reminds me of the recent The Grand Tour episode, when they mention how if you're famous for something positive you're called British, otherwise you're Scottish/Welsh.

Do they give any reason to believe that what they're mentioning is true?

I've looked informally for this phenomenon and I haven't been able to find it.

The only concrete piece of research I know on a specific case came up negative: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-349098...

Andy Murray is a highly-visible recent example [0].

[0]: https://stv.tv/news/stirling-central/1360095-andy-murray-mor...

List of famious Scottish People often include J.K.Rowling as Scottish, but Wikipedia lists her as English. So, it probably only applies to people that can claim both as she was born in England, but wrote the books in Scotland.

Scots have a saying: if you live here, you're Scottish.

There have been dozens of articles written about rich "immigrant founders" the past few weeks.

https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/02/01/study-immigrant-st...

http://fortune.com/2017/01/30/tech-immigrant-founders/

https://hardavenue.com/immigrant-founders-trump-muslim-ban/

etc

Search Google Images for "expat" and "immigrant", and see what the difference is in the people you see in the photos. Skin color.

It's about color, not wealth.

If you're rich and old you're an émigré.

They are an émigré from their country of birth or an immigrant into their new country.

^rich^white

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