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Comment by mahkeiro | Hacker News Reader

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.

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Brown and black people sent temporarily by their companies are considered immigrants.

White people living in retirement communities in Thailand call themselves and are called expats.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/10/immigr...

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.

Where is "here"?

"Immigrants" is still a humane term. H1Bs are called as "temporary alien workers".

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/laws-and-regulations/laws/i...

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.

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