Why are white people expats while other races are immigrants?

[Bradleyco]

Hello all. I think that the difference, as for me is that:
expat - it's the person who lives in one country, has own nice and big house, some plenty of money but for some reason, the best choice for him is to earn money in another country (for example I work in UAE https://jobpro.ae/) and wants to go home, when he will finish his work.
and immigrant - it's the person who wants to leave her country because she likes another country more than own.
I don't think that the difference is between races, maybe it's because there are, for example, a lot of Asians and they physically can't be highly qualified. And historically white people were learning at good universities, speaking with clever people. That's only the difference that I see, wait for some time and then speak again about this topic.

[Creoda]

Surely any person going to work outside their country is an expatriate?

According to Wikipedia, “an expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex (‘out of’) and patria (‘country, fatherland’)”.

Well, defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expat, regardless of his skin colour or country. But that is not the case in reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad.

Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats. It seems like immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races’.

What do you think?

[sean]

Modern English usage of the word expatriate is deeply intertwined with the French cognate expatrié - used to describe the influx of cultural American immigrants (Lost Generation) to Paris in the 1920's. It's not a synonym of "émigré"/immigrant, which would have been used to describe the French living in other countries.

It's been used (in multiple languages) to describe mostly English-speaking immigrants for the last 100 years because of this immense historical/social connection, of which the OP seems entirely ignorant.

Spoiler!

The two words "expat" and "immigrant" do not share the same meaning, they simply share the same referent. Both refer to people who leave their countries, but they differ in a further fundamental way; aka deictic center.

Educated Westerners are able to go and live in beautiful developing countries for a fraction of what it costs to live in the West. Think Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico, etc. They usually have easier and less-demanding jobs than they would if they still lived in their home country (think digital nomads, English teachers, retirees, etc).

Spoiler!

The fact is that the 'class' (and yes, it is a class of sorts) of upper-middle class and above 'global professionals' who move around the world, earn well within the top 0.1% (that's about $100k) of global income and usually have a lot of options with regards to destination and employment, and are mostly white, cannot be counted in the same category as the vast majority of third-world immigrants, who are often brown/black and poor (whether in relative or in absolute terms) and in search of a new home.

Spoiler!

While the racial divides are instructive they aren't the whole story. Financial means plays a key role. It doesn't depend on your personal skin colour or social status, it depends on the level of development of your country of origin. It has nothing to do with race.

Spoiler!

When a Russian oligarch or an Arab oil sheikh moves to London they aren't referred to as immigrants but Polish and Romanian workers are. Economics professor from South Korea is more of an expat than an ethnic Ukrainian escaping from Donbas or a Serb from Kosovo.

However, there are a lot of other immigrant groups that do this very thing without being called expats. There are Mandarin speakers who live in Richmond, British Columbia; Vietnamese who live in San Jose, California; South Asians living in Kenya. All of these groups have created enclaves. They can get by in these areas without speaking the native language. They can buy food from their country of origin. You will never hear them referred to as expats.