Hi,

Can somebody tell me the difference between an expat and an immigrant?

Cheers,
Nick

I understand that an expat lives abroad temporarly and and immigrant permanently

Not entirely - an expat is some who moves abroad to live, regardless of duration. An immigrant is someone who moves into a country, also not limited by duration.

And there was me, looking at the title and hoping for some sort of celebrity deathmatch type of thing.

If you ask my dad (an immigrant), he would tell you that expat is the fancy new name for immigrant . And people from the country you left would call you emigrant.

Ok, so in the right sense then the people in my country call me an expat and the swiss call me an immigrant

Technically or semantically?
Immigrant has negative overtones compared to expat.

I'd say I'm a British expat but not an immigrant to Switzerland...

we are all "economic" immigrants .... except for Boris, he is a vagrant ....

Not true - I eat fish and milk products.

You eat fish here? Thats brave.

I am too suspicious of seafood in a landlocked country.

all fish comes from the sea ...

rlly ?

I think you've got me there.

I would happily eat fish from the lakes and rivers if I could understand the menus

expat is a social/cutlural term, immigrant is a legal/policy term. there are no expat statutes or regulations, but virtually all countries have enacted immigration legislation. all immigrants are expats and all expats are immigrants.

Hi,

It's interesting to read the replies. My feeling is "immigrant" has a slightly more negative connotation than "expat" does. As other posters have implied, we are "Ausländer" in the eyes of the Swiss.

Question: Is an IT professional from India working in CH any less an expat than one from an EU country?

Cheers,

Nick

absolutely not ...

agree that the immigrant tag has a more negative connotation than expat.

interesting thread, hope we can keep it on track a little longer.

as i recall from some classses i taught on immigratin (but my notes are still packed away), the term expat developed during the late 1800s or early 1900s to describe american artists, writers, and musicians who went to europe (think dexter gordon and all the other african american jazz musicians who left the US as examples).

taken as a whole, immigrants add value to the countries they move to and the current hysteria about immigration is more akin to a moral panic than a reflection of any substantive problem or deficiency in immigration (yes theree are some bad immigrants but the vast majority are not problematic). interstingly dracula (the novel) was seen as anti-immigrant allegory (aimed at imms from eastern europe. this is a problem that is only going to get worse as people seek to find something to blame for the increasing wealth disparities that characterize many countries in an era of globalization.

From the mighty Wikipedia:

So basically the same thing. Though immigrant can sometimes imply something long term, it is not necessary. Expat includes all foreigners in a country.

Immigrants come here to work hard, do their best to integrate, and make a better life for themselves and their children.

Expats come here, sleep with as many locals as possible, drain the local economy of it's wealth (aside from the beer industry), and then fly home dodging as much tax and train fares as possible. Oh, and this one bought a PS3 today.

Yup, no question about it: you are an expat

Ex-pats are also most commonly observed in the Iberian peninsula, shouting at waiters and thinking by adding the suffix '-o' to every word in English, it is suddenly and mysteriously transformed into grammatically perfect Spanish:
"Oi, Pedro, get me-o two pint-os of Carling-o."

I'm just gutted I can't dodge the air fare home too.