Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?

[Igel]

16. You draw the wrong distinction.

It's what you see. That's the problem with unchecked confirmation bias.

The western EU countries have a thing about immigrants. They don't like them. They had big public controversies over Bulgarians, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Balts, and even Czechs. "Polish plumber" was a scare-term in the British media. Russians are also immigrants.

A large proportion of Poles are blond. Balts have a higher percentage of blonds. Few are what most would, these days, call "non-white." And yet they were denied white privilege? Heck, some of them make a lot of German "master racers" look like they have a permanent tan.

Although there was an interesting observation made in the mid-70s that given the percentage of Polish-American citizens, there were more African-American representatives in Congress than Polish-American-surnamed representatives. So I guess there's that. Still, the easy answer doesn't seem to be the right answer.

I've known expats in the US, and most were from Western European countries (oddly, some were also from African countries, some Arab but most from Africa were sub-Suharan; none that bore that title were from Asia). Most were here under their own juice--not brought by parents. Most had funds for surviving, or decent jobs; and most were here because they felt alienated from their countries of origin, or their families. All were legal. Most were fully adult, often older, and this was back in the '90s. It's sort of an outdated term, if you ask me. Or perhaps British, since it was mostly Commonwealth countries or natives that used the term. I think I heard it mostly in a British-style pub in Santa Monica, when I lived Santa-Monica adjacent.

I've also known some expats in Prague, back when Prague had an American ex-pat community worth the name. Mostly white, they were a bit diverse. But again, there weren't any economic refugees that weren't also political refugees. Some of the Americans sort of got stranded and kept the name: They went native, married local, or managed to be made long-term and get set up economically on their own. The term's still a bit outdated, and got stuck on the Americans on the Vltava because they fancied themselves sort of a "lost generation" on a 1990s East European "West Bank." "Expat" isn't what the Czechs called them, of course, but what they pretentiously called themselves.