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playing with words


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TU's own definition:

Expatriot: some one who lives away from their native country.

Immigrant: someone how has moved moved definitively to another country of their choice to start a new life.

So I am an expatriot, in my own terms. Although not an expat, which I reckon has yet another definition.

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yes, I think "immigrant" suggests a more permanent move than "expat".

If you go contracting round the world, just for the sake of earning loads of dosh, and spend a few years in Iraq, a few years in Saudi, a few years in Brazil, but regard the UK as your "base", you're an expat.

If you fill in all the emigration forms for Australia and go there with the intention of making it your new home, you'll be an immigrant there.

Holiday-home owners are therefore part-time expats - sorry! 

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An expat is someone invited to a country to work, an immmigrant is some who moves to a country uninvited to live/work. I have lived overseas and have found members of the expat community's who have been there for 20 years plus, where as immigrants often move around looking for work or better benifits.

working class persons=immigrants

middle class persons=expats

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[quote]An expat is someone invited to a country to work, an immmigrant is some who moves to a country uninvited to live/work. I have lived overseas and have found members of the expat community's who have be...[/quote]

Don't know about anyone else then but that criteria makes me an immigrant. Sounds so much more permanent than a mere ex-pat, don't you think  
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I think of myself as an immigrant, as I hope to stay in France.

I get the point about working class and middle class, but really in terms of UK thinking, i've always thought that UK people who live abroad, for whatever reason, tend to use the term expat about themselves and people they think are like them.

If many of those same people were talking about people who have moved to UK, they tend to use the term immigrant.

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I completely agree with the class and skin pigmentation points. I'm certainly an immigrant. Being married to a French woman might make me even worse in the eyes of the Sun and Daily Mail, surely it's a marriage of convenience!! Or is that a contradiction in terms??
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Always thought that an immigrant was someone who was moving permanently and will probably change their nationality eventually, while an ex-pat is someone, possibly moving overseas for work reasons, who retains their nationality and can claim protection from their embassy when in trouble.
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[quote]Cleaning tubes and playing with an elf, a little bizarre, so how come none of us have heard or read, about this strange couple from the Bog?[/quote]

Miki.

It's an extreemly exclusive sect situated in the Vendee. If you send me €15000 I will send you details of how to join and help a Nigerian get some of his money out of a Swisse bank account.

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[quote]Miki. It's an extreemly exclusive sect situated in the Vendee. If you send me €15000 I will send you details of how to join and help a Nigerian get some of his money out of a Swisse bank account.[/quote]

Boggie, that's far too cheap, there has to be a catch?

Anyway if it was in the Vendee, everyone would know about it I reckon  

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