I’m an American immigrant in Germany. It’s infuriating how many Germans complain to me about immigrants, then when hearing that I’m an immigrant, wave their hand and say I’m not like the others. I’m now a German teacher and married to a German, so they’ve always got plausible deniability that it’s about language or integration, but I wasn’t always good at German and I only met my husband after a few years here. It used to be much more fun to push back on why.

that he would not consider me “an immigrant” because I’m from the west.

I've lived in 7 countries - and still living in a foreign country now - and I've heard the same thing from many locals in all the countries I've lived in.

It's not because you're from the West that you'd be an acceptable immigrant, it's because you're white. From the way you're telling the same story I've heard a million times myself, I'm 99% certain you're as white as I am.

We just left the US at the beginning of the year, and so we've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot. The short answer is, before we thought about it, we were referring to ourselves as "expats." But just last week I saw someone online mention that, as a rule, people moving from rich countries are called "expats" while people moving to rich countries are called "immigrants."

That one did my head in a bit. Had to rethink some stuff.

They already do that in Mexico, they call themselves expats in their Facebook groups and complain about the locals

An expat is not an immigrant. An immigrant emigrates to a different country, like my mother who was born in Venezuela but earned her citizenship in the USA. An expat is somebody who moves to another country for work temporarily, and does NOT emigrate. Think of immigration as permanent and expat as temporary (think work visa for a few years then back home, or transfered somewhere else)

Your associate is racist. You should tell them.

It might be assumed that it is easier for people within Western countries to assimilate in another Western country? It's often not actually true, I imagine, and probably really comes down to the individual.

It depends on who.

For immigrants changing their mind, they are either going to approach it as moving back to their old country or being an immigrant in the new country.

For most native born Americans who I know who did or will, they will also likely self identify as immigrants.

It will be the elderly moving to Latin America to retire who will likely refer to themselves as "expats".

I moved to Germany from the US and make a point of calling myself an immigrant to tackle this very thing. Honestly I haven't heard expat used by anyone besides contractors looking to go back home after the duration, but that's anectodal.

Colonial legacy. One has to remember Europeans spent the 1800s and much of the early 1900s dabbling in "were civilized, they're not" brainrot ie. phrenology, race "science", eugenics, forced sterilization and most Western education essentially ignores the cultural legacy of white supremacy. Some Western countries (including the US) continued race based apartheid into the mid to late 1900s. It's why Western countries can never seem to completely shake Nazism. To a degree it's imbued into their very foundations.

I grew up in the USA and live in Australia. I think of and refer to myself as both 'expat' and 'immigrant'.

Which word I use depends on context. I'm an American expat (context: my relationship with USA), but I'm an immigrant in Australia (context: my relationship with Australia).

I guess I'm really just using "expat" to mean "emigrant". ¯_(ツ)_/¯

will call themselves “expats” instead of immigrants.

They do, all the time.