[rsynnott]

English speakers are often reluctant to refer to themselves as immigrants, due to pervasive anti-immigrant rhetoric in most English speaking countries.

The funniest manifestation of this is letters to the Daily Mail where the writer moans on about all the immigrants in England before revealing that they’re an ‘expat’ living in Spain.

Edit: incidentally, it’s not universal in English speaking countries. Irish media, for instance, will rarely refer to an Irish person living abroad, temporarily or permanently, as an expat; they’re an emigrant. And immigrants from other English speaking countries would normally be referred to as immigrants, not expats.