[seanmcdirmid]

It depends if you plan to stay (immigrant) or not (expat). Since most long term visas in the US terminate in a green card, we use immigrant more often than not to describe those who come to the US on an H1 or as PRs.

Also immigration primarily occurs from poorer developing countries to richer developed countries, so the label immigrant is used to describe long term foreigners since it is likely that they actually are. In contrast, in primarily emigrant countries (like say China), the immigrant label will almost never be true, so something else is used instead.