Ex-Pats

As if the world was not mean enough, this article recently appeared in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/mar/13/white-people-expats-immigrants-migration It even includes a reference to a similar article in the WSJ. 

The essence of the article is here: "Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races’."

According to Wiki, an expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of their citizenship. The word comes from the Latin terms ex ("out of") and patria ("country, fatherland"). In common usage, the term is often used in the context of professionals or skilled workers sent abroad by their companies. The term 'expatriate' in some countries also has a legal context used for tax purposes, meaning someone who does not have tax residence in the country they are living. An expatriate living in a country can receive a favorable tax treatment – they are still subject to taxation, but not in the same way as tax residents. "Expatriation" goes both ways; a country can expatriate a citizen, essentially exiling him and depriving him of citizenship as Nazi Germany did to its countless "undesirables."

Expat has a nuance but it is not racial, it is cultural. The classic expatriate in history was suffering a self-imposed cultural exile, a flight both from and to a cultural ambiance. Henry James, the writers of the 1920s like Hemingway found places in the world they found more compatible than home. This was less a work decision than an emotional one. Hemingway would be stunned to be called an "immigrant in Paris."

Leaving a country for the economic advantage of another or the safety of another has never been an expatriate act; the Pilgrims, as white as you can get, were not expats. But things change. People can see things differently. But they should not be allowed to blatantly distort for their own racist ends.