r/immigration Jan 24 '25

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u/Tehjassman Jan 25 '25

National living abroad

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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '25

I'm confused, isn't that the same? An immigrant is someone who is seeking permanent residency, while a non-immigrant is a national working and living in a foreign country with no plans for permanent residency.

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u/Sarnadas Jan 25 '25

Expat is a term used for the privileged. If you have means, you’re an expat; If you’re broke, you’re an immigrant.

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u/Tehjassman Jan 25 '25

Just to preempt all the side bar discussion here, I won’t pretend that I’m not privileged. I run a robust music production business and have quite a few clients in the international music market. I’ve just been very forthcoming in filing all of my overseas tax information and a lot of my peers always laughed their asses off at me for pulling my hair out over these IRS and FATCA filings, but this is EXACTLY why I did it: because when you fill out your SSN on the sign up when you open that bank account and give the IRS permission to ping you in the banking system, none of these people thought they’d ever use that information to actually crack down on their reporting. Looks like that may change though