Expat or Immigrant?

A conversation that shows up often on media sites for Americans living abroad is whether people like us prefer to call themselves expats or immigrants. “Expat” is verbal shorthand for “ex patriot”, someone who is living outside their motherland. I’d say that most of us default to using the expat moniker because it’s quicker to say.

Whatever we call ourselves, our status as Americans living abroad can only be seen as an unearned perk of privilege. In our personal case, we would never be considered wealthy in the eyes of most of our fellow Yanks. Tim and I have always had enough; sometimes even a little more than enough. We’ve lived simply; old cars, old houses, lots of second-hand furniture, little accumulation of expensive gadgetry. But the privilege granted to us at birth as white, middle class citizens of a world-class nation has opened lots of doors. We’ve always had access to quality education, decent jobs, adequate housing and first class healthcare. Not only were we able to accrue a modest savings account, but we are assured of being warmly welcomed by the governments of most countries on the globe. Our United States passports give us access to nearly anywhere we can dream of going.

Most of the circumstances that allowed us to make the choice to live abroad are not universally granted to huge numbers of the world’s population. Just as we didn’t have any role in being born white, middle-class Americans, the people who are not able to freely roam the Earth also had no choice in where they happened to be born. Tim and I are humbled by our dumb luck.

We talk sometimes about the reasons we found ourselves living an ocean away from everyone we cherish. It seems like it was always in our minds, although we never seriously planned for it until the last couple of years. Wanderlust and curiosity about our planet were the driving forces. Economics became more important as we recognized that our retirement income would erode over time until our lives would become very small if we stayed in the US. We began to get a little nervous about Medicare becoming a perennial political football. And, like so many Americans in the last couple of years, we became weary and frightened by the mean-spirited rhetoric we were hearing daily from certain politicians and the people who follow them.

And so we began our big experiment, full of eager anticipation and quite a few questions. Could we learn to navigate a culture we’d not been born into? Were our senior brains agile enough to learn a new language? Would our host country continue to embrace us if we failed to adapt quickly enough to their ways? Could we stretch our money enough to breathe easy every month, plus venture out into an even wider world occasionally? Could we really thrive without owning a car? But we never questioned whether we would be allowed to stay, or if we would be harassed by governmental agencies or private citizens. We are, once again, recognizing how fortunate we are.

One of our long term goals is to obtain a Portuguese passport – become citizens of this charming little country. That can take as little as five years, but will most likely take closer to seven. I wonder sometimes, after having achieved that goal, will we ever move back to the United States? For lots of reasons, it’s hard to imagine being extremely elderly in this place. But, we also can’t quite see how we’d manage back in the States. As it turns out, we enjoy being car-less, but that’s a very hard way to live almost anywhere in the US. Healthcare here is top quality, and very reasonable. In fact, we just bought a comprehensive medical insurance plan last week that cost around $1200 for both of us, for a year!

We love the warm, sunny climate, the sense of history, the fresh, unprocessed food, and the kind, generous people. I’m not surprised to find I really like living in a socialist country. The thing about socialism in Europe is that long ago, the people came to the conclusion that it is fair and noble to make sure folks have what they need to live a nice life, and they have decided that the government is a reasonable entity to oversee the programs that provide necessary services. No one seems to question that somebody might be getting more than they deserve. Everyone just simply accepts that living in a society means everyone watches out for each other. I recall seeing a Michael Moore movie a few years ago. Near the end of the film he was interviewing a woman in Iceland who was in a position of high authority in that country. He asked her if she would ever want to come live in the United States. I will never forget her response. She acknowledged that the USA had wealth, power, and influence, but she said living there held no interest to her. When asked why, she paused and said simply, “Because you don’t treat each other very well.” The sad truth of that statement hit home with me. Here, people treat each other well. I’d miss that a lot if we came back to the States.

Last month I finally read a new idea of the expat vs immigrant discussion. A guy who lives here in Portugal and has just published a book about his decision to never live in the US again, suggested this: If you live in a country not your own with the idea that you may eventually return to your native soil, you are an expat. But if you have no plans to ever live full-time again in the land of your birth, you are an immigrant. For me, the question is still not completely answerable, but more and more, I’m liking the sound of “immigrant.”