This might get me some flak, but IMHO it's an unconscious double standard for many people and it's also not exclusive to the English language.
Germans do something similar, a German who moves to another country, even if it's Thailand for retirement or because life in Germany supposedly doesn't work for them, is called an "Auswanderer" and usually has a rather positive connotation of being "worldly" and well traveled.
Guess how many people call immigrants "Einwanderer" with a positive connotation? Pretty much nobody.
Some might argue there's an economic dimension to this, like German pensioners bringing their money to the other country, but that also doesn't always apply: There are plenty of Germans who are migrating because they have economic troubles in Germany and think they could work it better elsewhere.
As unbelievable as that might sound to most people outside of Germany, there are so many of them that VOX Germany has a whole Docu-Soap about Germans migrating to other countries, and it's been running for nearly 12 years with great success [0].
Man, rolling nationality + expat/immigrant around is exposing some interesting biases.
For some nationalities, expat sounds more natural, for some immigrant.
The British and French get to be expats even if they live in the US, the Germans only if they live outside the US. Canadians don't get to be expats or immigrants, they're just Canadians.
I wonder how broad or narrow these biases are; are these something I picked up from widespread American culture, or just personal linguistic biases?
I don't think it matters what they are called. The connotations are attached to the people, not the word. Change the words and it becomes a euphemism treadmill.
> The connotations are attached to the people, not the word.
Language is a living thing.
If you reserve usage of certain terminology to specific people, then negative connotations can easily attach themselves to both of them in combination, thus fundamentally changing how positive/negative certain terminology is perceived by the general population.
We've been witnessing this live, in reality, for these past years: If you talk about "immigrant crime" often enough many people will see most, if not all, crime in the context of supposedly increasing immigration.
Completely ignoring any other contributing factors to crime, completely ignoring actual crime statistics and trends. [0]
Germans do something similar, a German who moves to another country, even if it's Thailand for retirement or because life in Germany supposedly doesn't work for them, is called an "Auswanderer" and usually has a rather positive connotation of being "worldly" and well traveled.
Guess how many people call immigrants "Einwanderer" with a positive connotation? Pretty much nobody.
Some might argue there's an economic dimension to this, like German pensioners bringing their money to the other country, but that also doesn't always apply: There are plenty of Germans who are migrating because they have economic troubles in Germany and think they could work it better elsewhere.
As unbelievable as that might sound to most people outside of Germany, there are so many of them that VOX Germany has a whole Docu-Soap about Germans migrating to other countries, and it's been running for nearly 12 years with great success [0].
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_Deutschland!_Die_Auswa...