I wonder if just like Brits and French, Unitedstaters emigrating elsewhere will call themselves “expats” instead of immigrants.

We, white people of the west, can go anywhere in the world for work, affordability and/or safety without considering ourselves immigrants.

Many years ago I was chatting with someone from Malmö. He was complaining how immigrants were “taking over his city”. But when I mentioned that I, a Canadian, would also like to move to Sweden, he told me it would be fine, that he would not consider me “an immigrant” because I’m from the west.

Anyway, I understand why anyone would want to leave. It’s just that it seems the vocabulary used is different for different people.

I’m an American immigrant in Germany. It’s infuriating how many Germans complain to me about immigrants, then when hearing that I’m an immigrant, wave their hand and say I’m not like the others. I’m now a German teacher and married to a German, so they’ve always got plausible deniability that it’s about language or integration, but I wasn’t always good at German and I only met my husband after a few years here. It used to be much more fun to push back on why.

Try immigrating to Canada from the US. Nobody here would ever consider me a ‘true’ immigrant, even though that is quite literally what I am.

I moved for school and never came back. All my family and personal ties were left behind in the states. Except for my family and the annoying need to file taxes every year for some fucking reason, I have no ties left to the US.

But Im white and culturally similar enough that the label ‘immigrant’ would feel funny to people here. It really is wacky.

Why pay taxes? Is it an extraditable offense?

You have to file taxes with the US, most people with US citizenship living outside the US don’t actually have to pay anything.

As for why to keep filing:

• renouncing your citizenship is difficult and expensive
• it’s hard to avoid the US

Let’s say you have no plans to ever live in the US again. Does that mean you never want to visit friends or family you left behind? Does that mean you’ll never go to a sporting event, concert or professional conference in the US ever again? If you’re flying internationally, will you always be willing to pay extra and do extra work to avoid being on a plane that makes a stopover in the US?

For most people it’s a few hours of work, and/or a hundred bucks or so once per year to keep their options open and avoid major headaches.