An expatriate is a person who lives in a country that is not the country they came from. People shorten it to 'expat' almost always in speech — 'expatriate' in full sounds like paperwork. As a verb, to expatriate someone is to send them out of their own country; that older, harder meaning is where the word started, and you still meet it in history books and in 'expatriate yourself' (to leave your own country to live elsewhere). As an adjective it sits in front of a noun: an expatriate teacher, the expatriate community, expatriate workers. Here is the messy part, and it matters. In plain meaning, anyone living outside their home country is an expatriate — a Filipino nurse in Taipei, a Taiwanese engineer in Texas, an American teacher in Kaohsiung. But in how people actually talk, 'expat' is mostly used for Westerners and for professionals sent abroad by a company, while people doing lower-paid work are called 'migrant workers' or 'immigrants'. That split is about money and race more than about the word, and many people have noticed it and complain about it. There is also a real difference in feeling between 'expat' and 'immigrant': an immigrant plans to stay, an expat is felt to be here for a few years and then gone. Someone can call themselves an expat for twenty years and still feel temporary.