Expatriate is a racist term for immigrant. Racist in the sense that it is usually used for white, European immigrants who are somehow considered something else than immigrants.
Even the words show a bias: an expatriate is a person who has left their native country, an immigrant is a person who has entered the country in question. An expatriate maintains an identity with their original country, an immigrant is merely seen as someone from an amorphous "outside". Immigrants struggle to provide for families, fear for their safety, and are at the victim of a confusing bureaucracy. Expatriates spend every night at the bar, visit the same five tourist sites that they assure you are "life-changing experiences" and are 'old hands' after they have memorized standard conversational terms in the native language.
My first six months in Chile, I was an expatriate, which is the normal term for being an expatriate. After that, I have become an immigrant. This change in self-perception wasn't a principled stand of solidarity with the immigrants from Haiti or The Dominican Republic that form Chile's marginalized migrant community. It was just a matter of realizing that my life involved standing in a lot of lines, worrying about a lot of bills, and trying very hard to accustom myself to a country where I had to live as a matter of fact. Also, I realized how stupid it was to pay $5 for a bottle of Stella Artois.