Well, in my experience it's the immigrants themselves doing it and never the locals.

Further, even in a poorer European country like Portugal I've never heard say, Germans or French calling themselves "expats" even though those are much more wealthy nations - it's pretty much only Brits and Americans living there who speak of themselves as "expats".

I think the use of expat is specifically a thing for people from countries were national delusions of grandeur are widespread (which I know for sure from direct experience is the case in the UK and seems to very much be the case in the US) rather than merelly the coutry of origin of the migrant being "better" than the host country.

Also these experiences of mine I've mentioned are in some cases from way back in the 90s - this shit was already done over 2 decades ago well before the recent anti-immigration sentiment in the West.

I know there's some opinions on this, but I would consider this to be the case. Many people don't have so much pride in their origins to consider using a term like expat, then there's Americans, who's entire identity is based on where they were born.

So it makes sense that someone from America living in another country would identify as an American expat, while everyone else is just, immigrated to where they are. Not enough focus on what country they came from to bother with an expat definition.

Makes me think that American expats are looking backwards, while other immigrants are looking forwards.

In my experience people will use "immigrant" to talk about were they're from by referring their nationality (i.e. "I'm a Portuguese immigrant") or explicitly adding a "from" and then using the country name (i.e. "I'm an immigrant from Portugal").

If talking about where they're an immigrant in, they will explicitly use "in" (i.e. "I'm an immigrant in The Netherlands").

Even though "emmigrant" is about where you were born and aren't living in anymore and "immigrant" is about were you went to, in my experience emmigrant is only ever used when physically in one's country of original and talking about living elsewhere (i.e. when in Portugal I would say "I'm an emigrant" whilst when in The Netherlands I would say "I'm an immigrant").

It's funny since as I'm writting this I remembered that when I first left my country of birth to go live abroad it actually took me a while to figure out the proper usage of the whole immigrant/emmigrant thing.

As I said, I was an immigrant in The Netherlands and worked often with other immigrants from all over there (mainly because until I learned Dutch I could only work in English-speaking environments and in my area - software engineering - those attracted immigrants), and most people would use "immigrant" when talking about were they came from (i.e. "I'm a French immigrant") and I only ever heard expat used instead of immigrant by people from Anglo-Saxon nations, overwhelmingly Brits and Americans.

That said, "expat" was used as a single word combining both "immigrant" and "emigrant" - in other words, unlike with the immigrant/emmigrant pair, the single word expat is valid both when one is physically on one's country of origin and when one is physically in one's host country: when I lived in Britain I did hear Britons saying that they were "expats" and meaning it as "living elsewhere than Britain".

And yeah, 2nd generation don't call themselves expats, but they also don't call themselves immigrants. It's only people from outside talking in general about people who are the direct descendants of immigrants in a country who will use "2nd generation immigrants" for the groups as a whole. Calling somebody who is a national of that country and has immigrant parents "an immigrant" in that country is only ever used as an insult by Far-Right extremists.

an option that a lot of immigrants don’t have.

Especially when a lot of the same type of people will throw a fit if an 'immigrant' doesn't do everything they can to assimilate.