Expats usually don’t have immigrant visas. They also receive packages from their companies for their temporary assignments. If you go to the country on your own to fund a job, you usually won’t be referred to as an expat by those with packages who refer to themselves as expats. But you won’t be referred to as a migrant worker either unless you are poor and doing construction or farm work. We used the term half-pats to describe ourselves, but mostly it was just foreigners.

The USA is exceptional because almost every visa that allows for work is considered an immigration visa (eg H1 leads to a greencard, eventually). But in other countries that is most definitely not true.