> The difference between an expat and an immigrant? Semantics

> “Immigrants are usually defined as people who have come to a different country in order to live there permanently, whereas expats move abroad for a limited amount of time or have not yet decided upon the length of their stay,” he says.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-fa...

> Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years

People from the wealthier first-world nations enjoy more international privileges — visa-on-arrival, stress-free travel, higher rates in currency exchange, dual citizenships, better societal structures and support for assimilation into foreign cultures.

Immigrants are either fleeing persecution or leaving their countries seeking a better life, requirements for visas and security checks, usually with not enough money, little privilege, and defacto distrust from foreign societal structures.

Relatively speaking, the typical expat can move around the world as they wish. Immigrants can't. So yes, immigrants, when they move, often do so, seeking to live elsewhere permanently.

"No taxation without representation."

So you're in favor of exempting minors from federal taxation?

After all, their income is basically a rounding error economically and most don't make enough to pay net federal taxes so it might even be a net loss. There's no real reason to tax them unless it's some perverse Cartmanic exercise in making them accustomed to it.

It’s not foreign influence when America more or less demands it.

Personally that feels like a great way to make sure we ruin things, rather than just arguing that those GOP members helping gerrymander might ruin things.

What difference does it make where you vote when you're an expat? You're still taxed and represented.

It would be a different matter if taxes were not involved, at least in my humble opinion. Other countries have revoked voting writes when you're no longer a tax paying citizen.

To me this feels like the kind of strategy that leads to us removing voting rights for expats. If the rule is meant to allow expats to still participating in voting in their hometown, and people abuse that to impact elections they have no real business voting in, eventually that right will just be removed.

Is the rule meant to do that? I don't perceive that to be the case. What even is a hometown? What if someone doesn't have a hometown? What if you leave and never plan to return?

Decidedly expats do have real business in voting in elections otherwise this rule would have been removed. But it would be unconstitutional to tax citizens abroad upon depriving them the right to representation so this seems. Given there seems to be no appetite to disowning American expats this all seems moot.

I'm not aware of any other country with this sort of policy. It certainly seems to me that you get precisely what you ask for here, and there is no possiblity of abuse.