I think it’s probably a useful distinction. Elsewhere in the thread we’re talking about “expats”. Is somebody who retires from the U.S. to South America where they can actually live off of their social security check an expat, an economic migrant or a refugee? They’re making use of the same features like exchange rate that many of the immigrants coming the other way are.

Many of the people I work with have petty bourgeois aspirations in their home countries. They and their families fund businesses and property purchases back home with the USD they earn here. Somebody who was just born here in the first place and does the same thing might be called a colonizer or exploiter.

The only answer has to be ending the imperial dominance of the U.S. over these other parts of the world in the first place, but if we’re trying to do any useful analysis in the meantime I don’t think there’s any benefit to just flattening all immigration into “refugee” and ignoring the differences.