The Chicago Style Manual holds that to emigrate is to leave a country in order to go live in another. Chicago Style describes to immigrate as entering into a country to live there.
This is then applied to the words emigrant and immigrant. For example,
- My grandparents immigrated to the United States.
- My grandparents emigrated from Norway.
In these sentences, my grandparents are immigrants in the United States, but they are emigrates back in Norway.
For a full discussion on the differences between emigrate and immigrate, please check out our full post on the subject.