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Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

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Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#311

Post by BeetleB »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #245
malshe wrote: post #130

Here is my anecdote. I was in Germany recently and met with a South American woman. We briefly talked about our immigrant experiences. She is now a German citizen married to a German man. However, she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one. By contrast, when I became an American citizen, my American friends (white and hispanic) insisted that they attend the naturalization ceremony.

> she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one As a native German, I actually have difficulties with concepts like "identifying as [nationality]", "feeling like [nationality]" or "naturalization". I really would say these are concepts that US-Americans (or people who were "shaped" by US mentality) seem to deeply care about, but Germans very typically don't. So, my opinion/advice is: s…

I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#312

Post by jitix »

ikut3hva wrote: post #194
svara wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely happy to hear you're successful here! But, why would you expect there to be no drawback to not knowing the local language when moving to a foreign country?

Definitely, I had a good awareness of the language barrier from the day I arrived. To be fair, I have continued learning German—not because I want to pass the B1 examination and obtain permanent residence, but because I feel my children need to be protected and guided, and I want to teach them the same things they learn at school. Every moment I spend learning the language is a moment I invest out of love, so that I…

Then why are you complaining about the language requirement for permanent residency? You knew the tradeoffs and chose them willingly, enjoy your income, invest in your home country and move back once you retire.

Simply making higher-than-median income should not make you eligible for permanent residency. Cultural immersion and assimilation is important to maintain social stability and language is just the first step. From what I found (and as another commenter pointed out) the bar is not even that high.

Edit: For context I am not a right winger and am an immigrant myself. But I am seeing the social fabric of my host country (Canada) degrade because of immigrants' refusal to assimilate.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#313

Post by baranul »

stickfigure wrote: post #268
dghlsakjg wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is that a group of independent states spanning a huge part of a continent that banded together into a country in the 1800s forms a country that is also an ethnicity, but that a group of independent states spanning a huge part of a continent that banded together even longer ago is not a country that is also an ethnicity?

The difference is that - excepting about 1.4% of the population - everyone here in the US is either an immigrant or descended from immigrants. Most of them long after the Mayflower sailed. However long it takes to create a new capital-E Ethnicity, it hasn't been long enough.

> excepting about 1.4% of the population - everyone here in the US is either an immigrant or descended from immigrants

Your data and percentage, is very wrong. America has significant Black and Indigenous (usually referred to as Indian or Native) populations. Around 15% Black and 3% Indigenous. Combined, they make up around 18% of the US population, with wild and vigorous arguments they are even a greater percentage than that (20% or so).

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#314

Post by aleph_minus_one »

eldaisfish wrote: post #287
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are not an engineer you must have an almost excellent level of local language --> an excellent level of a language is only possible if you are immersed daily over a long time and have the time to study I disagree: for many jobs, it is expected that you have a decent level of English, but at least in Germany, you are often not immersed a lot in English. So you have to get decent in English with barely any imm…

Your argument ignores one important aspect - incentives. English is the global lingua franca, hence the incentive to learn English is incredibly strong. Outside of Germany, what exact benefit does the German language get you?

> Outside of Germany, what exact benefit does the German language get you?

German is also official language in Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. In many neighbouring countries it is also often well-understood and/or there exist language minorities.

> English is the global lingua franca

From my professional experience I can tell that depending on the countries or persons from countries that you deal with, Spanish, French, Russian or Chinese can be much more important than English.

So, calling English the global lingua franca is in my opinion rather based on a selection bias on specific countries.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#315

Post by michaelt »

dgs_sgd wrote: post #237
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B1 is a completely fair minimum standard. It's normal for many countries to expect residents to have basic conversational adequacy. It's also the kind of requirement that's made explicit on government information about residency. So it shouldn't have been a surprise.

Like, I imagine if I moved to a country and couldn’t do the B1 things in their language, I would have daily obstacles doing basic life things.

A lot of societies are set up to accommodate that society's dumbest members, and tourists, for most everyday tasks.

Outside of the workplace and my hobbies, I can't remember the last time someone asked me to read more than a few words, write anything at all, or do any maths more complicated than "the 12:20 train is 10 minutes late"

Personally I would say it's not respectful to a society to move there and not make a decent effort to learn the language - but I have no doubt a person could survive with only basic skills, if their workplace worked in their native language and they had an ethnic enclave as a support network.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#316

Post by dghlsakjg »

bluGill wrote: post #289
dghlsakjg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If German is an ethnicity, I don't see why the US, which is older than the German Confederation (let alone the subsequent countries that have existed since then on that same land) has a distinct culture and set of shared values, cannot be.

There are shared values in the US, but not many. Love of the US, and 'freedom' is about all, for the later we don't agree in what freedom means. There are many different distinct cultures in the US. Cowboys from north Dakota and Texas are both cowboys but have little cultural connection, and the hill billies Tennessee are very different from each.

The same can be said about Germany.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#317

Post by fallingbananna »

mettamage wrote: post #195
wojciii wrote: post #98

This reminds me that I got fired from a German company (operating in DK) because I asked too many questions and would not stop complaining about the software architecture which was terrible. The company culture was clashing with the Danish culture that I was used to and also I didn't give a fuck.

Is Danish culture more flat in its organization?

With how much cultural weight law of Jante has in Denmark, I would hope so.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#318

Post by zerr »

FabCH wrote: post #308
zerr wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Permanent residency is a business deal between two entities: an individual and a state. It has nothing to do with linguistics. There are many Germans permanently living in Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, who never bothered to even learn how to say Hello, not to mention any certificate or exam...

I mean, even if you insist on viewing it as a business deal, what exactly prevents one side to put language requirements in the business deal? That’s how deals work, both sides state their position and either they find a middle ground or they don’t.

Business deal means the requirements should be rational, pragmatic.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#319

Post by BeetleB »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #224
joe_mamba wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who lived in the US briefly, I found Americans are just a lot more hospitable to foreigners, than Germans and most other Europeans in general. Probably because there's no such thing as an US-American ethnicity, but there definitely is at least one or more unique and very distinct ethnicities and cultures for every European country, and simply getting the passport as a foreign adult, does not also buy you i…

The whole immigrants who don't integrate seems to be a constant issue in every developed country across the globe, with the exception of maybe Japan, who is xenophobic enough that you wouldn't want to try to become Japanese anyway. Canada, England, France, and the US, to name a few, seem to have done it wrong considering how immigration is a constant complaint and weaponized topic in their politics, but likewise Japa…

> The whole immigrants who don't integrate seems to be a constant issue in every developed country across the globe

I can't speak for the other countries, but in the US it's almost entirely an agenda being pushed. When I hear people say this, it's not because of any experience they've had, but just a repetition of talking points. Virtually none of them had a negative story to tell. I've heard far, far worse stories in some European countries.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#320

Post by kuschku »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #285
Hardwired8976 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Americans would be a ethnicity but the US was taken over my European settlers. Europe the Germanic people have existed way before , a country is not tied to the ethnicity.

A country is not tied to ethnicity but this thread is about how German is an ethnicity. I’ve heard plenty of arguments about the German Volk as a distinct entity. The argument was pretty decisively lost according to my grandfather. Tell me, where does my Jewish German heritage fit in to Germany as an ethnicity? For some reason they didn’t feel very German when they left despite meeting all the qualifications…

> Tell me, where does my Jewish German heritage fit in to Germany as an ethnicity? For some reason they didn’t feel very German when they left despite meeting all the qualifications…

That's a good point, and personally one of the reasons I disagree with the ethnic definition of "nation".

The other reason are of course the frisian, danish, sorbian, etc and many other similar minorities that have historically lived in the region of modern Germany.

I think the french definition (which defines the nation almost entirely around the language, not ethnicity or origin) is a much more interesting and useful one. Language determines who you can talk to, and what media you can read or watch.

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