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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

#341

Post by mr_toad »

michaelt wrote: post #315
dgs_sgd wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> for most everyday tasks

That’s true, if you’re in Paris you can get by with very little French.

But don’t be too surprised if Gendarmerie aren’t particularly lenient just because tu ne comprends pas le français.

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

#342

Post by joe_mamba »

suburban_strike wrote: post #199
smithoc wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad that no immigrants work in construction to build more housing. If we could import lower cost laborers to build houses, that would greatly improve the housing affordability problem, but sadly, every time I go past a construction site, all I see are white guys whose great-great-great grandparents came over on the Mayflower.

> every time I go past a construction site, all I see are white guys whose great-great-great grandparents came over on the Mayflower. If you're going to lie to people, at least come up with more-plausible propaganda than the talking points you people came up with in the 1920s. The only WASPs anybody's going to find on a construction site in 2026 are the ones with wings and stingers.

Your parent was trying to be sarcastic that native WASPS are above working on construction sites and only migrants can do that.

Here in the EU where I was talking about, it's different, it's mostly European whites on construction sites, not WASPS, but intra-European migrants from balkans and eastern europe.

So here we literally gained nothing from the mass migration from africa and middle east except more housing demand instead of more skilled labor for building houses, contrary to the pro-migration propaganda.

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

#343

Post by lazyant »

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.

My prejudice is that there are only a few countries in the world (US, Canada, Australia, Mexico, possibly others I don't have experience with) where coming as an immigrant they take you in and you can be considered from that country.

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

#344

Post by nkrisc »

justacrow wrote: post #300
ryandrake wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There are many immigrant-majority communities in the USA where you can live most of your day-to-day without needing to speak much English.

Any $200k+ SW engineering jobs?

I’ve known some devs who were recent immigrants and did not speak much English. It wasn’t FAANG and not West coast so I don’t think they were making $200k but they got by and often paired with other devs who spoke their language and much better English.

Overall they were nice people and their English improved over time for the duration I knew them. It was a bit of a struggle to communicate sometimes but I didn’t mind it. Any time I felt frustrated about it I just thought about how they must be feeling, and it didn’t seem so bad anymore.

English is a pretty forgiving language.

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

#345

Post by jyounker »

zerr wrote: post #284
lispisok wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your complaint is you wanted permanent residence in Germany but did not want to learn to speak German?

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 can't imagine any Germans I know describing permanent residency as a business relationship.

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

#346

Post by Amezarak »

rayiner wrote: post #309
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.

The word you’re looking for is ethnogenisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnogenesis . There is no “American” ethnicity, though “white people” might come close to being considered a synthetic ethnicity resulting from the immigration restriction and birth rate boom from 1921-1965. But even that is too broad. It might be more accurate to get even more granular. For example, you might identify someone like Tim Walz a…

The US did undergo ethnogenesis; particularly in the southeast, there have long been large numbers of people that identify their ethnicity as "American." The process was largely disrupted/reversed in the northeast with the Ellis Islander waves and then near-totally nationwide in recent decades. (The west was too new and too churny to have undergone anything like that.)

"African Americans" certainly also separately underwent ethnogenesis, although the preferred nomenclature there has changed, and there wasn't really any disruption there. But I think it's certainly fair to count them as a distinctly and uniquely US ethnicity.

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

#347

Post by FabCH »

zerr wrote: post #318
FabCH wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, why is „learn the language“ not a rational and pragmatic requirement?

Seems rational to me. Want to live in country X permanently? Learn language X.

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

#348

Post by nkrisc »

rurp wrote: post #263
dgs_sgd wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your perspective, but I was curious what B1 proficiency actually entails and this is what I found [1]: - understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar topics such as work, school, or leisure - manage most situations that occur while traveling in German-speaking areas - produce simple, connected text on familiar subjects - describe experiences, events, dreams, hopes, and ambitions, and b…

It seems weird to me that someone would even want to settle in a foreign country without a good understanding of the language and cultural basics. I've done some traveling in non-English speaking countries and it was a huge hurdle not being completely fluent in the local language. It just seems like common sense to me to dive in all the way if you are moving somewhere long term. I don't really see what a good salary…

Well it’s definitely the best way to learn the language, if you’re motivated to do so.

If you want to learn a language, the absolute best thing you can do is to be completely immersed in it.

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

#349

Post by romanhounds »

jitix wrote: post #312
ikut3hva wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

[flagged]

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

#350

Post by wvbdmp »

gib444 wrote: post #94
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #5

I lived there for around 6 months like 15 years ago so perhaps it's changed a lot since then. But even as an Englishman, it was very different to home. I remember the supermarket was shut all Sunday and was only open until 12 on the Saturday, and it shut early in the week too (at like 5pm or 6pm or something?) so by the time I'd got the train back home from work it was already closed. I had to get up early every Satu…

Have you visited London recently? Particularly east. It's got the unfriendliness but also complete total breakdown of the social contract and social decency Music and video calls without headphones on all transport all the time. Shoes and socks off on train seats. Zombies barging into you constantly. Nobody letting people off the train. Throwing rubbish on the ground. Leaving it on trains and buses. Vaping on the tub…

We have all those things in Germany, including the converse stereotype that Brits like to queue and act proper and polite.

Guess we both need to redirect our fantasies of civility to Japan or something.

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