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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

#501

Post by quadrifoliate »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #275
stickfigure wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who cares if most people in the US had ancestors that came from somewhere else? My English ancestors have precisely no bearing on the way I live my life any more than my German, Dutch or Polish (well, they came from what is now Poland, but would never have thought of themselves as polish). The child of immigrants in Germany is going to be far more German than I am despite my ancestry. American culture is undeniably r…

> My English ancestors have precisely no bearing on the way I live my life any more than my German, Dutch or Polish (well, they came from what is now Poland, but would never have thought of themselves as polish). The child of immigrants in Germany is going to be far more German than I am despite my ancestry. American culture is undeniably real. American values and beliefs likewise.

I don't think you are disagreeing with the parent commenter as much as you think. The clear belief statement you are making and not considering your ancestry is a pretty core value of Americans (and one I like) that is not seen in other countries.

Most countries in the world automatically default to "my ancestors were X so I am X, if someone else's ancestors were Y then they are Y, no matter how many generations or how illogical this is". Example: people keep commenting how many players of African descent there are on the French men's soccer team. No one cares or talks about the ancestry of the players on the USMNT.

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

#502

Post by alchemism »

djaro wrote: post #462
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German. You can get to A2 level pretty easy (in most indoeuropean languages at least), but jumping to B1 can seriously be a year or more of studying. You have to be able to handle basic daily situations in the given language and understand what is said in a TV or Radio show. With practice yo…

I would disagree about it not being "easy". Learning a language certainly takes time and effort, but the fact that even the dumbest people in society can speak fluently, that literal toddlers learn languages, shows that it's far from difficult. It just requires turning your rational mind off, immersing yourself in the language and trusting things will work out, something which more rational/analytic people tend to st…

…young children have immense neural plasticity while adults, especially 40+, have little.

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

#503

Post by aylmao »

I have friends who moved to Germany, so although I haven't been or experienced immigrating there myself, it's been in the conversation amongst my circles.

What I hear about it is that it can feel closed and lonely. Germans are not necesarily mean, but they won't fully assimilate you into their circles easily, especially if you're not European. I also hear dating can be tough if you're not German or European. It's an important factor for choosing to stay somewhere permanently if you move there in your early 20s, like my friend did.

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

#504

Post by Izikiel43 »

ikut3hva wrote: post #165

Hi everyone I don’t usually comment on topics like this because there are so many biases and different perspectives involved. In the end, I believe only the person who has actually gone through the experience can truly understand it; otherwise, it often becomes just another judgment. We are an ASEAN family earning more than €200k gross annually (sorry for mentioning the TC, but there is a reason for it—please keep re…

> German is a must today if you want to obtain residency and stabilize your life here.

Well yeah, learning the local language is a requirement for a lot of countries on the path to citizenship.

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

#505

Post by mananaysiempre »

dgs_sgd wrote: post #226
ikut3hva wrote: post #165

Hi everyone I don’t usually comment on topics like this because there are so many biases and different perspectives involved. In the end, I believe only the person who has actually gone through the experience can truly understand it; otherwise, it often becomes just another judgment. We are an ASEAN family earning more than €200k gross annually (sorry for mentioning the TC, but there is a reason for it—please keep re…

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 is, in a sense. I maybe feel that, if one is unfamilliar with the CEFR levels, the description you gave might make things sound a bit more basic than they are: survival as a resident is more like A2, not B1. The B1 designation is like reading tabloid headlines and writing essays on middle-school-level subjects.

But that’s really a bit nitpicky, and the actual point I wanted to make is as follows: B1 is something like five uninterrupted years[1] of consistent lessons. Somewhat less for closer language pairs like maybe French to Spanish, potentially a lot more if the language is foreign enough that you need to build your vocabulary from zero; and keep in mind that the typical foreign-language class in middle or high school tends to go a lot slower so isn’t a good reference.

Uninterrupted is never going to happen for an immigrant who needs to find their footing for basic survival and, for the first year or two, also juggle the multitude of individually small demands of an unfamilliar environment (do I want a broker to help me rent an apartment? how do I deal with the healthcare system? where can I find a decent plumber? what’s the public transport situation? nobody writes this shit down). As an immigrant, you’re on the hard setting by default regardless of salary, and then you add an extra 2–3 hours per week of language classes and perhaps double that in homework.

None of this is to say it’s unfair to demand B1 if you want people to integrate. It is to say that the, realistically, seven to ten years of effort are in no way a small deal, and if you want people to integrate then you need to make the incidental stuff, i.e. everything else, as straightforward[2] as you can. At the moment, the incidental stuff is about as convoluted as possible more or less everywhere[3] and feels like it’s designed to make you lose at every step, partly because it is. That’s the natural state of affairs (like prison inmates, immigrants don’t have anyone to advocate for them so the system just drifts where it would), but not the one you need if integration is your actual goal.

(Israel is probably the only place to get a pass on planning because they took the extraordinary step of writing fucking manuals, in six foreign languages, for a lot of the implicit knowledge—at least to the extent that a government-endorsed document can be honest about things.)

[1] The estimate of 350–400 class hours that I see in some places feels wildly optimistic to me. That of 1000 hours for C2 feels like downright mockery.

[2] Straightforward to understand, not necessarily to pass.

[3] No specific experience with Germany, for the record.

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

#506

Post by hunterpayne »

torton wrote: post #364
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting story about Europe's medieval history, is that the bankers and loan officers and financial professionals were all drawn from a certain ethnoreligious community. And this intrinsic nature of being the foremost, and usually the only, bankers and financial professionals, who were essentially authorized to commit usury and extract interest from the populace... probably had a lot to do with their public percep…

That's the nice part about having your own country -- no more systemic discrimination or prohibition on owning land, or joining professional guilds, or having some king being upset about his debts and organizing a small confiscation of wealth. The ambition of keeping that country, however, is something that many people would rather deny that specific etnoreligious community.

In this case, the GP is talking about the Huguenots who are/were French Calvinists.

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

#507

Post by crossroadsguy »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #451
torginus wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what she meant that even if you live in Germany/work with German colleagues, basically you will enternally made to be felt that you are not one of them by all but the most liberally minded Germans (and even those are rare even in the big international cities). So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants. Btw most Europeans are li…

> I think what she meant that even if you live in Germany/work with German colleagues, basically you will enternally made to be felt that you are not one of them by all but the most liberally minded Germans (and even those are rare even in the big international cities). So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants. Thanks for your interes…

Immigrants who go to Germany are not used to US mentality, they don't have a mandatory few years of pitstop in the US to pickup US mentality before they finally land in Germany. You are "certain" (literally) about a lot of things that you are typically missing (or rather ignoring) any points the other commenters are trying bring in. Maybe that's also a point?

As for work connections - someone just landed in a foreign country and spends decisively most of the "waking hours" with a bunch of people… as in literally, it's not even a metaphor… that's called being human, social, etc.

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

#508

Post by pessimizer »

eldaisfish wrote: post #223
ikut3hva wrote: post #165

Hi everyone I don’t usually comment on topics like this because there are so many biases and different perspectives involved. In the end, I believe only the person who has actually gone through the experience can truly understand it; otherwise, it often becomes just another judgment. We are an ASEAN family earning more than €200k gross annually (sorry for mentioning the TC, but there is a reason for it—please keep re…

There is yet another angle that people don't like to discuss because it is uncomfortable. Every European nation state is built around ethnicity as the bedrock of society. This makes it nigh on impossible to integrate fully in these countries. The way this manifests is different in each country, but the fundamental reason is the same. In the german case, take the words of Messut Ozil, the former footballer - when the…

> In sharp contrast to this are the US and Canada, where there is no shared definition of "white" even though the majority of their populations are ethnically European.

I think you've got this turned around. In the US and Canada "white" is all you have. In Germany you have Germans, in France you have French, in the US, you have "white," which usually means "untraceable white mutt, at least one grandparent didn't speak English, don't be surprised if they're a bit Lebanese, Indian or Mexican."

The difference between Europe and the US is that in the US, the only important thing is not to be black. Europe's hostility is more finely tuned because they have more culture and community to protect (more continuity, more history, etc.)

Once that's gone, it's gone. Greece can't get back its Greekness by importing more Greeks, whereas the US (and the other Anglosphere colonies) can get more white by taking in anyone who isn't black. The colonies are places that often started by being filled with British prisoners; i.e. standards were nil. The standard was that you were white, could kill natives, and in the US, catch slaves.

The lack of an overarching culture in the US is probably why slave and ex-slave culture had such an outsized influence. It's uniquely American.

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

#509

Post by freehorse »

pessimizer wrote: post #477
blks wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want people with foreign backgrounds to “assimilate”? If you were to move to France, are you going to abandon your own language, culture, and play-pretend to be a Frenchman? If you live somewhere long enough, know the country, work and handle daily life without issues, have social connections with other people in this society, understand at least some language - in my opinion you are as integrated in that…

You're making it sound like the desire to be a Frenchman is an unreasonable requirement for becoming a Frenchman. > abandon your own language, culture Thank god nobody is asking this. They're being asked to learn enough French to participate in France. B1 is hard, but it ain't B2, and you'll still barely understand what's going on around you.

> requirement for becoming a Frenchman

The discussion is about permanent residence, not citizenship.

Permanent residence allows eg an employee be able to continue staying in a country without being dependent on a particular employer and having to reapply everytime they change jobs. It is gives a person who works in a country for a certain amount of time already, paying taxes etc, having the same rights as an employee.

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

#510

Post by nixon_why69 »

pessimizer wrote: post #465
thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The US doesn’t require language fluency for green cards. You can even bring your own interpret to the interview. United States issues the highest absolute number of permanent residency permits in the world. It grants approximately 1 to 1.4 million lawful permanent resident (LPR) cards (Green Cards) annually

The US is an exception, doesn't require language proficiency for almost anything, and doesn't have an official language. This is very controversial in the US, and always has been. Historically, this can originally be blamed on the desire of the US to import as many European immigrants as quickly as it could after the slaves were freed (post-"1877 Compromise"), because ex-slave votes were changing the composition of g…

I'm not saying you're wrong but weren't the big immigration waves northern, and involving a bunch of Catholics who were also hated by the KKK types?
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