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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

#531

Post by moomoo11 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #231
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…

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.

nah. i speak english and have zero interest in learning another language.

english is the best language for business and everything else.

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

#532

Post by D_Alex »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #516
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…

First, €200k gross annually is huge in Germany. You are high income! Do not read that as a (negative) judgement, but a lot of people on HN don't understand how much lower salaries are in central Europe compared to the US. Your situation makes me think of Japan. Starting about 10 years ago, they introduced a special "fast path" to permanent residence for high income people. I am surprised that it has not triggered mor…

It means have fun, be adventurous, bend the rules a little bit.

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

#533

Post by JumpCrisscross »

blks wrote: post #423
jitix wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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…

> Why do you want people with foreign backgrounds to “assimilate”?

It’s a healthy, human process that forces weighing what works and what doesn’t across cultures and, hopefully, walking away with something better than either individually. The idea that immigrants shouldn’t have to assimilate is arrogance redressed.

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

#534

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pessimizer wrote: post #461
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #440

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. I am very certain this is not true. The "just learn the language" people are typically rather people who are very talented in learning new languages (and often indeed to this as adults as a personal hobby - often even with languages from very different families), and thus are often…

I've always heard it said that "polyglot" starts with the fourth language. The opinion is that to have a at-home (family) language, an outdoor (regional) language and a market (capital) language is too common to be considered truly exceptional. Once you pick up the fourth, you're getting into hobby territory. Kató Lomb (maybe the first official "simultaneous translator" wrote about gaining, losing, and maintaining la…

[dead]

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

#535

Post by thayne »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #497
14u2c wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in most of Western and Central Europe. Everyone speaks great English. It actually can be a problem because most people switch to English as soon as they realize your are not a native speaker, which can make learning harder.

This was my experience. I lived for almost four years in Berlin, and was trying to learn German (I got to A2, which isn't much). But actually getting experience/immersion in German is difficult in Berlin - everyone under the age of 50 speaks good English and switched to that as soon as my first badly-conjugated sentence left my mouth. I worked for two German companies while I was there, and the entire tech team in bo…

Even when I vacationed in Bayern (Bavaria), a lot of people switched to English when they realized that my German wasn't that good. Which was frustrating, because I wanted to practice speaking with native speakers.

Although, there were also people who only spoke German.

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

#536

Post by throw-the-towel »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #525
marcus_holmes wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but some don't; I lived in Cambodia for a while, and there were/are "ex-pats" living there with Khmer wives and children, who speak perfect Khmer, work in Cambodian companies, have been there for 20+ years, and still refer to themselves as "ex-pats". But I think this is might be cultural about the host country. Cambodia is blatantly racist, "Cambodia is for the Khmer people" is a thing there. Any no…

> Cambodia is blatantly racist In my experience, there is nothing special about Cambodia in this regard. You could substitute any poorly developed nation, and you would have similar results. If Cambodia had a GDP per capita similar to Japan/Korea/Taiwan, they would "suddenly" become less racist because they would be much more concerned with economics rather than ethnicity/religion.

Who ever said Japan is not xenophobic in this way?

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

#537

Post by tharkun__ »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #440
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…

> None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German. I am very certain this is not true. The "just learn the language" people are typically rather people who are very talented in learning new languages (and often indeed to this as adults as a personal hobby - often even with languages from very different families), and thus are often…

This reminds me of Xiaomanyc.

When I first found the channel I was like "wow that dude speaks so many languages so well!".

He does not. I can't really judge for most languages of course, but for the ones I can, he really isn't good at all :shrug:

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

#538

Post by lotusw0w »

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…

Are you just using LLM to process your text or are you a LLM itself?

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

#539

Post by woodpanel »

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…

Honestly, that even highly educated people are complaining about a host country attaching bare minimums to handing out its citizenry (I.e. the right to vote, welfare) is all the more reason to attach them in the first place.

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

#540

Post by yostrovs »

hunterpayne wrote: post #506
torton wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From Wikipedia: "Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to late 15th centuries"

The Huguenots really became a thing at the end of 15th century. They were named after Besançon Hugues (1487 – 1532).

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