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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

#601

Post by simianwords »

happytoexplain wrote: post #331
eldaisfish wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these conversations are always incredibly frustrating. On one extreme are people who believe that white people are inherently better than black people because of some genetic inheritance. This is obvious nonsense. On the other extreme are the people like the one you are arguing with who claim that race does not exist because all humans are biologically identical. This is also nonsense as any black person in the US wi…

Is this thread just one big semantic misunderstanding, then? I think of ethnicity and race as casual synonyms, and when they are distinguished, I think of ethnicity as cultural ("Hispanic") and race as biological (genetically Spanish), both of which are very fuzzy. But it sounds like you're using the term "ethnicity" biologically, the way I would use the term "race", which I'm not used to.

It’s not semantic misunderstanding. It’s one group trying to signal moral upper hand by either playing semantic games or by being ignorant. It’s mostly stemming from signalling moral upper hand. The group seems to think you can beat racism by claiming race itself is not real.

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

#602

Post by nikanj »

anthonj wrote: post #31

I think there is also a chicken-egg problem in almost every country that doesn't use English as official language: 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 --> to live there you need a job --> back to start Different counties have different tolerances…

The same problem also exists in countries that use English as their first language. If you don't speak passable english, you will have a hard time integrating or finding an engineering job.

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

#603

Post by throwaway2037 »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #536
throwaway2037 wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Whenever I bring up Japanese culture, I am guaranteed to get a response like this. It is like a doctor's hammer to the knee: The leg always kicks. It is as low effort as someone saying that there are still blatantly racist people who live in the US "Bible Belt" and think all black people are inferior to white people. It adds so little to the conversation.

Ask anyone who has spent time in Japan, there has been a dramatic fall in blatant racism in the last 10-20 years. Yes, there are still rare instances, but the bad old days (before 2000) are gone. There is now a consistent, tiny, visible minority of non-East Asians that live and work in all major Japanese cities. And their children go to local schools. They are mostly working in low skill jobs like restaurants, construction, retail shops, farms, or factories. To be clear, many of those businesses require highly skilled people to run them, but the immigrant labour is doing low skill jobs. Also, there is a tiny fraction of those immigrant workers whom have trained very hard and are no longer low skill, like a bus driver or elderly care nurse.

Korea and Taiwan also have large numbers of immigrants doing low skill work.

My guess is that probably Taiwan is the most exposed to non-East Asian immigrants because they have a large population of foreign domestic helpers (clean/cook/child+elder care), so that is someone foreign in and around your house all day. I don't think Japan nor Korea has that system.

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

#604

Post by voidhorse »

akudha wrote: post #125

All this discussion makes me wonder - is there any country an immigrant can move to, and better their lives as well as the locals' life/economy? Assuming the immigrant makes every effort to integrate (learning the language, respecting local people/customs etc). It seems the world is turning hostile to immigration in general - or maybe it is just the impression I get from the media? I don't know for sure.

> It seems the world is turning hostile to immigration in general - or maybe it is just the impression I get from the media? I don't know for sure.

I view it as growing pains. We inhabit a highly interdependent and interconnected world now, the economy is extremely global. Nation states as the primary governance model simply don't make sense anymore, and the world needs to adjust and find a new political organizing principle. The modern concept of nation state is itself a historical concept, it really arose approx. 18th cen. has worked ok for a while and now we need some new governance concept that is a better fit for our highly interconnected and global world.

What we are seeing now are reactions against what in my view is the inevitable decline of nation based organization and the formation of something else. The "old system" is acting out in an attempt to save itself, in a refusal to evolve. People don't like change. The writing is on the wall though. The degree to which every nation is now completely entangled with every other makes nations themselves as an operational concept inefficient and untenable.

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

#605

Post by itake »

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.

The US has a huge population of Spanish only speakers and they find success.

I live in Vietnam for over three years, and while I continue to practice the language, I literally cannot pronounce the tones for about a third of the letters, but I still have a very happy and comfortable life here

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

#606

Post by itake »

kombine wrote: post #192
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…

My rule is that if you want to settle in the country, you ought to learn the local language and it doesn't really matter how much money you make in my opinion. I got to B2 and passed the test, but ultimately left Germany years ago. I don't intend to go back but I also don't regret learning the language.

What do you say to people that literally can’t?

I still can’t pronounce about a third of the Vietnamese sounds. I’ve had three private in person tutors, no luck.

Should I just like pack up my bags and leave?

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

#607

Post by moezd »

mstaoru wrote: post #580

I can add my anecdote to the language barrier points. At work we speak English, everybody speak English all the time, all docs are in English, all meetings are in English. There's an occasional German email every now and then but people will switch. When we go to a "team building" retreat, all the same teammates that happily chatted with us expats in English just switch to German 100%, full stop. You can come and sta…

This. And don't forget the occasional refinement meetings during which you think you're making a group decision but your manager and the other senior (both German, speaking German, having spoken in private without your awareness) already decided on many things, even though they acknowledge that you're the more experienced person in the room. So you're treated as a rubber stamp and three months in when you have an objection because clearly you're walking into a sunken cost, will be shown ADRs (in Denglish) basically where everything's already decided in their favour.

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

#608

Post by vidarh »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #425
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.

> Not in most of Western and Central Europe. Everyone speaks great English. For sure not in France and Spain (outside of tourist areas).

I agree not everyone, but it has changed dramatically in at least France as well in the last 30 years. First time I went to France, most people would not switch to English even in the middle of Paris, often even if they knew English unless they saw no other way out.

More recently, with much better French, I've had people impatiently switching to English the moment I was struggled to find the right word.

There certainly is a shift, though, when you get outside the tourist areas.

E.g. in Nice, you can pinpoint it almost by street. Cross under the railway in the city centre and move into Liberation, for example, and you will immediately find some staff that are unable or unwilling to speak English, and many who at least won't switch unless you ask. But it's also not surprising given how abrupt the number of tourists fall off...

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

#610

Post by vidarh »

bloppe wrote: post #567
throwaway2037 wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You beat me to it! This is the classic HN reply. Even in Paris or Milan, as soon as you leave the central areas, most people will speak little English and are happy to allow you to practice your poor French/Italian with them!

I'm constantly amazed at how far I can get in Portugal or Italy speaking only Spanish. They're different languages but you can make it work well enough in pretty much every situation I've been in.

To butcher a old quote about English: Spanish is just badly pronounced Italian, after all ;)
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