The obvious question is - if you are a holder of one of the named prestigious awards, why on Earth would you want to move to the UK in the current situation?
I left the UK after the results of the Brexit referendum were published in 2016 and that was one of the best decisions of my life...
(Back to) Germany with a detour to Norway. But, as I mentioned in another comment, I'm working in academia, so things are probably a bit different compared to working in industry.
> there has been zero change to regular life as a result of leaving the EU
I should add that I'm a German citizen and didn't intend to apply for UK citizenship. From what I hear from my friends who like as expats in the UK, things have changed quite a bit.
>> why on Earth would you want to move to the UK in the current situation?
> substantially higher pay in London than the EU?
Not in the academic sector at least - and, compared to the cost of living in London (I worked in Cambridge, but life is not significantly less expensive there) I think salaries e.g. in Germany are competitive.
> there has been zero change to regular life as a result of leaving the EU
Maybe yours. My life has been affected as a result, and I'm a UK born citizen. I think you left out these aspects (some affect me directly):
- UK people with access to a home abroad (for example in Spain) can no longer use it as they used to, or work there any more. There are short time limits, so people who used to go to their second home for the whole winter (for example) aren't allowed to do so any more. And they can't work there legally any more when they go; this is a huge step down in lifestyle for some people.
- UK people lost the freedom to work in EU countries which they used to enjoy. This especially affects contractors who used to travel to different countries for work: that work has basically stopped. And people who occasionally worked in another country for a couple of years (as I did). Getting visas is still theoretically possible as with any country, but it is not reliable and has made the UK persons much less attractive to employ than their counterparts who don't need them.
- Mobile roaming charge caps are going away, but only for UK people, as we drop out of EU regulations.
- The Erasmus educational travel and cultural exchange opportunity is gone for young UK citizens. The program created to replace it (non-EU because of course) has some good points but it is not equivalent, and it's one-way unlike Erasmus, so we no longer enjoy the company of as many foreign students in the UK for cultural exchange as we used to.
- All the musicians, DJs, and other performers who used to rely on performing at venues across the EU suddenly can't do that work any more. The UK is a much smaller market, so their work has dried up, but even for those finding work in the UK it's obviously a huge, unwanted change to their life compared with the travelling they did all the time before.
- The families whose lifestyle relied on having an "au pair" help at home (and provide language lessons for the children) can no longer do that, in practice.
- People in care homes aren't doing well: They can't find the staff for care homes, because too many of those doing the work have left now, and the seasonal intake from EU countries don't want to come here any more.
- Fruit and veg farmers aren't doing well: The seasonal staff they depend on no longer come over from other countries to do the job, because UK conditions are now unattractive compared with elsewhere.
- Can't find enough staff for hospitals. Multiple reasons, EU staff not coming over now is one of them.
- Every small business which exports to the EU, which is virtually all small businesses which export because EU is our largest export destination, has found its customer base shrink. Not only are costs and bureaucratic obstacles now much higher, and time delays higher, these factors have made the UK suppliers competitively unattractive compared to other EU suppliers, so EU customers are switching away, a stronger effect than mere costs.
- Horizon R&D science and tech funding is cancelled, and UK has only a joke replacement planned, with neither the funding or the quality of collaboration possible any more. Many research group's work has had to stop as a result. Of course losing many academic colleagues due to them feeling no longer welcome or sometimes not being able to stay, also adversely affected those groups.
- Some of us used to be approached by EU clients for freelancing/consulting opportunities. That work has dried up because of the new barriers.
- Some UK parents are unhappy their children won't have the opportunities they themselves had, to go travelling in the culturally interesting and varied EU/EEA/other while living off casual work among the various cultures and meeting all sorts of people. It's become much harder to do that for a UK young person.
- It's generally more of an unwelcome-feeling place for immigrants, and UK children of imm...
when the first item in your list is "people with second homes in foreign countries", I think you're pretty much beyond "regular life" for the typical UK citizen
Well I don't even have a first home anywhere (can't afford to buy), nor do I have a place to visit. The first item is not relevant to me.
But in fact a lot of people in the UK used to regularly access some place in the cheaper EU countries which they stayed at as and when they felt like, because travel used to be so easy - and much cheaper then visiting other places in the UK. Not necessarily places owned by themselves.
I've known many poorer people do this from the UK in the past, you might be surprised. It's cheaper to stay at a resort in some parts of the EU than to rent a low quality flat in the UK, and much cheaper to stay on some patch of rural land.
Whatever order my list was presented in, each item necessarily affects only a minority. That's not a good reason to dismiss. The combination of minorities is no longer a minority. Many people in the UK are affected by one item or another. The GP rather implied that regular life for just about everyone was unaffected, but that's not what I see or experience.
Unfortunately it's common that people tend not to think of issues affecting a minority of other people who aren't revealing it in their personal circle, and often don't think of their existence, even though most people are themselves in some minority with issues or linked to someone who is.
I've been on-off in England over the years, and stuff like groceries have got both way more expensive, and are far inferior in quality, to what I remember. That's pretty much my observation across the board: things are worse, but cost more.
German politics is a mess and has been one since Kohl came to power in 1983 - including the few years of Schröder social democrats/green government in between the Kohl and Merkel years. Corruption in politics is common and nobody seems to care (from the CDU party donations scandals to all the shady deals around Covid masks).
But to me things in Germany still seem to be a bit more rational than all the things that are going on in UK politics since BoJo became prime minister... of course, it's far from ideal, but which country is close to ideal in these crazy times?
Unfortunately, academia doesn't pay well enough to buy my own little island in the Carribean (which would be submerged in a couple of years anyways)... :)
> But to me things in Germany still seem to be a bit more rational than all the things that are going on in UK politics since BoJo became prime minister...
Johnson's antics are a rounding error compared to the damage done to Europe this year by the German state's energy policies
What mess? I'm not German, but from living here, it feels like the German state is sort of working OK. A benchmark that I feel is pretty fair is COVID death numbers. Germany does OK. Countries like the UK completely fumbled the whole thing, so a bunch of people died.
There aren't really a lot of other grounds of direct comparison: certainly, the UK economy has been tanking, but there are confounders there, and the UK has a poor (and flat-lining) life-expectancy, but perhaps that's just a consequence of the COVID thing. In general though, I feel like the UK has just plummeted on all the stats, except perhaps, the number of union jacks per square meter, in the last decade or so.
Germany is in the EU, easy language to learn, decent cost of living, good roads, good connections to other countries, nice people (once you get over German frankness), also, Germany is in the EU.
Why do I mention that Germany is in the EU? It means that it's much easier to go there for EU citizens, it is trivial to trade with Germany, it is not hard to start a company there, it is trivial to rent a house there, it is easy to travel there.
No matter some "minor" issues with German energy politics, this makes Germany a pretty interesting location.
For me personally, the UK seems to be the best balance of salary/job opportunities/work-life balance/immigration policies/location. What are the alternatives?
I got one of these visas ("Exceptional Talent") in 2019, also via TechNation, before they were updated and renamed to "Global Talent". The main difference seems to be that now three letters of recommendation are required rather than two.
For the most part, my application relied on my co-authorship on academic publications, patents, conference speaking, and press coverage of my work.
A lot of people seem to DIY these things, but I hired an immigration law firm to guide me through the process. The most helpful thing about that was that they were able to make a lot of decisions for me with regards to what to submit.
The "not reliant on an employer" part was extremely important to me - letting anyone have the kind of leverage over me that sponsoring a visa provides was not acceptable.
One thing that really surprised me was that my lack of a post-secondary degree was a complete non-issue.
19 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 59.9 ms ] threadI left the UK after the results of the Brexit referendum were published in 2016 and that was one of the best decisions of my life...
there has been zero change to regular life as a result of leaving the EU
if you hadn't been paying attention to the news you would have noticed exactly nothing
> why on Earth would you want to move to the UK in the current situation?
substantially higher pay in London than the EU?
I should add that I'm a German citizen and didn't intend to apply for UK citizenship. From what I hear from my friends who like as expats in the UK, things have changed quite a bit.
>> why on Earth would you want to move to the UK in the current situation? > substantially higher pay in London than the EU?
Not in the academic sector at least - and, compared to the cost of living in London (I worked in Cambridge, but life is not significantly less expensive there) I think salaries e.g. in Germany are competitive.
I've noticed that buying things online from mainland Europe has gotten significantly more annoying and expensive.
There have also been a lot of issues for UK citizens with significant family ties in the EU.
Maybe yours. My life has been affected as a result, and I'm a UK born citizen. I think you left out these aspects (some affect me directly):
- UK people with access to a home abroad (for example in Spain) can no longer use it as they used to, or work there any more. There are short time limits, so people who used to go to their second home for the whole winter (for example) aren't allowed to do so any more. And they can't work there legally any more when they go; this is a huge step down in lifestyle for some people.
- UK people lost the freedom to work in EU countries which they used to enjoy. This especially affects contractors who used to travel to different countries for work: that work has basically stopped. And people who occasionally worked in another country for a couple of years (as I did). Getting visas is still theoretically possible as with any country, but it is not reliable and has made the UK persons much less attractive to employ than their counterparts who don't need them.
- Mobile roaming charge caps are going away, but only for UK people, as we drop out of EU regulations.
- The Erasmus educational travel and cultural exchange opportunity is gone for young UK citizens. The program created to replace it (non-EU because of course) has some good points but it is not equivalent, and it's one-way unlike Erasmus, so we no longer enjoy the company of as many foreign students in the UK for cultural exchange as we used to.
- All the musicians, DJs, and other performers who used to rely on performing at venues across the EU suddenly can't do that work any more. The UK is a much smaller market, so their work has dried up, but even for those finding work in the UK it's obviously a huge, unwanted change to their life compared with the travelling they did all the time before.
- The families whose lifestyle relied on having an "au pair" help at home (and provide language lessons for the children) can no longer do that, in practice.
- People in care homes aren't doing well: They can't find the staff for care homes, because too many of those doing the work have left now, and the seasonal intake from EU countries don't want to come here any more.
- Fruit and veg farmers aren't doing well: The seasonal staff they depend on no longer come over from other countries to do the job, because UK conditions are now unattractive compared with elsewhere.
- Can't find enough staff for hospitals. Multiple reasons, EU staff not coming over now is one of them.
- Every small business which exports to the EU, which is virtually all small businesses which export because EU is our largest export destination, has found its customer base shrink. Not only are costs and bureaucratic obstacles now much higher, and time delays higher, these factors have made the UK suppliers competitively unattractive compared to other EU suppliers, so EU customers are switching away, a stronger effect than mere costs.
- Horizon R&D science and tech funding is cancelled, and UK has only a joke replacement planned, with neither the funding or the quality of collaboration possible any more. Many research group's work has had to stop as a result. Of course losing many academic colleagues due to them feeling no longer welcome or sometimes not being able to stay, also adversely affected those groups.
- Some of us used to be approached by EU clients for freelancing/consulting opportunities. That work has dried up because of the new barriers.
- Some UK parents are unhappy their children won't have the opportunities they themselves had, to go travelling in the culturally interesting and varied EU/EEA/other while living off casual work among the various cultures and meeting all sorts of people. It's become much harder to do that for a UK young person.
- It's generally more of an unwelcome-feeling place for immigrants, and UK children of imm...
(didn't read the rest)
But in fact a lot of people in the UK used to regularly access some place in the cheaper EU countries which they stayed at as and when they felt like, because travel used to be so easy - and much cheaper then visiting other places in the UK. Not necessarily places owned by themselves.
I've known many poorer people do this from the UK in the past, you might be surprised. It's cheaper to stay at a resort in some parts of the EU than to rent a low quality flat in the UK, and much cheaper to stay on some patch of rural land.
Whatever order my list was presented in, each item necessarily affects only a minority. That's not a good reason to dismiss. The combination of minorities is no longer a minority. Many people in the UK are affected by one item or another. The GP rather implied that regular life for just about everyone was unaffected, but that's not what I see or experience.
Unfortunately it's common that people tend not to think of issues affecting a minority of other people who aren't revealing it in their personal circle, and often don't think of their existence, even though most people are themselves in some minority with issues or linked to someone who is.
Why?
German politics and government look like a total mess to the outsiders in 2022.
Also being an immigrant in the UK vs Germany - I will choose the UK any day.
But to me things in Germany still seem to be a bit more rational than all the things that are going on in UK politics since BoJo became prime minister... of course, it's far from ideal, but which country is close to ideal in these crazy times?
Unfortunately, academia doesn't pay well enough to buy my own little island in the Carribean (which would be submerged in a couple of years anyways)... :)
Johnson's antics are a rounding error compared to the damage done to Europe this year by the German state's energy policies
There aren't really a lot of other grounds of direct comparison: certainly, the UK economy has been tanking, but there are confounders there, and the UK has a poor (and flat-lining) life-expectancy, but perhaps that's just a consequence of the COVID thing. In general though, I feel like the UK has just plummeted on all the stats, except perhaps, the number of union jacks per square meter, in the last decade or so.
Granted, Germans are more racist.
Why do I mention that Germany is in the EU? It means that it's much easier to go there for EU citizens, it is trivial to trade with Germany, it is not hard to start a company there, it is trivial to rent a house there, it is easy to travel there.
No matter some "minor" issues with German energy politics, this makes Germany a pretty interesting location.
For the most part, my application relied on my co-authorship on academic publications, patents, conference speaking, and press coverage of my work.
A lot of people seem to DIY these things, but I hired an immigration law firm to guide me through the process. The most helpful thing about that was that they were able to make a lot of decisions for me with regards to what to submit.
The "not reliant on an employer" part was extremely important to me - letting anyone have the kind of leverage over me that sponsoring a visa provides was not acceptable.
One thing that really surprised me was that my lack of a post-secondary degree was a complete non-issue.