I'd move my family to Germany in a heartbeat for the right opportunity. Anybody want to employ a German-speaking American tech worker (remotely or in person?). I studied in Muenster years ago and have always wanted to return, but the timing personally and in the world economy has never worked out.
I've actually interviewed with German companies, and one of the tricky bits is compensation. They only way things would make something like sense financially is if I keep my US house and rent it out at about twice my mortgage expense.
I know what you are saying, but personally I've kinda reached a point where I would trade compensation for quality of life. I'm not convinced the quality of life in the US overall (despite there theoretically being more money to be made) is the better tradeoff. I think in terms of health care, the social safety net, transportation, etc, IE: the physical and social infrastructure.
100% agree and if I was a little ahead in the money game instead of rather behind (for reasons I can't blame on living in the US) I'd accept a 40% salary cut to live where I lived as a kid in Germany - 45m outside of a city, with rock-solid bus + train access and a thriving Jugendverein.
> Perhaps she could move to Frankfurt am Main, one of the world's most important financial centers? No, James said. Germany is out of the question. To find a job, you need to learn the German language, which is difficult. "Aside from that, Germany is also rather strict with issuing visas. And I have heard that the Germans are quite harsh toward people with brown skin, and to immigrants in general."
I really don't know what Europe is going to do over the next century. These countries are homogenous in a way that's difficult for Americans to comprehend. Forget "white" versus "brown"--Germany is 86% ethnic German. It's one specific tribe of white people with a flag. It's been almost half a century since Germany began a family reunification program for Turkish immigrants, and the Turkish population still hasn't assimilated, much less reached parity with native Germans. (Meanwhile, in the same amount of time, multiple refugee groups, such as Cubans and Vietnamese, have achieved economic parity with whites in America.)
I love Germany and Germans. My wife is a fluent German speaker and lived there. We have had several German au pairs who are now family friends. I have family in Frankfurt who immigrated there from Bangladesh, and they seem to be doing okay. But personally I would never immigrate there.
"America" is in the unique position of having no culture -- barring "make money" -- to assimilate to. This obviously leads to much greater ease of assimilation for immigrants; you don't even need to speak English. If you can achieve an upper middle class income, you have assimilated and are thus dubbed "American."
In Europe, it's much different. There's no "short cut" to being accepted in your host society; and I very much doubt anyone really assimilates into a European culture if they're not born within. There's a depth to it that is impossible to grasp unless you've been submerged in it for the entirety of your life.
You will never be a German. Should you decide to change your mind, and make the decision to move to and have children there -- then perhaps they will end up being German; but that path is closed to the individual you.
Accepting people is a long process when your standards are high; and short when low. Letting people come and go as they please does not make for a very stable society, filled with the types of persons that are beneficial to the whole.
> "America" is in the unique position of having no culture -- barring "make money" -- to assimilate to
Which part of America are you from? America where I live absolutely has culture. Where I live this means things like sacred harp, country dances (contra, waltzes, English country, buck, etc.), bluegrass fiddle music, southern cooking (okra, smoked corn on the cob, etc.). Hollywood would have you believe we have no culture but we actually do.
Not just Germany. Jews across Europe, for example in Poland, had lived harmoniously with their neighbors for hundreds of years until their neighbors turned on them. When times get difficult, there’s really no telling what can happen. As I was telling my dad the other day, it’s nice as Bangladeshis that we have an ethnostate we can always return to.
> As I was telling my dad the other day, it’s nice as Bangladeshis that we have an ethnostate we can always return to.
Does this extend to others too? Is it maybe best to make Germany an Ethnostate so when they are thrown out of some other country they have some place to return to?
I guess most of the 12-14 million people went to West Germany.
"after WWII, the Allies carried out the largest forced population transfer -- nowadays referred to as "ethnic cleansing" -- in human history. Between 12 and 14 million civilians"
I have a hard time believing homogeneity is the most important factor. Cities are expensive in Europe and rural life isn't exactly popular among expats. Now take your pick between Europe, struggling to keep native talent over finances, using tax breaks for expats to win them over and causing bad blood among its citizens, their own country, or some other rich first world country.
The most common complaint in Europe is that we are emulating the US at the cost of the middle class and below.
Only 73% of all people living in Germany have no modern migration background. Beyond that the German nation is relatively young concept (which has proven to be problematic) and there is no homogenic population within the country. Many people rather identify with their region (which is supported by the federal structure). But it is true that we have problems Integrating migrants.
Maybe CIA is using a looser, American notion of ethnicity, where just because born in America immediately makes you ethnic American. European people, for the most part, do not see it this way (even if their governments do).
Good point. The Aussiedler represent some big numbers, are foreign born, but can loosely be considered German.
I've known a lot and while not entirely representative, the criteria were loose: only adoptive father of German ancestry, last person really German and to speak German was mummy's oma, etc. Of course when you're being beat up by the locals in some ex soviet republic because you're not really one of them either, well, you do what you have to do.
What surprises me are the numbers of Spanish, Italians, Poles, Hungarians. Anecdotally I would have expected bigger numbers. Germany has emptied such countries of their qualified workers in recent years.
> Forget "white" versus "brown"--Germany is 86% ethnic German.
This number is not entirely correct (it's more like 74% as of 2019, depending on the definition), and it's certainly way more off for larger cities or urban areas in general. You mentioned Frankfurt. Frankfurt am Main e.g. had 54.6% migrants as of 2020.
That number is not really accurate though because ethnic Germans from their diaspora that ended up back in Germany post-WW2/USSR collapse are considered to have migrant background.
Wonder if the relative lack of a Colonial past plays a role in the German experience today. The Brits, French, Spanish, Portuguese all had a long-term personal all-class interaction with the rest of the world. The rest of the world might not have been all that pleased, but intermarriage, educational opportunities, economic investment made “the Other” (or at least some Others) acceptable and even desirable. Granted it took 100-200 years to have that happen…and the Europeans were basically living a Peace Corps experience (sometimes War Corps but still) collocated with the Natives in their Countries. That does something to a person, and thus to a society. Germans, not so much.
Open to immigrants because a/ its economy is an electromagnet that needs foreign talent and b/ its post war doctrine makes it imagine itself as America but with better beer. Foolish but true.
Closed to immigrants because it is the clearest ethnostate in western Europe (I don't make this up, my political science professors taught that) and its culture is borderline neurotic.
In general, it's the last place where I imagine locals running after brown people with pitchforks because most Germans aren't apes. They are however quite particular and have other ways of making the piece that sticks out, feel unwelcome. Immigrants from Germany's closest neighbours have trouble integrating there. French, Scandinavians, Slavs, even the Dutch.
The article mentions both a banker and a electrician...
What is qualified ?
Bankers/Academics go to the UK and make twice the money.
For a electrician, Germany is very attractive.
However, don't try to setup your own firm because politics seems to actively work against entrepreneurship.
Their business administration literally is like a guild system from the dark ages.
> Bankers/Academics go to the UK and make twice the money
Academics does not make more money in UK than in Germany, in fact for junior positions (PhD/Postdoc) they make less. Full professors seems to make more, but I rumors say than new professors in UK are making significantly less than their older (boomer and older) counterparts.
With academics I mean people with a phd working in the private sector, not professors ...
But you are right about Germany taking proper care of public servants. My German gf makes almost double the amount of money compared to her Dutch counterparts over here.
Germany is fantastic if you are white American or first world Westerner wanting to live in a place with good public transportation, good healthcare , good work practices and less hustle culture and good beer .
For others especially brown folks I think the experience is a little more complex. You will never feel completely integrated or accepted even though it will never be all our hostility.It is becoming more multicultural but I suspect there is starting to be a backlash against Angela Merkel’s open immigration policies and I fear Germany may flip in their next elections.I have friends who are 2nd generation Turkish or Greek who still don’t fit in and want to move to the US at the first chance .
The closest example I can find is living in Portland, Oregon. Great culture , good beer , sort of a socialist culture with good walkability and public transportation. But very homogenous and that fantastic living experience vastly changes with your ethnic and racial background . The intent is good and everything is good until it isn’t .
On the similarity of Germany to Oregon....30 years ago, I heard there was a quite large community of German retirees around Portland, who chose there because of the similarity to home.
I grew up in Oregon and when I visited Germany I was rather disappointed at how different it wasn't. Same food, same work culture, same scenery and weather. I felt that I might as well have stayed home for all the novelty of the experience.
I worked once with a Turkish guy who immigrated to the US. He's a great guy, smart, organized and well spoken. He started his own business in the US a few years after our joint work.
He confided in me once that as a college student in Turkey he had a gig job in Germany over a summer. He said he was treated in such a way that he would never go back.
A friend of mine is a CS professor at a top university. He was born in Germany to Turkish foreign workers and could never get German citizenship despite being born and growing up in Germany . Was so disgusted that he came to the US for Phd and found a job and US citizenship and never went back to Germany again .
I help people migrate to Germany. Germany is attractive. People would be happy to live there, and Germany would gladly earn taxes from them.
However the immigration system sends the opposite message. It's overloaded and unresponsive. This adds considerable stress to people moving here since they can't start working until they get their residence permit.
There's also the difficulty of making friends here. People often move here for economic reasons, and don't give culture its due consideration. If you're used to a tightly connected, informal society, the switch to a contract-based one where you don't know your neighbours is really difficult.
Still, once you're through most of that, Germany is a really attractive place. The legal protections the average citizen enjoys are fantastic, and the country is a good foundation in which a family can grow roots.
So many horror stories. As a counter point I'd like to say as a brown person my stay in Germany was nothing but pleasant. Everyone was super friendly and tried their best to talk to me in English. I wish I learned some German. I lived there for about a year.
Germany is hostile to entrepreneurs, class mobility and is backward when it comes to how their taxation, pension and healthcare systems are structured.
Basically anyone who is not a typical cookie cutter employee will find it difficult in Germany.
Additionally employee salaries for tech jobs are quite low when compared to North America or Australia.
There are many reasons to migrate to Germany, though, if you can put up with these annoyances.
Germanys migration policies, as criticised as they are, are still easier than most other western nations
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 28.6 ms ] threadStart here! We'd be happy to have you
I really don't know what Europe is going to do over the next century. These countries are homogenous in a way that's difficult for Americans to comprehend. Forget "white" versus "brown"--Germany is 86% ethnic German. It's one specific tribe of white people with a flag. It's been almost half a century since Germany began a family reunification program for Turkish immigrants, and the Turkish population still hasn't assimilated, much less reached parity with native Germans. (Meanwhile, in the same amount of time, multiple refugee groups, such as Cubans and Vietnamese, have achieved economic parity with whites in America.)
I love Germany and Germans. My wife is a fluent German speaker and lived there. We have had several German au pairs who are now family friends. I have family in Frankfurt who immigrated there from Bangladesh, and they seem to be doing okay. But personally I would never immigrate there.
In Europe, it's much different. There's no "short cut" to being accepted in your host society; and I very much doubt anyone really assimilates into a European culture if they're not born within. There's a depth to it that is impossible to grasp unless you've been submerged in it for the entirety of your life.
You will never be a German. Should you decide to change your mind, and make the decision to move to and have children there -- then perhaps they will end up being German; but that path is closed to the individual you.
Accepting people is a long process when your standards are high; and short when low. Letting people come and go as they please does not make for a very stable society, filled with the types of persons that are beneficial to the whole.
Which part of America are you from? America where I live absolutely has culture. Where I live this means things like sacred harp, country dances (contra, waltzes, English country, buck, etc.), bluegrass fiddle music, southern cooking (okra, smoked corn on the cob, etc.). Hollywood would have you believe we have no culture but we actually do.
The South is a cultural wasteland. The only thing it has going for it are its manners.
Does this extend to others too? Is it maybe best to make Germany an Ethnostate so when they are thrown out of some other country they have some place to return to?
Of course, that expulsion was mostly because Germany invaded Eastern Europe in the first place.
"after WWII, the Allies carried out the largest forced population transfer -- nowadays referred to as "ethnic cleansing" -- in human history. Between 12 and 14 million civilians"
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/expulsion-germans-forced-migr...
The most common complaint in Europe is that we are emulating the US at the cost of the middle class and below.
As another commenter said, more migrant population does not lead automatically to better integration.
This number is not entirely correct (it's more like 74% as of 2019, depending on the definition), and it's certainly way more off for larger cities or urban areas in general. You mentioned Frankfurt. Frankfurt am Main e.g. had 54.6% migrants as of 2020.
Some statistics cite Germany as the country with the second most immigrants world-wide, right after the US. (for details, see e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...)
The only constant in nature is change.
Such a nice slap in the face of the erstwhile "Kinder statt Inder" campaign of CDU.
https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2022/04...
Open to immigrants because a/ its economy is an electromagnet that needs foreign talent and b/ its post war doctrine makes it imagine itself as America but with better beer. Foolish but true.
Closed to immigrants because it is the clearest ethnostate in western Europe (I don't make this up, my political science professors taught that) and its culture is borderline neurotic.
In general, it's the last place where I imagine locals running after brown people with pitchforks because most Germans aren't apes. They are however quite particular and have other ways of making the piece that sticks out, feel unwelcome. Immigrants from Germany's closest neighbours have trouble integrating there. French, Scandinavians, Slavs, even the Dutch.
Just be aware.
Academics does not make more money in UK than in Germany, in fact for junior positions (PhD/Postdoc) they make less. Full professors seems to make more, but I rumors say than new professors in UK are making significantly less than their older (boomer and older) counterparts.
https://fastepo.com/comparison-of-salary-of-postdoc-in-europ... https://academicpositions.com/career-advice/professor-salari...
I grew up in Oregon and when I visited Germany I was rather disappointed at how different it wasn't. Same food, same work culture, same scenery and weather. I felt that I might as well have stayed home for all the novelty of the experience.
He confided in me once that as a college student in Turkey he had a gig job in Germany over a summer. He said he was treated in such a way that he would never go back.
However the immigration system sends the opposite message. It's overloaded and unresponsive. This adds considerable stress to people moving here since they can't start working until they get their residence permit.
There's also the difficulty of making friends here. People often move here for economic reasons, and don't give culture its due consideration. If you're used to a tightly connected, informal society, the switch to a contract-based one where you don't know your neighbours is really difficult.
Still, once you're through most of that, Germany is a really attractive place. The legal protections the average citizen enjoys are fantastic, and the country is a good foundation in which a family can grow roots.
Basically anyone who is not a typical cookie cutter employee will find it difficult in Germany.
Additionally employee salaries for tech jobs are quite low when compared to North America or Australia.
There are many reasons to migrate to Germany, though, if you can put up with these annoyances. Germanys migration policies, as criticised as they are, are still easier than most other western nations