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 reading before judging). We have lived here for more than six years, and you know what? I still haven’t obtained either permanent residence or German citizenship simply because I don’t have a B1 certificate. So first things first: regardless of how much you contribute to the country, German is a must today if you want to obtain residency and stabilize your life here.
I was honestly devastated when the officer told me that I was not eligible for permanent residence. That was also the moment when I started to feel that maybe I don’t actually need permanent residence in this country after all.
Story 2: In an international working environment, German may not matter much at the IC level. But I’ve seen countless situations where Germans exchange a glance with each other, and suddenly the final decision is not what was agreed upon in the meeting. Over time, I’ve learned that there are many unwritten rules behind the scenes, and when you speak their language, you start to understand them.
One bright thing is that maybe we’re still lucky. We bought our first home without fully understanding the laws, the government system, or the tax rules. We simply worked hard and played the game in a way that we believed would be sustainable in the long run. Whatever happens, we know there are still many other places we could go.
Our children speak German natively, but they are also willing to go the extra mile to speak our mother tongue at home.
If you ask me for one piece of advice for immigrants and emigrants in Germany, I’d say: life is short—play naked!
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 briefly explain your opinions or plans
That seems like a reasonable standard of native language proficiency to ask of people who want to make the county with said language their permanent home.
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 both companies did everything in English. This is normal there. In one of them, the (German) CEO gave a townhall speech to the entire company (~1000 employees) in English.
So yes, it's very understandable for the German government to say "you must be at least B1 to live here" but that doesn't recognise the fact that it is perfectly possible to actually live and work in Berlin with no German at all.
It's different in other German cities, apparently. If we'd moved to Munich or Cologne I would have had more pressure to learn German, and also more exposure to it and more immersion which would have helped learn it.
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.
This is the right way. Speak the language you want. Even if they reply to you in English, and they know you can speak English, continue in German. They will understand. They switch to English because they want to be helpful. If you continue in German they understand you prefer it that way.
Another thing is that once you start talking with a person (who you meet on a regular basis) in one language, it is hard to switch to another language at a later date. So if you start with English, it is hard to go back to German. But if you start with German, even if it is less fluent for you, it will come natural that with that person you speak in German.
Did you ask if you can move to a different city and work remotely? Even if only 1-2 years, it might really help to boost your German. Moving to Dresden, Hanover, or Hamburg would help. (German HNers can probably recommend a bunch of small cities 1-2 hours away by train/car from Berlin that will use much more German language!) You could come to the office once a week.
Another tip: Always start the conversation in German. If the person switches to English, ask them politely to speak German, and explain that you are studying German. My parents did similar when they moved to the Netherlands 50 years ago. The local shopkeepers were eager to practice English with my parents, but my parents were also eager to practice their Dutch.
That's really good advice, but I found it hard to put into practice because my German was so bad. And German isn't a language you can just hammer out a badly-formed sentence in; word position is less important than conjugation, so if you get the conjugation wrong it makes no sense at all to the listener. I did try this a few times, but everyone lost patience with the painful butchering of their language when they realised their English was a lot better than my German.
I would have moved city, but a: COVID b: my wife also had a job there c: I really loved Berlin and really enjoyed living there
I like the effort! It is more that half of the battle when learning a new language as an adult. What really helped me: Create your own custom Anki deck. Literally, start from zero. Each time you try-and-fail (or think of something that you don't know how to say), write a note to yourself in English/broken German with the sentence/idea that failed. At home, use a translate tool (LLM/Google/whatever) to build the correct German sentence. Next, add it to your Anki deck. Personally, I only add full sentences, never just vocab, because it adds more natural context. Only add real stuff that you will use. On the first day, you have an Anki deck with one card. If you are really motivated, try to add one card per day, but just 1-2 cards per week will quickly improve the deck. Since the deck is so damn small, you can blow through it in five minutes while riding the S-Bahn/U-Bahn trains. And, every single sentence is useful to you. Bonus: Ask a native German speaker about some of your Anki deck sentences. They will probably love to talk to you about the German language because you will be showing your commitment.
>everyone under the age of 50 speaks good English and switched to that as soon as my first badly-conjugated sentence left my mouth.
OK maybe things have changed in recent years. I was always annoyed when coming to visit family living in Berlin for a couple days or driving in to a conference, and inevitably there would come a time when I would have to ask someone for help and I would have to ask in English because I do not speak German (although due to youthful immersion I start to remember it again after a couple of weeks) and they would inevitably answer in German.
I could somewhat understand when we stopped in a park asking where the convention center was of just a couple people by the side of the road, but asking a ticket agent at a train station what route I should take to get to a particular station and getting replies in German seemed especially rude.
At any rate despite some good experiences with Germans regarding helpfulness I have had a few too many negative experiences.
in most other countries renowned for being efficient it would not be considered efficient to answer in a language the questioner evidently does not speak.
This isn't really true. I've lived in both Munich and Hamburg now, and you 100% need some amount of german to navigate life, many people do not in fact have conversational-level english. I often say that the common paths tend to be easy to navigate in english (e.g. booking a train ticket, getting a phone line), but the adjacent flows (e.g. filing a refund request for your unfulfilled seat reservation, cancelling your phone contract) often require talking to someone in german. A doctor may be marked as speaking english, but that doesn't mean that their reception speaks english.
Berlin may be a different story within Germany, and then there's the entirety of e.g. Netherlands, but I know that the situation in France isn't better than here.
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That said, B1 is a difficult level within german. Being able to converse fluently enough in not-quite-correct german -which is enough for getting through day to day life- is not necessarily enough to pass the test, and you really need to crunch through memorizing the grammatical gender of thousands of words, alongside getting really good at applying them in various grammatical forms (e.g. declensions vary for the same word based on how it's used).
There is some sort of weird phenomenon that I cant quite put to words, but the core is:
While there is a big chunk of the native german population speaking great english there is a subset of (often) service workers who... dont. Had multiple furniture movers come through my house the last few weeks, the only way to communicate with them was broken german, since they had no english skills and my (croatian? serbian?) skills were zero.
At one point I ended up in the weirdest situation of my live were i translated the german instructions from the phone rep into english to the shift lead of the moving company so he could then give them in the native language to the movers.
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...
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.
I recall reading an autobiography by US Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. She used to represent Fendi, the Italian fashion brand, when there were suing for copyright infringement (counterfeit goods). She would speak Spanish and the Fendi senior execs would speak Italian and they understood each other well enough. That was a real a-ha moment for me!
For my german work visa in 2022, I had to either give proof of sufficient german knowledge, or a letter from my employer confirming the job would be in english.
"People who don't speak english or native language" does not represent the people moving for work to germany. Most family reunion routes at least require A1 german as well (which is super easy to pass, but is scary enough for some anyways).
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
People who work low skills jobs do this all the time. In rich countries, many construction sites and factories have people working for little more than minimum wage in low skill jobs that barely speak the local language. They make it. If they have a family, they live in a native language bubble at home, but their kids are immersed in the local language at school.
A lot of societies are set up to accommodate that society's dumbest members, and tourists, for most everyday tasks.
Outside of the workplace and my hobbies, I can't remember the last time someone asked me to read more than a few words, write anything at all, or do any maths more complicated than "the 12:20 train is 10 minutes late"
Personally I would say it's not respectful to a society to move there and not make a decent effort to learn the language - but I have no doubt a person could survive with only basic skills, if their workplace worked in their native language and they had an ethnic enclave as a support network.
I have B1 German, finally managing an official certification at the start of this year despite living here since the end of summer of 2018.
As societies require accommodations for idiots, I found it so easy to get by with the German I did know that I kept incorrectly assuming I was at B1 level for years and years.
B1 requires being able to read headlines and a few paragraphs of a typical newspapers, to briefly plan events, that kind of thing; not just the ingredients and cooking instructions on the back of food packaging and know how much money to hand over to the cashier.
Given what I still can't do, I can totally understand why so many job openings I see at the moment require B2 or C1:
My grammar is still terrible, and my grasp of accents is still heavily biased towards a handful of podcasts and youtube channels, and being surprised by the conversation topic can still easily confuse me, as I found out on Sunday when someone's classic motorbike broke down outside my house and they asked to borrow a 19mm spanner.
> I would have daily obstacles doing basic life things.
That heavily depends on the city and country. I don't know where OP is, but for example in Berlin it's kinda rare to meet people not speaking any English, basically mostly old people/retirees don't.
There are gyms where people speak English, cinemas with English subtitles, all kinds of doctors speak English, even a lot of bureaucracy like driving exams etc. can be taken in English. Speak to a random person in English, odds are very high they respond back in English.
I'm not saying this to mean it's 100% easy of course. Default language is ofc German, and not knowing it locks you out sometimes. Just saying that it's possible to live in a city like Berlin and not speak the language, and most days you barely think about it. I'd say it's an obstacle once-twice a month rather than daily.
Berlin is a completely different world than the rest of Germany. Never make the mistake of generalizing anything that you observed in Berlin to Germany outside of Berlin.
Great point! I would say the same about the "alpha" economic city in any rich country. Think about Paris, Milan, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid, Lisbon, etc.: The same rule would apply.
> Berlin isn’t the alpha economic city in Germany though. There isn’t really one, but it’s more like Frankfurt.
You are right. I will add one thing: Berlin is the alpha economic city in Germany for the new economy. Frankfurt is for finance, and Munich is for manufacturing, but those are the old economy -- barely changing.
Being bombed to hell and then split in half and starved of resources until 1989 really hindered Berlin's economic development. It's not the powerhouse one might expect given its cultural output and being a nation's Capitol.
I’ve known some devs who were recent immigrants and did not speak much English. It wasn’t FAANG and not West coast so I don’t think they were making $200k but they got by and often paired with other devs who spoke their language and much better English.
Overall they were nice people and their English improved over time for the duration I knew them. It was a bit of a struggle to communicate sometimes but I didn’t mind it. Any time I felt frustrated about it I just thought about how they must be feeling, and it didn’t seem so bad anymore.
Honestly, this question is really revealing, because it's the lower-paid SWE jobs that are probably not Bay Area or NYC, which are precisely the places where lower* English fluency is most likely to be tolerated or even the majority.
I was the only person on my 5-person team with 'Business English' at my first BA startup, so I got the job of writing all external-routing communications.
When I worked remote for a Midwest company years later, it was very clear that anything but perfect English was disqualifying in the eyes of a lot of (Midwest white male) management there.
It seems weird to me that someone would even want to settle in a foreign country without a good understanding of the language and cultural basics. I've done some traveling in non-English speaking countries and it was a huge hurdle not being completely fluent in the local language. It just seems like common sense to me to dive in all the way if you are moving somewhere long term.
I don't really see what a good salary has to do with it either. When it's hard for me to communicate with a neighbor or coworker I don't care whether they have a high or low salary.
Exactly. As a german i can say we don‘t care about your salary, we only really care about your language and culture. If you move to a foreign country, learn their language, it‘s literally the only way to integrate into a culture.
Germans frown upon rich, tax-paying immigrants that don‘t try to learn german way more than they frown upon B1 speaking ones that don‘t have a job. It‘s about culture, not money. It‘s not the US lol
Doesn’t really match my experience. If you are non white and you go and look for an apartment in any big german city (because you shouldn’t move a small town if you are non white) then you have 2 options: you have money and can afford a slightly higher rent than average or you don’t have extra money and have to compete with the locals. You have very little chance to find something decent if you compete against the locals.
There's also supposed to be a distinction about intent to leave in a relatively short predetermined time period.
I consider myself an expat in New Zealand, because I'm on a ~2 year visa that cannot be extended, and I have no particular intent to try to transfer to a different visa.
If I'd been here the same amount of time, in the same job, but on a straight to residency visa I intended to convert to PR/Citizenship, I would be an immigrant.
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 non-Khmer immigrant will never be considered Cambodian, always a "barang"(foreigner) no matter how long they live there. This isn't true of NZ, who would happily consider you a Kiwi if you got the citizenship and lived there for a while, no matter your race or origin country.
An expat is someone living outside (ex) of their homeland (patria, technically fatherland rather than homeland if we are pedantic). All immigrants and non-immigrants [1] are expats, by definition, no matter the connotation some people have decided to give the word.
[1] Non-immigrant is the administrative word used by the United States to designate people that are supposed to leave the country rather than settle in the US, usually on training/work/investor visas.
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.
> I don't think it's wealth that's the differentiator. I think it's partly colonialism and partly culture.
I think it is political/social issue. What really drives the fall in racism is politicians/community leaders/school officials talking about it. They observe it, then speak out against it. When and why different countries choose to do is (a) somewhat random and (b) somewhat correlated to their wealth and (c) strongly correlated to the strength (and existance) of their democracy.
Why do almost all countries that get rich also get more democratic and more liberal on social issues? I don't know, but I see it nearly universally in many different countries.
> Colonialism has a lot to answer for in SE Asia. I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.
One interesting point that many people are not aware of: Thailand is the only country in SE Asia that was never a colony (including "protectorate"). Is Thailand really so different than Cambodia in this regard? I'm not the right person to answer, but it is interesting to think about.
> I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.
Racism can also take different forms. India has the world's oldest and most deeply embedded racism, but westerners rarely even recognise it for what it is.
It's human nature to be "racist" since people generally prefer to be with others similar to themselves. That can be multi-dimensional, ranging from values, cultures, tastes, but race is the most obvious and one of the major principal components of human experience.
Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are effectively ethnostates and they've not had the cultural enrichment yet that America or Europe has faced. Notably, there is rising anti-migrant extremism in the West, because the Great Replacement Theory is becoming increasingly obviously not just a theory.
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.
> I've done some traveling in non-English speaking countries and it was a huge hurdle not being completely fluent in the local language. It just seems like common sense to me to dive in all the way if you are moving somewhere long term.
I know lots of English speaking people who have settled in non-English speaking countries (or at least countries in which most people do not speak English as a first language) with little knowledge of the main language(s).
Travelling somewhere is not the same as living. It’s pretty common among people without immigration experience to have a certain idealistic idea about it, that does not work in reality.
This person lives in a very international city where they speak English at work. For some people it’s not as easy to get to B1-B2 levels while working full time, having children and using English to communicate daily without issues.
In many EU countries requirement for a permanent resident status is just 4-6 years of residency, plus sometimes certain income/language level. And there is always EU permanent residence permit that just requires you to reside for 5 years.
Yeah, B1 is not even nearly fluent, on my B1 exam Spanish I had to roleplay with the examinator going to a store to return something after buying the wrong item. This is like, bare minimum of functioning.
I cannot imagine living in a country for over a year and not taking the effort to lesrn the language.
If you speak English and live in an area where most others speak English, then it's not hard to get by without learning the local language. People who do that often find it difficult to make friends outside of expat circles who do the same, but it's perfectly possible to live like that.
Not just that, but for example, working as a software engineer in Germany for an English speaking company means your salary is gonna be p90 among the population.
Compare that to someone who doesn’t work in IT and needs to master the language to get a decent job. All in all, it’s better to speak English in Germany
Agreed, and (especially if you are a nerd who is good at tests) the description of the levels always seemed to me to imply more ability than what you really need to pass the test. OP, just study for the test and pass it. You can, and you will be proud of yourself and happier in your new home country.
Lyft and Uber, currently in my state, are onboarding drivers who are not required to speak any English at all. Their textual communications can occur through app translation, and the driver is not expected to understand anything a rider should say, because the driver should be following their app, not the rider's instructions.
The joke is on them, though, because I happen to speak impeccable Spanish with 40 years' experience, and I've successfully intervened when the app inevitably misdirects the driver.
I also happily greet drivers in Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, or at least try to understand what country/dictatorship/failed state that they've emigrated/fled from, to be driving in the United States.
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.
I like this hot take. I'm onboard with most of it. It is interesting that you mentioned Israel's special handling of immigrants and their languages. I lived in New York City for a short while, and I was very surprised by the accomodation of foreign languages by civil servants. Almost any city office I went to had a section with a few people that could speak a bunch of languages to support residents. Plus, many written notices were available in a wide range of languages.
Follow-up reply: I asked ChatGPT about those six languages in Israel.
> The six primary languages supported by Israel's government for immigrants (Olim) are Hebrew, English, Russian, Spanish, French, and Amharic. The Ministry of Aliyah and Integration uses these languages for government services, informational portals, and the official Olim App to help newcomers manage their entitlements.
Very cool! I felt stupid that I never heard of Amharic as a language, and I needed to look it up on Wiki.
Hebrew doesn’t count in my mind, but there’s also Portuguese (more for the sake of Latin America than Portugal itself). Arabic is missing from the list likely because almost every prospective immigrant with such a background has already moved (or died); Yiddish and Ladino because the government likes to pretend they don’t exist anymore.
I wasn’t talking about that though—plenty of countries are friendly to speakers of foreign languages to varying degrees (especially if that color is black^W^W^W language is English). I was more talking about written guides on the education system, the heathcare system, the tax system[1], walkthroughs on what documents you need to get and in which order[2] and so on. If you’ve ever spent a few months in a foreign country without already-settled friends or family, you know what I’m talking about, otherwise you probably won’t get it from my explanation. Israel is I believe unique in writing this stuff down pretty thoroughly; elsewhere things like guides for international students may help (even if you aren’t one), but be ready for gaps and holes.
[1] Believe me, as an A2 to B1 speaker you are not reading laws yourself, much as this might seem natural to our RTFM instincts; and as a relatively cash-strapped immigrant, you’re not hiring a lawyer either, assuming you can even figure out how to find one.
[2] Let’s say you need a mobile phone number to get a bank account, and a bank account to get a phone number. Not a problem in Israel but in the EU that’s a pretty common catch-22 to have to work around.
It is other way round. If you are unfamiliar with CERF, you assume a lot more skill from the description then is actually required.
> B1 is something like five uninterrupted years[1] of consistent lessons.
If you go to lessons twice a week and dont do much else, yes. Or, if you go duolingo 15 min a day way. Otherwise no, it does not require 5 years. And what you need the most are not so much lessons (tho you need some for grammar) as watching and reading of basic media - and german has tons of those.
> If you go to lessons twice a week and dont do much else, yes.
Right, this is with a schedule of 2–3 hr/wk of classes (and, as I’ve said, probably 1× to 2× that in homework). Remember this is for someone who likely has to work long hours already; but also, there’s a reason why everything over that is usually described as an intensive course: diminishing returns hit hard at 4–5 hr/wk (in decreasing retention as well as not having the energy to do much homework).
> Or, if you go duolingo 15 min a day way.
I’m not convinced Duolingo can get one to B1 at all but I guess it must work for somebody?..
> And what you need the most are not so much lessons (tho you need some for grammar)
As well as to have a place where somebody will correct you whenever you go wrong and also to ask about that elusive word stuff that’s too long for the normal dictionary but too flexible to count as an idiom.
> as watching and reading of basic media - and german has tons of those.
Again, no experience with German in particular, and this also depends on your tolerance for frustration and your native language, but I’d say tail end of B1 is when you can start reading unadapted books etc. Once you do, it’ll speed up your journey through the bog of intermediate, so to say, quite a bit, but through A2 and lower B1 you do still need graded readers and other kinds of specially prepared comprehensible input.
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.
> The requirements [to possess sufficient knowledge of the German language] shall be waived if the foreigner is unable to fulfill them due to a physical, mental, or psychological illness or disability, or due to age.
That is kinda the point of the article, countries create these arbitrary rules to prevent people that create value in their society from permanently participating.
Whats slightly ironic is you don't have to speak Vietnamese, even raised in a Vietnamese home, or have Vietnamese parents to have Vietnamese citizenship. Many racially Vietnamese students attending international school only know English, because English is spoken exclusively at home and their school.
Or if you're Hmong, you might not know Vietnamese, but can hold a Vietnamese passport.
Same situation in the USA where many Americans couldn't pass our citizenship test.
Washington State is grappling with this issue now: we have very wealthy people that created a lot of wealth for themselves while residing in the state, and now are taking it to Florida, due to the Washingtonians voting to increase taxes on wealthy people.
I've lived in foreign places for less than 6 months and still bothered to pick up enough language to at least converse on a basic A1 level. Especially in certain regions where people don't speak english well this is almost a requirement for any daily life that is not work related. I can't imagine living somewhere for six whole years without picking up the language at all. Maybe if you actually hate the place and are sure you will leave again after that stint, but the above commenter doesn't seem to fall into this category either.
To be fair, B1 and especially B2 are not trivial requirements. A1 you will "pick up" like you say, but it's easy to fall into a trap of remaining around A2 without sustained effortful studying. (If you try to do it through just interacting with natives with no structure it's common to fossilize mistakes which take much longer to fix, or even just become permanent)
Personally I've gotten to B2 (not Germany) which is enough for most purposes, but it would have been very possible to get stuck in a rut.
It's very common for couples that move here for one to have a job, and the other to spend some months unemployed looking for a job. It's generally observed that those that have the job learn the job much slower and get stuck, and the ones that spend time at home and looking have much better outcomes longer term
B1 to B2 is a big step. Bigger than A1-2 to B1. B1 is basically just understanding people who speak slowly and clearly and being able to participate in everyday life situations. So a very gradual progression. B2 is already being able to do professional work in that language. This is what will take considerable time and active study. But it is also not a requirement for naturalisation in most countries. And many natural born citizens also never reach C1-2 level of proficiency either. So if you're B2, you may as well be counted as fully integrated.
FWIW, for Blue Card holders, after 27 months the language requirement drops to A1 and even if you don't have a Blue Card after five years you could also get an EU permanent residence without language requirement: https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa-residence/living-...
Though I would recommend setting yourself a target of some small (≈10) number of new words to learn every day and practice them during your commute or so. B1 is achievable in under a year with consistent practice. The official word list has 2400 entries: https://www.goethe.de/pro/relaunch/prf/de/Goethe-Zertifikat_...
This. With this much income you should qualify for a Blue Card. The 27 months start when you are eligible, not when you are actually holding the Blue Card. A friend of mine (w/ Blue Card) got permanent citizenship in Germany after the 3 years and was not asked/tested for any language skills. As long as you speak a little German to follow the process it is pretty easy.
As a german living in spain, i feel your pain. While I do speak spanish around B1/B2 level, it took a lot of time and effort - probably the biggest effort in learning something after uni. People are often "you should speak the language if you life there" - yes, agreed. BUT: Hell, if you are a professional entrepreneur, you are already not working 40h week but way more. If in your day job you speak english anyway because it is international, you hardly practice it. Especially in the EU we are taught that we can move freely between nation states - but reality of learning a language takes years. I learned english at age 10, so am practicing for over 30 years now and still learning and anybody could spot that I am not a native speaker. Countries that rely on foreign labour and advertise agressively on skilled immigration (such as Germany does) should not have those strict language requirements. Especially since german itself is a very difficult language.
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 you can get there especially if you live in the country and force yourself to speak the language, but easy it is not.
It's not easy. I learned Japanese at 28 and am now proficient. But I didn't want to spend my whole life asking other people to translate things for me, being permanently ostracised from conversations, or causing problems for others by forcing them to speak English. It's basic decency imo.
It's less of a basic decency if you're in a country where almost everyone is fluent in English, you get by your life just fine in English, speaking the local language doesn't open new doors, as you're not going to be "native level" speaker no matter how much you study (and many would prefer to speak English with you if you have less than native level of German), learning the local language would take many years of continuous time and effort that could be spent elsewhere, and in the end you're not even sure how many more years you want to stay before leaving.
Considering so many people here are feeling extremely strongly about their right to not learn a language and the absurd amount of apathy I honestly see zero goodwill here.
Like, no one is arguing based on personal failure, saying they failed to learn the language. They're saying they are busy raising a family as an adult in a foreign country and learning the locals language is a waste of time.
I'm in such severe disbelief. Like, how can any rational and sane person even think that?
How can you decide to go to a foreign country and then decide that actually all of that country is bad including the language and say you're above the locals and their stupid language and then expect to be considered a welcome guest?
Obviously the host wants the unwanted guests to leave.
I think it can be more useful to think in terms of hours of lessons rather than time spent learning. My partner is learning french right now at a private school and they have occasional classes (1h30 once a week), middle ground (2h twice a week) or intensive classes (4h five times a week). The program is always 70h, but you can either do it in a month, a semester or a year.
Having learned czech, I only had 1h30 a week and it took me 5 years to get to B1. I agree that the steps to A2 are much simpler because it focuses more on simple phrases and vocabulary, so you also learn it outside of the classes by reading descriptions, signs, menus. For B1 and up, you definitely need to practice by having deeper discussions with people or reading articles.
You are completely right, and hours spent (in class) is how say US Foreign Service measures how quickly you get somewhat competent in a given language. There’s a lot of hoopla about just immersing yourself to the language and so on, but for most people achieving B1 means going to classes several hours every week for quite awhile.
> 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 not easy to convince that not everybody is as talented in language learning as they are.
Believe me, I know this kind of people:
I just want to quote some polyglot person who very casually said: "Being fluent in five languages is not something to be proud of - this is rather minimum standard." (she had the opinion that rather keeping fluent in 10 [!] languages is something that takes steady learning efforts to retain the obtained level in all of the 10 languages).
I do typos and grammar mistakes in four languages (only two of them fluently) and it’s pretty easy to learn basic vocabulary, read a bit of a comic book and order coffee with a thick accent. A lot of “polyglots” who can do basic phrases in 11 languages and make videos about it on YouTube. There’s people who genuinely speak plenty of languages fluently, but they are quite humble about it. Reaching B1 after completing A2 is 200-300h of study, preferably in a class. That’s a lot for a working adult with a family.
However, there is plenty of people who think that they speak a language because they can order a coffee in some language close to theirs and have never lived in a foreign country for any extended period of time, ie. don’t know what they are talking about, and arguing from the position of complete ignorance say “just learn the language”.
The idea that there’s one country with one language is very recent actually, part of the nationalistic idealism of 19th Century. Most of the history, as it is still today, any nation is a mishmash of cultures, languages, dialects of various kinds and origins, there of course always being some official one (used to be Latin, then French, now it’s TikTok-memes). The fact that pur systems cannot facilitate that multitude is a shame and I believe those systems that can will succeed.
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 languages entertainingly and in detail.
It's honestly absurd to make the case that you don't have time to learn the language of a country you're spending 100% of your day in.
What are you doing all day? The people who are struggling to learn a language tend to be the people who have zero pressure to learn a language.
The most time consuming part of language learning is immersion, meaning that you just listen to or speak the language, without going out of your way to do any language lessons at all.
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 struggle with. It's telling that children from non-English countries naturally become completely fluent in English by just playing video games and watching YouTube videos, while adults will struggle for years to reach conversational fluency in their second language.
this is massively overrated. Given the same amount of exposure, adults win every single time. Just look at the other people in this thread decrying the idea that it could possibly take 5 years to learn a language. How fluent would you say a 5 year old is? Consider their mastery of legal terms, cooking, vocabulary, geography, political terms, things from all aspects of life? Their grasp of grammar and spelling?
You might suggest "oh but surely a child knows far more about animals and plants and countries and the like, child things" but I find almost all adults pick these up extremely easily, at least the same ones a child might be expected to know. (lion, tiger, blue whale, dinosaur: Yes. Osprey, Bullfinch, Plaice, Tapir perhaps not.)
However, adults must put a lot of very draining, effortful study consistently to have a chance. I'd put learning a language to fluency on the same level of difficulty as getting a degree. Something one really must do if living in another country, but not something to be trivialised, or sneered at someone for not having found time to complete yet.
Imo this is so overrated, the biggest difference is that children have 100% exposure and almost all language they come across is tailored exactly to the right level, just for them.
Why can’t you grow 10cm of height each year? Toddlers do it very easily, and they don’t even go to the gym. Maybe you just don’t work out enough? Average 40 year-old man should be about 4 metres tall, otherwise he just gave up.
It just requires turning your rational mind off, immersing yourself in the play/sport and trusting things will work out, something which more rational/analytic people tend to struggle with.
"So first things first: regardless of how much you contribute to the country, German is a must today if you want to obtain residency and stabilize your life here."
You should look the other way around. The country is contributing to YOU. You are profitting from Germany.
Most countries will grant PR without requiring a language proficiency. Assuming your immigration status is regular and you are a contributing member of society.
Citizenship? Absolutely, you must speak the language. Residency? Not nearly as common.
> Most countries will grant PR without requiring a language proficiency
Hmm, is that really the case? Or perhaps you're confusing work visas with permanent residency? Most attractive destinations for immigrants usually require a language test for PR. Ignoring the United States and its dysfunctional immigration system, a language test is required or practically required almost anywhere there is a points-based system to obtain PR. The UK requires a language exam to be granted leave to remain. Canadian federal programs for PR require a language test result to even be considered for the Express Entry program. In Europe, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Italy also require it, and I'm sure there are more I'm not aware of.
Also, B1 is honestly a very basic level of proficiency with the language. It is really hard to be a productive member of society and interact with locals if you cannot speak at a B1 level.
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 government. In 1910, only 60% of white Americans were native born (as opposed to about 98.5% of black Americans.) This period is also referred to as the "nadir of American race relations."
Spain is historically trying to attract old foreign retirees with money who will spend their retirement savings/pensions there, but probably doesn't want that same group voting unless they really have assimilated. So that set of rules makes sense for their immigration model but is also probably not a place to look to for setting policy if your immigrants are working-age adults (that are coming there to work, not retire early).
Germany treats permanent residency much more like a "citizenship lite", e.g., if you are a permanent resident[1] any newborn children will automatically be German citizens (even though Germany has no jus soli).
________________________
Footnotes:
[1]: As long as at least one parent is a permanent resident and has in Germany for at least 5 years (the same duration that's usually required to become a permanent resident anyway)
> Most countries will grant PR without requiring a language
This statement is clearly false, off the top of my head only USA and Spain come to mind. There are some countries like Japan where there it isn't a hard requirement, but you'd need a very good reason to justify why
Correct. Seems like various people are confusing the two. The issue of granting PR, is often about an additional tax and labor source for the government of that country.
For example: 1) Low birth rates and high ageing population percentage, this can be offset with immigration. Then PR status can be granted, as a kind of carrot and better tax revenue generation "filter". 2) Labor market manipulation and facilitating international business, where immigration is used to fill holes in various industries.
Why a country would want to grant PR, usually has different purposes from citizenship. There is overlap, but they aren't the same.
Permanent residency is a business deal between two entities: an individual and a state. It has nothing to do with linguistics. There are many Germans permanently living in Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, who never bothered to even learn how to say Hello, not to mention any certificate or exam...
I mean, when you have already proven that you are net positive for the state, and continue doing so, requiring you to pass some exams is not rational. PR != citizenship. Will I have a bit difficulty buying some groceries in a local market? Maybe, but that shouldn't bother the state.
Also, you can live permanently without PR. PR unlocks some additional perks, which again, have nothing to do with linguistics.
There are implications by linguistics.
If you learn a language you also passively obtain insight into cultural norms and expectations.
Moreover, Learning a language is much easier if you're friends with natives and converse with them on a semi-regular basis.
Being able to speak the language also means that there doesn't need to be a separate support structure for you, as you will be able to use the ones provided to everyone else.
I'd wager the sum of these things is something one may expect from a permanent resident (i.e.: cultural knowledge, some amount of integration, ability to function without specialized support structures). And it turns out, that language proficiency is a pretty good proxy for measuring that.
Just because you don't accept the rationale behind the requirement it does not mean that there is none.
The requirements are not there to verify that you can live somewhere permanently, but if you _may_ live there permanently. Money is not the only dimension your so called "net positive" may be measured in.
You can be a net positive one day, next day you lose your job and are not. On the other hand, permanent is supposed to be without end. An unemployed worker with no language skills in the local language quickly becomes a burden
Residency while employed is rational. If you want to stay longer, learn the language
One would say, unemployed with a good local language skills will be able to easier navigate bureaucracy and claim more benefits - more loss for the state :)
> FWIW: I personally politically support PRs being given the political right to be voted into office as well.
Why? I'd go the other way and only allow political office for natural citizens. After all why would you welcome someone into your country when their goal is to change it - then maybe they would fit better into another country that already works like they want.
Because if the will of the people is for person A to serve in office X, then the will of the people should be absolute. I'd even allow election of minors and other currently non-eligible persons.
The only requirement should be that you are politically member of the given area, which typically means you actually physically live in the city/state/country.
Note, in Switzerland, you can already be voted into office _against your will_. And then you MUST serve. And this has actually happened in recent past, in remote villages to be fair.
Are (native) citizens a net positive? Do you ask each one of them how they contribute culturally? What does "spiritually" and "emotionally" even mean in this context?
People should be afforded basic rights because they are people. People who live long term in a place, do the same (or different for that matter but analogous) work etc should have the same basic rights. In this context I interpret "net positive" as basically fulfilling jobs/roles in the society. This alone should (in the long term) afford basic rights, not cultural and other tests.
edit: Regardless that, cultural contribution does not really require a specific language. You can paint, you can play music from your own culture/home country etc. You can even write things in english anyway that many will understand.
First of all, _basic_ rights should be afforded to _all_ humans. That's not what the discussion here is. The discussion here are non-basic rights, like the right to enter a geographic area without restriction or the right to state welfare.
You saying "job/role" is where the argument falls apart, because job and role are not the same. Yes, I absolutely agree that people who fulfill roles in society should be afforded protection of that society.
There are roles in society that have nothing to do with your job: neighbor, volunteer, person you ask for direction on the street, parent, parent of your child's friend... Those are also the roles that typically have some form of emotional, spiritual and cultural work associated with them.
Refusing to fill those roles and filling only the role of "high-income immigrant" isn't necessarily a net positive to the society and should not on that fact alone be provided permanent residence.
I will say however, I think parents of children that attend public school in a country should have almost automatic PR. Not fully automatic, but 99.99% of such cases are net positive, much more than high-income immigrants.
Permanent residency is a deal (not necessarily business related) between two entities: an individual and a state. It has everything to do with whatever requirements that the two parties have, and if there is no agreement on them there is no deal. In this case the state cares about language proficiency and requires it for a deal, so if you are not proficient in German there is no deal.
Exactly! Though it often seems that people conveniently forget the reverse scenario. Them in other countries is fine and relax about requirements, others in their country, not so much.
One country is not in any way obligated or expected to have the same entry requirements as another. It is based on priorities of the state and those differ greatly between states.
I don't have any skin in the game here for Germany specifically, but I would point out that B1 is an incredibly low bar to clear. With concentrated effort, you can reach that level in under a year, I know because I've done it. Given you have kids and are otherwise preoccupied, maybe a few years. At six years in, it's purely a matter of whether you yourself actually want it or not.
Genuinely happy to hear you're successful here! But, why would you expect there to be no drawback to not knowing the local language when moving to a foreign country?
Definitely, I had a good awareness of the language barrier from the day I arrived.
To be fair, I have continued learning German—not because I want to pass the B1 examination and obtain permanent residence, but because I feel my children need to be protected and guided, and I want to teach them the same things they learn at school. Every moment I spend learning the language is a moment I invest out of love, so that I can be a better and more supportive parent.
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. From what I found (and as another commenter pointed out) the bar is not even that high.
Edit: For context I am not a right winger and am an immigrant myself. But I am seeing the social fabric of my host country (Canada) degrade because of immigrants' refusal to assimilate.
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 country as needed.
> 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.
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.
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.
Either you argue that the job requires you to stay in another country and the stay is always temporary and there you would not focus on any given language since you're going to leave before you reach any level of proficiency
or you want to stay in the country because you like it and therefore learn the language.
You cannot cherry pick the option where you have your cake and eat it too.
It is illogical to demand permanent residency for a temporary stay that is short enough to not bother learning the language.
If someone wants to be a permanent resident of a country and build their life there, they should have to plan to eventually become a citizen of that country.
To allow otherwise leads to its destruction, just people with no long term skin in the game extracting before moving on.
It is a huge conflict of interest among the population. Its like having a corporation where half the owners want a quick return and exist and half want to run it like a lifestyle company.
Extraction is a weird way to put it. Usually, immigrants, especially skilled workers, are overwhelmingly net contributors. That's part of why modern economies want them so badly.
It's actually the perfect opposite, a skilled worker who plans to leave is a burden on their home country as they presumably will use services there they never paid for. Hopefully, in developed nations this balances out more or less. In undeveloped nations there's not much of a system to take advantage of.
I live in a country I was not born in, I pay taxes as much as anyone else and pay into social security programs I'll likely never get to use. The state did not have to spend a penny to educate me. If I return to my home country without having worked there another day in my life, I'm probably quite the net loss to them.
The extraction phase of your life is overwhelmingly being a child or elderly.
All of the net benefits you're talking about require some form of assimilation and we're in a discussion about rejecting/refusing assimilation.
There is plenty of evidence that immigrant enclaves depress wages because these immigrants are trapped in their local community instead of being part of the broader national economy.
Everything you're talking about just proves the point of the person you're responding to.
The main difference is citizen rights like voting for government, flexibility over regaining residence when leaving the country for some time, and how potential kids get the citizenship (depends on country). But otherwise I do not see how there is conflict of interest, in most other respects in the places I know permanent residents have the same rights and imposed to the same rules as citizens (social benefits, health, pension etc). In the corporation case, it is like some having shares with voting rights and shares without. In some ways, (permanent) residence and citizenship are orthogonal, because you can have citizenship in a country, but not be a resident there because they live abroad, and then they do not have certain resident rights like public healthcare.
Getting citizenship is a different thing, and in some places much harder, easier to get denied if you have the wrong ethnicity etc. I think that when settling long term in a place, having equality wrt work, health, social rights as native citizens is important, and thus getting permanent residence in a country should not depend on irrelevant factors. The important thing is to not have people who live long term but their residence rights are tied to their current employer. In these situations, the system produces a workforce that is pressured to be much more compliant and accept stuff that citizens and permanent residents typically don't. This is the kind of difference that creates people with different interests within a country. Stuff like cultural assimilation and similar mentioned here in comments should be irrelevant imo for solving issues like this, and frankly, it presupposes already a certain dynamic and as if the local culture is on homogeneous thing, which is often not. A country don't accept economic migrants (at scale) as some kind of philanthropy, but to fulfill needs/jobs within the country. If they need people to work, they should expect those who stay long term to be given rights equivalent to citizens wrt work etc.
I'm pretty sure asking for social stability is considered racist. So how dare you. Anyone should be able to move anywhere, do anything they want, and if the locals complain. Well they are racist.
You can get B1 with a bit of spare time. With kids, I understand it's a different situation; however, it took me about 2 years to get there, learning in my spare spare time (which after a certain point was just listening to audio books before bed). The compounding effect works.
BUUUUT, even with B2, it's just not enough for avoiding "the look", as you put it. I think you need flawless C1 or something, idk. Don't care anymore lol.
Most b2 holders can’t even speak German. B1 is not that much better nowadays. You get tons of applications for a job where people struggle with the basics with these and as a small company with only DACH customers it’s most often not worth it
> You get tons of applications for a job where people struggle with the basics with these
Any specific examples?
I'm a bit surprised because I thought that the German certifications were quite standardized. So I would expect B1 certified people to be able to speak in everyday situations.
Not the person you replied to but they mentioned DACH + customers.
As someone from Bavaria... I have several stories of coworkers who speak and understand decent German but put them on a phone or a in a room with people who speak in a thick German dialect and they will understand 10%. Functionally useless.
There is a massive difference between complaining about someone being bad at a language and treating the act of telling someone to learn the language as some great offense.
One of those is an honest attempt, the other one is pure hostility.
For me it doesn't really matter how well you speak the language.
If you cannot be bothered with learning our language, and think that being rich somehow makes our country owe you its citizenship — then yeah, maybe Germany isn’t for you.
I am European, working in China for 12 years making multiples of the average salary, speak Chinese above B1 level and am not eligible for permanent residency yet.
First of all, if you want to become a resident somewhere you must learn the language. Not should.
Second, no country owes any foreign citizen residency there.
You're always going to be an outsider if you can't speak the language, no matter where you go in the world. B1 is a reasonable level, as it's the bare minimum for doing day-to-day tasks in the local language.
I honestly can't image planning to live in any country for the long term without learning the local language to at least this level.
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 more debate in Japanese society. I think the numbers are so small that most people (and politicians) don't really care. The goal was to attract high income people to work and live in Japan... and pay taxes! Germany could consider a similar programme. However, for normies, I am still strongly in favour of language requirements in any nation when applying for permanent residence.
Last:
> If you ask me for one piece of advice for immigrants and emigrants in Germany, I’d say: life is short—play naked!
Hey. I'm with you there. My German also kind of sucks, but I've had a very successful 15 years in Berlin. The best part is how easy it is to pick jobs from the neighboring countries, like France. You pay taxes here, you commute maybe once a month to Paris and enjoy the prices and quietness of Berlin. We are lucky with my partner, and bought finally our own apartment.
My partner, an American, is fluent with the language so it helps. My plan is to make a good amount of savings, take a year or so of sabbatical and finally learn the language. Until that, we go with bar Deutsch.
Thank you! I skimmed through your text, and for a moment I thought we were working at the same company with its HQ in Paris, haha.
Honestly, you brought up a valuable point that I didn’t cover in my original comment. Living in Germany has been one of the best ways to strengthen our relationship, especially when one of us couldn’t speak German and the other stepped in to help. Some people may see this as a fragile vulnerabilitye, but I see it as part of our growth.
For me it's only about getting into the local scene more now, to learn the language. I kind of started to finally understand the German inefficiency, the distributed nature of the country and their culture. Now when we bought our apartment, the need to be part of the culture is bigger than ever. And at the same time I'm so busy for the past 10 years already, there's more work than ever in my life.
Just need to say stop one day, take a year off and go to language school.
P.S. I don't think it's the same company: the other devs are either in Paris or in Scandinavia.
I know life as an immigrant, especially while having kids and professional careers can be tough.
That said, personally I'm thankful for Quebec having been the forcing function to learn French.
With no prior formation to reach "intermédiaire avancé" took me about 20 months of studying on the side with one lesson per week for most of that time; usually before or during work hours (partially was a group setting there).
I'm a German native speaker so I'm probably biased / ignorant about some major language hurdles but to me German must be the easier language to pick up for most as it's way more regular.
I think the trick is to make a deliberate choice / opening up to love language and people, speaking with as many native speakers as possible etc. It also really helped me to almost exclusively switch to consuming French news and most of other media.
I'm not a fan of dubbing in general but for learning, Hollywood movies in French have been mostly great same as with German translations. Maybe watch older movies, they used to put in an unreasonable amount of work into those especially.
Computer games I'm personally still playing mostly in French to this day and I know that German translations are usually done with a lot of heart as well.
Edit: do check out https://www.arte.tv/de/ if you haven't - one of our favourites for both French and German of course; probably one of, if not the best TV worldwide. Always especially palpable after having been on youtube for a while too long; just the opposite of engagement bait, wholesome and good journalism and more.
> suddenly the final decision is not what was agreed upon in the meeting.
Are you sure you're not reading too much into that? I've witnessed plenty of times (in the USA) that agreements of a meeting were later 'forgotten' (no doubt often indeed due to poor memory). To the point that it was best to insist on a written record of a meeting.
It's the same in the Netherlands (needing a minimum language level), I suspect it's 25+ years of right-leaning, anti-migration governments; as a compromise they said "foreigners can stay as long as they integrate into our society", and language is a big factor there. Or that is the claim anyway.
This doesn't apply to higher end jobs though, which are almost always international to begin with.
Could you also add your thoughts on whether you think a B1 level is a sensible requirement for permanent residence in any country?
Because that's what the post seems to boil down to, but you haven't opined on it (other than refusing to learn B1, which implies the answer somewhat).
B1 by the way is considered doable for a consistent parttime learner in 9 months, and 1-2 years for someone doing weekend studying. That's an average.
For a studious family with higher educational background making 200k a year (this is significantly above average in Germany), you've got both the IQ and the capital for tutoring to do better than average.
Seems like a sensible, useful, necessary and practical bar to set for permanent residence, to me.
My mate, learn German and be happy they don't ask for B2 or C1. If I move to China and want the nationality, it's absolutely normal that one expects me to speak Chinese.
As an Ausländer (who reached C1), I am surprised that you are not talking about the other actual and terrible problems the german society is facing: an aging population relying on immigrants to fill in the gaps, taxes everywhere without the advantages of a strong social system, a very expensive health system but with doctors almost prescribing you tea to fight cancer, crippling solitude inherent to the german culture which even spreads to immigrants -more than half of Berlin lives alone-, a housing market held by boomers and huge corporations (literally no houses below 200k€ in the whole country) which leaves you to rent your whole life to shelter your family, a pro-russia, pro-Afd east Germany vastly undevelopped and uneducated compared to the west. And also food, love, conversations. Germany often feels like the bad sides of northern Europe have been mixed with the bad sides of southern Europe.
And then the glass ceiling does not come at B1, but when you start to notice the difference in behaviour the Germans make between C1 and C2. If you want to pursue your whole career in this country, given how strong the german identity is, you will have to know every single subtlties of the language and culture if you are willing to compete for the next step in your career, for instance a management position.
Really, this country has been in a bad shape for at least five years now. Germany lived until now on its bounce after the reunification, the money poured by the Americans after the war and cheap russian gas. Now it feels like the bill other european countries always had to pay in the last decades has been finally handed to Germany.
An observation from the side, is that this person already speaks 2 languages, and very probably more. They aren't dumb, I do question their logic, but the capacity to speak more than one tongue is in this person, witness their writing in English, and stating they come from an ASEAN background. That means at least one non-english language, and for many ASEAN economies, more than one.
eg Chinese both Manderin and Cantonese, Indonesian and Chinese, some Chinese and Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese, these are combinations I have met at work here in Australia aside from "and english"
I've had lifts from Uber drivers who speak 4 tongues fluently.
You can also take a Bildungsurlaub (educational leave, 5 days a year or 10 days every two years) and take a German course. For a two week course with private tutoring it's like 1k, which at your income level is not much. A lot of bureaucracy in Germany becomes a lot easier once you get over the B1 hump.
B1 German is about 1 year of intensive studying from zero. With immersion and part-time commitment, I'd say ~3 years is a comfortable timeline to learn B1 German.
I am basing this off my personal experience of going from A1 -> A2 -> half-way through B1 (I dropped after I decided against studying in Germany, but my classmates continued the course). Given that German companies are known for excellent work-life balance, there should be enough spare time to learn German by the 5 year point.
All that being said, I imagine it's harder to learn a language when you have kids and family responsibilities.
You'd be surprised at the lengths some will go to avoid learning a new language.
I've met people who have lived over 20y in a country while working, having and raising kids there and still can't have a half decent basic conversation in the local language.
There is always an excuse: too much work, too little time, too tired or you name it, but the end result is that they are inconveniencing themselves.
Not saying it is OP's case, just some anecdotal obserevations.
The thing that makes this illogical to me is that once you reach basic fluency, you stop needing to study since you will now be automatically improving your language skills every time you hold a conversation, read a newspaper, watch a television program, etc. It's genuinely just the relatively small initial hurdle towards ~B1 that is a slog, but after that, you never have to actively study again if you don't want to.
You don't magically get language skills by living in the country. You still have to put in the time and effort.
The utmost basics, A1, you could learn very quickly and those will get you through basic interactions (buying groceries, greeting neighbors, etc.)
At work, doctors, apartment search etc. you can use English.
For contracts you can use translate, since B1 wouldn't get you far there anyway.
But to get to B1, you would have to make language learning your hobby for at least a year... and that is not for everyone. Especially given that there aren't interesting media to immerse yourself into in German, compared to other languages like Japanese or Korean.
The only thing that I find puzzling is that OP didn't learn it, when they plan to stay in the country and obtain permanent residency. I would understand not learning the language if they planned to move out in 1 year.
I think some people just get an irrational block about learning particular things. Like maybe you struggle with a music class in school and just identify as being incapable of learning an instrument, for example, even if they're a skilled learner otherwise. Can't speak for OP, obviously.
"regardless of how much you contribute to the country, German is a must today if you want to obtain residency and stabilize your life here."
What's the issue here? Is it me or is it absurd for someone to permanently move to a country and expect to integrate without knowing how how to speak the language?
I lived in Germany for seven years and by the end I was fluent. B1 is a very low bar to pass, I know because I've done it.
Sorry to say, but the rule is fair. If you want to be a permanent resident, put in a little bit of effort to integrate into the country that you would like to call home.
This. German really isn't that difficult for an English speaker. And if someone really wants to make a home and build a life in a foreign country, why would they expect that they don't need to learn the native language? That seems stunningly entitled to me.
Well I am an Indian who lived in US and worked for top companies for 10 years and left back to my home country as I did not want to be beholden to the Green card waiting time or take some unethical pathways (I see a lot of abuse of O1 now). I find coworkers from smaller and friendlier countries sail through and become Americans.
The point is that immigration can never really become a true meritocracy and even I recognised the privileges I had to reach to US in the first place. The country's ethos, ideas are grandfathered into the law alongwith numerous loopholes or sneaky ways. There is never a social compact where I did X , I deserve Y coming true. I suspect globally we are at the tail end of this type of immigration from Global South to Global North as well
I was under the impression that English speaking countries are by far the most desirable for immigrants.
Most people don't care that the current US, or UK governments are a mess, because grass isn't exactly greener back at home.
And there are quite a few more English speaking countries that have their own issues, but don't get so much negative press online. (Ireland and Canada have housing crisis, but sound fine otherwise. Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand surely have their own issues that I don't know about)
> (sorry for mentioning the TC, but there is a reason for it ....
sorry to nitpick on this, but the story did not expand on this despite the pronouncement that there is a reason. Maybe it was subtle, but then let it be subtle.
Having B1 seems like a really lenient condition to get citizenship. I got B2 after 6 months of Erasmus, and I have B1 in Russian even though I never even stepped in the country.
Have you even tried to learn German, and if so what is so hard that you can't even get B1, although you stayed long enough to have kids speaking natively the language?
It's a good thing you can't get permanent residency, let alone citizenship! without speaking the local language. There are few countries in the world that hand out citizenship as cheaply as Germany.
In fairness, speaking the language is a reasonable bare minimum to obtain permanent residence and certainly a must citizenship in any countries.
AFAiK, in most European countries obtaining permanent residence requires at least 5 years of continued residence in the country so it is also a bad look in term of effort to integrate if a person still can't speak the language (maybe not perfectly but at least "good enough") after all that time.
> Story 2: In an international working environment, German may not matter much at the IC level. But I’ve seen countless situations where Germans exchange a glance with each other, and suddenly the final decision is not what was agreed upon in the meeting. Over time, I’ve learned that there are many unwritten rules behind the scenes, and when you speak their language, you start to understand them.
I mean, how many CEOs of major German companies are non-German? The country does seem much more insular than the Anglosphere.
I live in Austria, and from my experience it's the higher management that is almost exclusively native Austrians. But the highest (C-level) and lowest (IC-level) staff is international.
CEO of Mercedes was born in Sweden to Swedish parents; has blue eyes. CEO of
Adidas has a Norwegian father and grew up in Norway; has pale skin,
reddish-blonde hair and blue eyes. CEO of Bayer was born and raised in the US.
Last name is "Anderson". Has pale skin and blue eyes. Two of them could pass as German (at least until they started talking): most Norwegians don't really look like Germans and the CEO of Adidas is no exception.
Now let's do the top 5 companies in the US (by market cap). CEO of NVidia was born in Taiwan to Chinese parents and immigrated to the United States as a child.
CEO of Google was born in India to Indian parents, came to the US after college.
ditto CEO of Microsoft. CEOs of Apple and Amazon are a white men who grew up in the US.
Yeah, my wife speaks German and can easily understand Swedish (and probably Norwegian). There’s not a big cultural and linguistic for a Norwegian to come into a German company. It’s like an Australian coming into an American company.
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.
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 German team wins, he is German. Lose, and he is the immigrant. He is ethnically Turkish, i.e. not ethnically German.
The same will apply to your kids as well.
I want to be clear, not every German person is a frothing racist, i would argue that the racists are a minority. It is, however, important to note that the reactions of the individual and the reactions of society can be different, sometimes polar opposites.
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. In that case, "European" spans everything from Irish and Greek, to French and Austrian. Less than a hundred years back, Irish people were not seen as white. Today, that idea is laughable. The fundamental difference between the US and Canada on one side and German or european society on the other is that the old world is built around exclusion, while the new world is built around inclusion.
This is one important reason why skilled immigrants leave europe, and is also why i left.
You’re right but I think the US/Canada are just exceptions. Essentially every other nation on earth (not just Europe) is what you describe Europe to be.
> A nation state, or nation-state, is a political entity in which the state (a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory) and the nation (a community based on a common identity) are congruent.
The traditional view taught in history books is as follows:
> Before the french revolution, states extended as far as their kings' military power allowed them to, and the king derived his claim to power from god.
> After the french revolution, states formed around the concept of a common shared ethnicity, language, and culture (nation), with the claim to power deriving from the people.
> This shared national identity was instrumental to the unification of many separate kingdoms into the German confederation.
EDIT: That view is not necessarily correct (see the comments below), but it is what most people will have learnt in school
YSK: This is a disputed view. Wether nation comes first, or the state, is something academic historians don’t agree on.
While it sort-of fits if you limit it to France, it breaks down even when you cross the border to Germany.
Three different countries speak German as their official language, and Germany itself wasn’t really a nation-state until Nazism. It was a multi-ethnic empire before that, and a bunch of random kingdoms and ducheys before that. And after 1945, it was not a nation-state either, since it was somewhat famously 2 states.
> I want to be clear, not every German person is a frothing racist, i would argue that...
Of course not every German has fallen into the abyss of such insanity, but sorry to inform you (for those that have never been), way too many have. There are also levels to it as well, where various people may not be so open about it, but very much embrace and practice it. This then is reflected in housing, jobs, or even nightclubs.
> The way this manifests is different in each country, but the fundamental reason is the same...
While in agreement with this argument, the levels of hostility can be very different, depending on the European country. Views and treatment of other people in regards to color or xenophobia in the Netherlands, Germany, or the Czech Republic can be wildly different.
The US and Canada should not be viewed as better, but how things manifest themselves are different, which can result in different experiences and outcomes. Maybe better or maybe even worse.
> 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.
I've been here for a decade, and sadly I feel the issue is upward mobility for skilled workers. Unless you're working for an intl company, with ex-pats in positions of leadership, your chances of "getting ahead" are going to be limited, especially when you're competing against natives.
The reason is sadly, the culture is very reserved and cautious, so as an "outsider" it's going to take A LONG time before you can be trusted in a senior/leadership position (no matter how good your German language skills are).
The good part, from my experience the people here are great, friendly, and yeh it takes time to get to know them but it pays off in the long run. But professionally... it's complicated.
So while people come here, work and stay for a few years, they're going to leave when they realise that despite their best efforts, they need to do 10x more than someone who is simply "a native" to the country (or... you'll stay in a position and just rot until you move on).
And this sadly affects applications for jobs (a photo is pretty much required which would be considered illegal in other countries like the UK), apply for apartments (which country is your last name from... automatic rejection), just to mention a few key cases that really affect immigration.
i've lived+worked in 4 different countries on 3 continents and i think you always have to expect to adjust to the culture, it's not going to change for you, nor should it. But if you want to progress professionally (and Germany NEEDS tech-imports, the tech culture here is a disaster, it's embarrassing) you're going to have to promote these people into high positions, not just view them as "cheaper labour".
> hey need to do 10x more than someone who is simply "a native" to the country (or... you'll stay in a position and just rot until you move on).
Staying in a position for a long part of one's life is a very common situation for many Germans, too. The whole concept of that you must have a career seems to be deeply ingrained in US mentality.
So, I have a strong feeling that a lot of immigrants who feel they hit a glass ceiling are rather used to the USA understanding how a career works, and think because they are not promoted, they are discriminated against, when in reality it's rather that a promotion to a completely new role/title is much more uncommon in Germany than in the USA.
I think this is the type of answer that is frustrating to non-Germans. Hey don't look at that person who got promoted ahead of you despite you being more qualified. Look here instead at all these other people who didn't get promoted.
> The whole concept of that you must have a career seems to be deeply ingrained in US mentality.
But it makes more sense. If you're a normal human being, the longer you work with something the better you become at it. That's just natural. And then you should have your compensation increased to reflect that, or move to other ventures where your skills have better use.
One thing I will point out is that some of this partially due to coming to Germany with a US passport. Specifically, banks in Europe are increasingly weary of allowing US passport holders to open full account due to the international reach of the IRS and the additional bourdons it creates for banks. A US citizen living abroad still has a responsibilities with regard to reporting financial activities to the IRS. This is an extra liability and risk for foreign banks so in many cases they chose to simply not deal with Americans.
I was born in Germany and have a German passport. When I was a teen my family moved to the US and and have since also gotten my American citizenship. I have been considering moving back. I talked to my aunt who lives in Switzerland who told me not to bother trying to open a Swiss account it’s virtually impossible as long as you have a US passport. Germany is slightly better but at most there are 2-3 (mainly online only) banks where you might be able to get a basic (ie bare bones) account.
The IRS has the ability to compel foreign banks to freeze assets of US citizens living abroad or at least to make it a paperwork nightmare for them. I can understand why a company might not want to promote an individual to senior positions if banks are weary of dealing with them.
This is the case virtually everywhere thanks to FATCA, unless the country’s banking system is OK with getting punished. It applies not just to US citizens, but also to US permanent residents.
If you move to CH on your German EU passport, register at the local authorities and get your residency card, most traditional Swiss banks will open an account for you. You just won’t be able to do it online or with the Neo-banks. But an actual physical UBS office or Kantonbank will eventually be able to handle the paperwork for you.
I thought it was a regular thing for Americans or anyone in the world to be able to make a Swiss account? Is that not the case? Or is it different if you live there?
Compared to a normal Swiss bank: CHF wire transfer and EUR SEPA wire transfers are usually free of charge. Dukascopy charges 2.30 for each CHF or EUR transfer and 19 USD for each USD wire, on top of 0.50% currency conversion.
And, their FAQ clearly states they don’t accept US citizens.
I think this is the biggest factor. Ambitious people who want to become rich do not have any opportunities in Germany. It is good for people who are content with a middling but comfortable life. That's why most ambitious people leave.
Bang on... it's initially about opportunity. But when that runs out, people move on.
And with the offer of DE citizenship where you're not giving up your birth citizenship, most people will take it, and move somewhere else in EU with a shiney new DE passport.
> Germany. It is good for people who are content with a middling but comfortable life. That's why most ambitious people leave.
Just curious how well does that work? I assume it’s being able to have a job, have a place to live, travel once a year. Medical care not tied to employment but hopefully easily accessible?
I agree with the feeling, but the market doesn't. Inflation in the last 8 years has been slowly strangling families. And that's without mentioning the fact that owning an apartment or home is basically impossible without inheritance or being upper-class.
So for most middle-class families, the work grind will continue for the rest of their life, until retirement (if it even exists by then), without anything to show for it (owning the place you live in). How are people even going to be able to pay for their rent between retirement (67 years old) and assisted living (+75 years old)?
There is a level where it's probably bad (France, Russia, China prior to revolutions). But wealth equality (Russia, China, Cambodia, all of eastern Europe, Cuba, etc. AFTER revolutions) seems to be infinitely more destructive.
The issue is concentration of power. Wealth inequality is just one way destructive levels of power concentration can happen. We need low wealth inequality along with truly democratic government.
Yeah, these people are not looking to become super rich. They are coming from very poor backgrounds (compared to median wealth in Germany) and they want to reach upper middle class levels (wealth wise, not income wise) for those countries.
A small town where I've lived was very much like its neighbours, but one particular neigbour was different in two clearly visible ways: ① there were (still are) more rich people in that neighbour and ② it was much easier to get financing for starting and growing companies in that neighbour.
You are right I think - but this is the case for everywhere besides startups in the US
Try going to Singapore, Japan, the UK, Netherlands, god forbid France, Germany, Latin America.
Try going into engineering in major US companies - you know how hiring works and who is prioritized over whom.
If you are not local or you are not part of the inner circle of management the glass ceiling is there.
Some would say that it's just empirical evidence and they never had this problem. I would call them lucky.
Just to add, the experience can be quite different between Bundesland (for example the tech culture in Berlin can be really decent IMHO). And the Bewerbungsfoto is technically not allowed to be required (but often expected in practice, though I personally don’t remember sending one).
Overall that comment sounds quite true based on my experience. I had a way better time contracting for foreign companies from Germany
That sounds similar to what you experience in the US especially as a first gen immigrant. I see a glass ceiling (for the lack of a better word) here. Most of the leadership positions are occupied by US-born (mostly Caucasian) and/or to some degree, Indian immigrants. Sometimes, I truly wonder how/why this person got into the leadership role because it's fairly obvious that s/he lacks the essential qualities required for it. The only explanation is the politicking (typical in the corporate world) and somehow being able to impress others by talking fast and/or smooth (while giving false promises and failing upward).
All of this to say that your observation in Germany doesn't sound that different from mine in the US (been here for over 20+ years; been in a manager/director role in data for almost a decade).
Have you ever worked for a European company? You could say the exact same things about every country on the planet except the US version is probably less extreme. Also the US companies are probably more complex to run so its more visible. I once worked for a company that probably manages some of your retirement. They had a team of 50 people working on a compiler for an internal language. Not a single person on that team knew how to actually write a compiler and the executive in charge was both the most arrogant and least capable executive I have ever worked with. So the idea that this is somehow US specific is pretty absurd.
> a photo is pretty much required which would be considered illegal in other countries like the UK
I work since over 15 years as SWE and have been job hopping most of the time. Only during one job hunt I put a (professional) photo on my CV. While a photo on the CV is obviously not illegal, employers aren't allowed to demand it since 2 decades. But I agree there is a bias.
While I'm fully German so to say, I have a foreign last name literally from centuries ago. For most of the time this was never an issue, at best a conversation starter. But companies where the daily language is German (hint: these companies usually suck) I definitely had weird situations before. Also with some recruiters, especially from the UK.
The problem is, management requires stronger language skills than engineering.
While an engineer can usually get by with good English, a manager in a German company with German clients and German bosses also requires excellent command of German. I would think that this would equally apply to any other country and their native language.
Perhaps Germany is a bit unusual in that it fosters a strong small-company culture, with few levels of management. There is no "engineering ladder" in a company with only a single layer of management between engineers and CEO.
One thought I hate reading this is: do you need upward mobility?
It's a serious question because in an ideal (IMHO) society, people can have full and satisfying lives with security and family without becoming a CEO. In the US, for example, there's an obsession with "getting ahead" but, by definition, only so many people can get ahead. And why do they want to? Because, at least in part, a basic job in insufficient to make ends meet in most cases now. This is a form of coercion.
This is orthogonal to the issue of German social inclusion and forms of xenophobia (eg in the housing applications you mention).
Personally I'd rather in a society where everyone's needs are met and it's not a race against a rising tide where only 20% of the population are above it.
> > > The reason is sadly, the culture is very reserved and cautious, so as an "outsider" it's going to take A LONG time before you can be trusted in a senior/leadership position (no matter how good your German language skills are).
Can someone explain what the "strongest plausible interpretation of this" is in this context? It sounds like straightforward xenophobia from the Germans but the other guy who said so got flagged by the moderator. That implies that the strong interpretation is entirely obvious but I don't know what it is, and I can't get it out of an LLM. If it were that anyone takes a long time before they're trusted, that's institutional slowness. If the slowness is reserved for an "outsider" and not for a "native" then that feels like the natural interpretation is xenophobia.
I can understand why a foreigner in Germany (the outsider here) would be hesitant to say anything so I understand that part.
You're adding a lot of assumptions in order to reach that conclusion.
Generally it's not a good idea to reduce someone else's comment to a blunt denunciation, and especially not when you're adding a putdown of your own ("that is a LOT of words"). The commenter was obviously offering a complex expression of their experience and not just circomlocuting a crudity.
I assume you mean "you" here in the sense of "one" because I didn't say those other things. And certainly the "that is a lot of words" framing is something I personally dislike as well, but the conclusion seems accurate, doesn't it?
If German companies routinely have a glass ceiling for foreigners that they don't have for natives then surely in the American context we'd consider that bigotry of some sort and certainly if it were in the US we'd consider it a Title VII violation of the CRA on the basis of national origin.
I think it would help to provide an example by construction: relax one or more of the assumptions you think are being smuggled in and describe how it is not xenophobia to do what the German organizations OP was at were doing. I'm struggling to come up with something here - some kind of cultural mismatch not related to language fluency?
What it seems to me is that the OP, immigrant that he is, is describing a fairly xenophobic society that he nonetheless has to live in and is therefore not using explicit labels for.
I migrated to Germany 10+ years ago and I'm still here. Based on my limited experience, there are two big issues.
First, things are bad: trains are getting worse every year, the highways are in disrepair (ask me about Bonn!), overloaded doctors, impossibly slow bureaucracy, economic crisis, growing inequality, housing crisis, and so on. If you're a fresh immigrant who cannot find a job in an economic crisis (aka "most of them") you may very well wonder why staying here alone when you could be just as unemployed near your family.
Second: I won't say that Germany is xenophobic (not even all AfD voters) but I will say it's unfriendly. Work example: I've worked in multiple places in German without language issues, and yet many jobs automatically disqualify me because they ask for "minimum C2", a rank I don't have and one that many native Germans wouldn't achieve either. Add less chances to make a social circle, inflexibility, not great weather, and a government that's constantly calling you lazy and entitled, and that's how you get depressed.
The sad part is, Germany has all the pieces to be a great place to live that, for some reason, has decided to dismantle them all one by one.
>First, things are bad: trains are getting worse every year, the highways are in disrepair (ask me about Bonn!), overloaded doctors, impossibly slow bureaucracy, economic crisis, growing inequality, housing crisis, and so on.
Any minute now those millions of doctors, lawyers, and engineers from the MENA countries that flooded Germany the past decade will fix all that! Any minute!
An insane assumption when there are millions of immigrants in every european country lining up for every type of health care service and not contributing a cent back into it
I think you talking about refugees, not regular migration.
People who migrate need to deposit thousands of Euros, at least when they come for training in health care sector (nurse or doctor). You can also come if you have an offer from a German company or a very good outlook to get one. In any case, you are not allowed to stay if you don't work for a longer period of time.
I can't believe how many don't know about this even here.
It's basically relatively easy to stay here as a refugee, but not as easy to stay here as a skilled worker.
> I think you talking about refugees, not regular migration.
I'm surprised I need to explain this, but refugees are also migrants. They're using one of many visa pathways.
This conversation highlights the issue with this discussion: many intersecting issues. As you point out: Europe has made it incredibly easy for refugees to immigrate (most of whom, depending on the country of origin, do not ever enter the workforce); and made it incredibly difficult for working immigrants. This is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. Unfortunately negativity towards the high crime and high unemployment immigrant populations gets conflated with working immigrants. Since politicians do not dare touch the sacred ECHR cow, they enact rules to make it harder for law-abiding immigrants.
In most cases it's not possible for a refugee who's already in Germany to gain a regular residence permit without going back to their country of origin and starting the entire immigration process from scratch. All this talk about refugees not wanting to integrate, and no one mentioning that there is no point for them to integrate whatsoever, if they are going to be kicked out eventually regardless of their merit.
You get German citizenship almost automatically after 5 years in the country just by having a job and a basic understanding of the language. Even without speaking the language you can get citizenship simply by going to school here for 4 years.
> no one mentioning that there is no point for them to integrate whatsoever
There is a point: They are GUESTS here and when you are a guest in someone's house, you better act respectfully.
I don't think that is really true. I think what's true is that people like private nursing care but its really expensive. Its less expensive if you have a large influx of cheap labor.
The shortage of workers in the health care sector is well established, just look at some numbers. As my wife works in health care sector, I also know that from own experience. Here colleagues and friends are mostly from within EU but also outside EU. A friend of mine from Syria just completed her training to become a neurologist. Another just finished training to become a nurse. She nearly had to move out of the country because she was on a "training visa" but finished it an wanted to start working. They wanted her to move out of Germany to apply for a work visa.
It's pure insanity. Meanwhile, many people think regular migration and coming as refugee is basically the same thing and that we don't need skilled worker to begin with. Maybe we deserve to become insignificant, but I would rather from some distance.
Of all places I never imagined finding so many AfD talking points here on HN. Trying to migrate to another country right now, because I see a grim future coming with the direction the society is going. Reading here strongly confirms my reasoning for that.
Funny thing is in the US, Mid East background (especially Iranian) is stereotyped as being doctors and lawyers, sometimes engineers. I know at least they disproportionately go into medicine.
that was such a self inflicted wound that Europe, and Germany, did to itself. No wonder people are voting AfD.
and for the downvoters: these are facts. this is what the politician in Europe campaigned with, built platforms on and said for everything. "We'll get engineers, and doctors! Lots of workers!" Fast forward 5 years... How's the Willkommenkultur going you ask? Look at AfD. Look recently at the 10 million Switzerland votes.
And I'm writing this as an immigrant myself... It's sad.
You talking about refugees or migration? That's two totally different things. Germany is in desperate need of migration and yes, the people that come are skilled workers.
Willkommenkultur should have given it away that I am talking about refugees. however, in normal societal culture, these cannot be separated, I promise you. refugees set the tone for how migrants are viewed by the general public.
The "refugees" are migrants. Low-skilled migrants who would not make it through to normal immigration process but still migrants. They are not coming here for safety but to build a better life for themselves - and their families who are often initially left back home.
> Any minute now those millions of doctors, lawyers, and engineers from the MENA countries that flooded Germany the past decade will fix all that! Any minute!
I would assume this would take a generation. Y'all don't understand how lucky you have it, tbh.
If a native speaker didn't pass a C2 exam, it's not because they don't understand the language well enough, it's because they are bad at reading/writing as a skill and might make e.g. spelling mistakes.
Any native speaker will still be far beyond C2 when it comes to intuitively understanding a language and using it. No native speaker will ever fail the oral part of a C2 exam, unless they have to talk about a topic they don't know, which would be a case of a lack of knowledge, not a lack of language proficiency.
> it's because they are bad at reading/writing as a skill and might make e.g. spelling mistakes.
Reading and writing are part of language proficiency. If someone struggles to understand complex written texts, then their command of the language isn't as strong as that of a proficient C1/C2 user, even if they are a native speaker.
> they have to talk about a topic they don't know.
When I took my C1 exam, I had to read and discuss a text about polymers used in aircraft wings. The definition of C1 describes someone who can understand complex texts and use the language in academic and professional contexts. Many native speakers are not even close (eg I know a number of people who were born and raised in Italy who don't understand all the moods and tenses, so I have to simplify my language when speaking with them, as I would with a foreigner).
What you have in mind is “sounding like a local” or “not having a foreign accent” or “knowing most of regional idiomatic expression”.
C1 is high school level indeed and C2 is academics. this has been studied on native speakers:
me> I'm looking for studies which examine citizens language proficiency in their native tongue in the European language reference framework i.e. b2 C1 C2
also here is the "self assessment" on the CEFR home page:
Self-assessment grid - Table 2 (CEFR 3.3) : Common Reference levels - Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) https://share.google/E6POb6UYC53cUkxXg
Germans just love to exclude others based on their 'master race' sentiment - I have had this happen to others in my vicinity, so that's why I know it's not a personal grievance thing.
I had a friend rejected from a job (she was not German but lived in Germany, and spoke the language), as the recruiter told her they are looking only for people from DACH countries becase of some 'data protection laws' that can be enforced there. Since the job was remote, they argued, she could move out of the country at any point in time so she would not be eligible.
(I know this because I had another acquaintance who worked there)
Presumably they are excluding non-native Germans using difficult German language requirements?
Tbh I wish my current employer had higher (or any) English language requirements. It makes meetings (especially video calls which is all of them) significantly harder when you have to decode heavily Indian English as well as understand highly complex technical discussions.
I get you, but credentialism is an issue in general - the best AWS expert isn't usually the one with the most certs. Likewise I don't have any sort of advanced English or German cert. I have B2 in both, but my German is a lot worse now, but at my best I had no trouble interacting with my German coworkers or society in general.
East Germany was completely looted by West German corporations. There were east german workers who's final job was packing up all the machinery and inventory in their plant to ship to the west german company that had bought it all for €1, for example. Basically west germany did to the former east what private equity in the united states does to many companies- tear it down for scrap and sell it off. Then years later people blame the Ossies for just being backwards.
If you want more information about this I highly recommend Katja Hoyer's book, "Beyond the Wall" about life in the east and the problems of reunifcation.
It has been my experience that many jobs which say "Must have C1 German" or something like that just mean "You need to be able to speak with us in German at work" and if you can speak at B2 level, that's perfectly fine. I had B1 level German and got job offers from places with such requirements because I can speak pretty well with my German colleagues who dont know any english, and I can use a mix when speaking about complicated things with my other colleagues.
It may not sound like a satisfying answer, but: because I'm not here to earn a language certificate but rather to live and work, my German is more than fine, and I think my time could be better employed doing something else.
I've worked in German institutions for a long time now, I've published in German, I have no problems understanding people and, leaving my accent aside, people can understand me. I read books in German and understand German movies. My German is fine.
I could take time away from learning what's new in tech and science (a lot, apparently) to get a C2 but, and I may be wrong here, I don't think someone asking for "minimum C2" (which, again, disqualifies even native Germans) is engaging with the process in good faith.
I have no objections to learning the language, which is why I've done it. What I do object to is chasing a pointless certificate when I could be doing the thing I was brought here to do.
As a inverse example: a (German) family member has lived fully immersed for 20+ years in my Spanish speaking country.
I doubt he could pass a C2 level test, there's simply a hard limit in language learning for most people without academic instruction. It's also pointless, he's had a long career in a professional field where clear communication is mission critical. Furthermore even if another foreigner with a shiny Spanish C2 certificate appeared they would fare worse, because they wouldn't know the local social minutia.
Aside from jobs in the Literature department or something, a C2 requirement is a "foreigners need not apply" sign.
C1 can be achieved (I did it on 360 hours). C2 is academic level of language proficiency -- you have to either deliberately study for the difficult exam or get an university degree in German. Most of the Germans won't be able to pass a C2 test.
When a company sets C2 as a requirement, it can be interpreted as "must have a degree from German University".
That's not true, but it is a commonly shared myth. I've taken and passed C2 with the highest mark in every category (I moved here when I was a young teen, wanted to know if I would pass it after hearing years of people saying things like you're saying).
Most Germans would easily pass C2, although I think they'd have to be well-read/possibly university educated to get high scores (mostly need to be able to read quickly, give a semi-structured presentation and write a persuasive essay).
For what it's worth, I could run linguistic laps around all the other test takers there that day, and I assume at least some of them passed.
That's a really interesting experience. Lots of people in language learning communities have this argument back and forth for years. Have you ever written a longer piece about your education, preparation for the exam, abilities of other test takers?
For reference I scored ~C1 in German years ago (testdaf 4/4/5/4) and at that level there's no question at all about the vast gulf between me and an educated native speaker.
I've not written up anything, no. I think I'd have a hard time doing so without just feeling like I'm bragging about myself, which I don't like.
There's still a definite gap between me and native speakers, that shows itself primarily in the effort required, but I'm definitely near native (pass as German in all social settings, although an hour long conversation will usually tease it out due to my unfamiliar first name or small-talk topics, rarely but occasionally due to mistakes).
I prepared by doing two practice exams and about 5 filmed and timed practice presentations, and that was over preparing for me. Experiences vary, and I do think I'm a bit towards the outlier side, but it's left me convinced that the whole "native speakers might not pass C2" thing is overblown.
The issues you see now in Germany are the direct consequence of the Merkel era conservative government and its austerity policy. They really wanted to get the deficit down at all cost. And all cost included any sort of needed maintenance on public infrastructure.
I have zero knowledge on German politics. But I do wonder, if these same problems are plagues many (most) big cities (and even countries) in the west, including very liberal and high spending governments, how can we safely conclude it’s a conservative problem (or a liberal one)?
Well in this case it is a documented trail of defering needed maintenance with the argument of needing to safe money.
I did not argue that this is a outcome that can only happen to conservative governments. In fact I am convinced it is a fundamental problem of how politics work: you elect politicians to government for a limited period, so they often try to push off costs for which the ultimate prize will be paid to the next period, in which they may not be in government anymore.
But of course conservative governments tend to be more often part of that dynamic since austerity politics and conservatism often (although, not always) go hand in hand. Often the austerity has a smidgen of corruption as well, where government contracts that then need to be made (urgently! since maintenance was deferred!) often go to the politicians private friends. Free market for thee and not for me.
Another classic is to starve some working government/public institutions budget, only to then point at the mess and explain why this needs to privatized (coincidentally you know exactly the right guy to step in, what a surprise).
I am not saying that it is only conservative polticians that do that, but it tends to be a bit harder to do while e.g. demanding democratic socialist policy and strong public institutions.
While Germany and some other Western countries were going along with the IMF and their austerity policies, Japan just kept printing money. Where would you rather live today? (I've been to Japan (Tokyo) but never Germany, so I have no opinion)
It's going to be interesting to see the long term consequences of the choices different nations made along the way.
Here is my anecdote. I was in Germany recently and met with a South American woman. We briefly talked about our immigrant experiences. She is now a German citizen married to a German man. However, she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one. By contrast, when I became an American citizen, my American friends (white and hispanic) insisted that they attend the naturalization ceremony.
> she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one
As a native German, I actually have difficulties with concepts like "identifying as [nationality]", "feeling like [nationality]" or "naturalization". I really would say these are concepts that US-Americans (or people who were "shaped" by US mentality) seem to deeply care about, but Germans very typically don't.
So, my opinion/advice is: she should simply abandon such concepts ("identifying as [nationality]", "feeling like [nationality]", "naturalization") that, as a native German, are simply far away from the mentality that I observe in daily life.
Don't forget that a unified Germany was a concept that only involved in the 19th century, so "Germany" is more of a somewhat "synthetic" unification of various historical, and very different, federal states where the unifying element is rather what is now considered to be a shared language, ethicity, culture and history.
With this in mind, the advice should be obvious:
This woman should concentrate on getting really good in German, and learn about the more than 1000 years of (what is now German) culture and history, and additionally learn about the laws and rules to survive daily life. Otherwise, she should live her life.
What she should not do, is caring about what "identifying as" or "feeling like a" German means - she should put this out of her mind, since modern Germany is a very synthetic unification of what were historically very different sovereign nations that share what is now considered to be a common language, ethicity, culture and history.
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 like this - but some are more polite about this than others.
Americans are the incredibly weird outlier (in a good way!). If you speak decent enough English, then basically if you get along, they forget about where you come from. At least it felt like it - Americans basically don't make headspace for this kind of stuff.
> 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 interesting point.
Nevertheless, I think the situation is a little bit different:
Many Germans indeed also have the feeling "that [they] are not one of them", but I would say it is part of the German mentality to worry much less about that than in other countries.
A lot of connections at work are rather "communities of purpose" [English translation of "Zweckgemeinschaft(en)"], i.e. you work together because of a common goal/hobby/... which makes collaborations a really good idea.
I read somewhere that in the USA a lot more of the social life is centered around the work/company than in Germany. So, it is not untypical to get social connections at work, but this is only one way among many. I would even claim that the social connections from work are often not the most important ones.
Immigrants who are used to the US mentality that work is much more important for social connections than in Germany thus feel that "[they] are not one of them", when in reality this is not the case.
I am very certain that typically German colleagues treat immigrants colleagues as they would treat their German work colleagues (as far as possible). The misunderstanding is rather that many people from other cultures want to be treated quite differently.
> So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants.
In my observation the reason for this is rather because many migrants have very different wishes on their surrounding group than what is common in Germany (also and in particular for Germans).
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.
I don’t think that she means it as literally as you are interpreting her. It’s a _feeling_ of not belonging to or probably feeling welcomed to join the culture that surrounds her daily life, I don’t think she cares whether she belongs to the history-based definition that you outlined of modern “synthetic” unified Germany.
This experience is usually invisible to the people who are part of the in-group, in this case Germans, but if someone lives in a foreign country for an extended period of time and tries to make it their home, I think they understand what that woman was saying.
>
I don’t think that she means it as literally as you are interpreting her. It’s a _feeling_ of not belonging to or probably feeling welcomed to join the culture that surrounds her daily life
> This experience is usually invisible to the people who are part of the in-group, in this case Germans, but if someone lives in a foreign country for an extended period of time and tries to make it their home, I think they understand what that woman was saying.
is not a feeling that is felt as strongly by people from Germany as for people from other countries.
1. As I have hinted in my original post, there simply is not that much of a feeling of "belonging" also for Germans who live in Germany.
2. I wrote in the linked post
"I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around 'if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own'. There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it."
So, people from Germany are often much more used to the situation that they do things alone on their own, and thus in my opinion indeed have much more internal tolerance to the situation what people from other cultures would call "a feeling of not belonging".
This is exactly why I wrote further above:
"This woman should [...] learn about the laws and rules to survive daily life. Otherwise, she should live her life."
The reason is not knowing the laws and rules can get her into trouble, but living your life on your own (without a sense of "belonging") is something that is easily doable (as I hinted: quite some Germans feel this about their life in Germany) - if you don't "belong" or have few contacts, you can still live.
I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc.
> I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc.
Concerning "part of the in-group": It is very usual that in Germany, you don't become a "friend" fast (the German translation of "friend", [der] Freund, has a much deeper meaning than the US-American understanding of the English word). Friendship is much deeper and takes much longer to establish, but is also there to stay.
The same is said about Nordic countries.
If you come from a country where you become a friend much faster, but in a much more shallow sense, you will indeed likely be disappointed.
My advice based on my feelings/observations:
- If you do shallow smalltalk (as it is very common in the USA), you signal that you only want a shallow relationship. If you want a deep friendship, better bring something deep to the table.
- In particular referring to the point "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them": I would really say that life in Germany is much more "live your own life" (which is also what I wrote in my post above: "Otherwise, she should live her life."), i.e. you do much more things on your own. For me, for example, a very common evening is filled with learning (which I do on my own).
I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around "if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own". There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it.
With this in mind, I think that "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them" is not something that you will commonly experience (and people likely would consider this to be unfair), it's rather "people not throwing parties, so you are not invited to a (non-existing :-) ) party".
It's very strange to see you simultaneously say that that friendships take longer to develop but also that I'm supposed to avoid shallow talk the entire time even when my friendship is very shallow.
Especially since it's usually Americans that have the reputation for treating strangers overly familiar in conversation.
> It's very strange to see you simultaneously say that that friendships take longer to develop but also that I'm supposed to avoid shallow talk the entire time even when my friendship is very shallow.
I don't get your point:
- Avoiding shallow talking means not wasting the other person's time - this is politeness.
- You can also talk about deep topics with people who are outside of your friendzone.
Hypothesis - I wonder if this is about places with lot of movement vs places that don't. Internal movement within US, even within rural communities, might be more than in Germany? and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?
From my observations about Germany and what I read about the USA, there was historically much less internal movement in Germany than in the USA. But over the last decades, shifts occured: internal movement increased in Germany and decreased in the USA.
> and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?
I would say the topic is more multilayered:
Traditionally, Germany was not an immigration country (yes, there exist exceptions in history: migrations of big groups from other countries, but let's ignore them for the sake of the argument), so there barely exist any traditionally grown structures for immigrants from other countries or cultures; they are much more on their own.
I wouldn't say that this bare existence of immigration structures is a bad thing per se, or that such people are unwelcome etc. It's just that there exist no really structured way for immigrants from other countries or cultures to set foot in Germany's society.
On the other hand, the increased internal movement over the last decades in Germany has not lead to the situation that incoming (German) people have an easier way to get into the existing structures, but I would rather say that this lead to a more tolerance of new incoming people doing their own thing separately.
In other words: it lead to the situation that people living next to each other often having few common things in their ways of living.
So, the increased internal movement rather lead to a loss of "common grounding" of people living in some place, without anything new appearing that replaces this loss of common grounding.
That's an interesting question. Personally, I'd say the north of Germany has more in common with Danish and Dutch people than with Bavarians (who in turn have more in common with the Austrians than with us).
It’s a super interesting example because the Swiss German in the question would also vehemently disagree that they have anything in common with the German :)
I’m actually curious if the GP expects „yes“ or „no“ as an answer, because I couldn’t even say. It’s probably „yes“, but…
As an American, to me it's always felt like non-white Americans are never really accepted as "full" Americans by people as a whole. If a German guy moves to America and gets citizenship, he might be known as that German American guy, sure. But if he has kids, they'll just be called American. Over 100 years ago, some Chinese people moved to America. Those people had kids. Those kids had kids. Those kids had kids. Some of those kids also had kids. But what are those 5th or 6th generation Americans called? Asian Americans or even Chinese Americans, even if they've never been outside of the US and nobody in their family several generations up the line has either. And people who were forcefully brought to America 300 years ago still have their descendants being called "African American" instead of simply "American."
I say this as someone who myself emigrated from America. Nobody calls me "that American guy." I'm just "that guy".
I think the test for being accepted is when you screw up. For example, if you parked wrongly do you become “that foreigner/ethnic guy” or do you remain “one of our idiots”.
It is an interesting divide. "German" is both an ethnicity and a citizenship, and it's possible to become one but not the other. "American" on the other hand is purely a citizenship, and so it is possible to become an American after immigrating.
> "American" on the other hand is purely a citizenship ...
This may be how you perceive or feel about it, and of course you're not alone, but many other Americans feel differently. Those of us with Colonial ancestors maintained much the same culture and mores for generations; it's evident in the manners and the literature; it's something distinct that we certainly feel as close to an ethnicity. Granted, we comprise multiple European heritages, but those heritages did not define any of us after a few generations. The concept I am trying to outline her is also a very old one: e.g., first Speaker of the House Frederick Muhlenberg, referring to some of his own constituents, said, "The faster the Germans become Americans, the better it will be."
There has always been some concept of a process by which people can become American and join in that culture through assimilation and integration.
I've had ancestors in North America since 1650, including a vice president and a union admiral, but I also have friends whose parents arrived from Somalia or Vietnam in the eighties and nineties who grew up in largely the same cultural soup I did, speak with the same accent, have the same humor, drink the same beer and eat the same food. Some have served in the US military. In my eyes, they're just as American as I am.
If German is an ethnicity, I don't see why the US, which is older than the German Confederation (let alone the subsequent countries that have existed since then on that same land) has a distinct culture and set of shared values, cannot be.
The word you’re looking for is ethnogenisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnogenesis. There is no “American” ethnicity, though “white people” might come close to being considered a synthetic ethnicity resulting from the immigration restriction and birth rate boom from 1921-1965.
But even that is too broad. It might be more accurate to get even more granular. For example, you might identify someone like Tim Walz as belonging to a synthetic Scandinavian-Midwestern ethnicity: although he has no actual Scandinavian ancestry, he grew up in Minnesota in what’s a recognizably distinct ethnocultural subgroup.
A far more useful analogy might be that “American” is a college football team.
The US did undergo ethnogenesis; particularly in the southeast, there have long been large numbers of people that identify their ethnicity as "American." The process was largely disrupted/reversed in the northeast with the Ellis Islander waves and then near-totally nationwide in recent decades. (The west was too new and too churny to have undergone anything like that.)
"African Americans" certainly also separately underwent ethnogenesis, although the preferred nomenclature there has changed, and there wasn't really any disruption there. But I think it's certainly fair to count them as a distinctly and uniquely US ethnicity.
It was done on purpose, and the people who did it were on board with it, thought it was best for their children. My grandmother speaks basically no Italian despite both of her parents being from Italy. They always insisted on speaking English and it largely worked. My grandmother is considered by anyone who meets her “American” despite that part of my lineage being less than 90 years distant from Italy.
Native American is not an ethnicity. The tribes that occupied North America prior to the Europeans are notable for their very high cultural and linguistic diversity. Many of the pre-European languages are unrelated to each other.
It’s amusing that the word German is an Anglicisation of a Roman word for a variety of tribes that the Roman Empire couldn’t be bothered to distinguish between.
A country is not tied to ethnicity but this thread is about how German is an ethnicity.
I’ve heard plenty of arguments about the German Volk as a distinct entity.
The argument was pretty decisively lost according to my grandfather.
Tell me, where does my Jewish German heritage fit in to Germany as an ethnicity? For some reason they didn’t feel very German when they left despite meeting all the qualifications…
> Tell me, where does my Jewish German heritage fit in to Germany as an ethnicity? For some reason they didn’t feel very German when they left despite meeting all the qualifications…
That's a good point, and personally one of the reasons I disagree with the ethnic definition of "nation".
The other reason are of course the frisian, danish, sorbian, etc and many other similar minorities that have historically lived in the region of modern Germany.
I think the french definition (which defines the nation almost entirely around the language, not ethnicity or origin) is a much more interesting and useful one. Language determines who you can talk to, and what media you can read or watch.
The United States is a distinct legal entity, not a label for an area of land. Native Americans have never been the dominant ethnicity of the United States.
There are shared values in the US, but not many. Love of the US, and 'freedom' is about all, for the later we don't agree in what freedom means.
There are many different distinct cultures in the US. Cowboys from north Dakota and Texas are both cowboys but have little cultural connection, and the hill billies Tennessee are very different from each.
Very true, but Germany has a much smaller country, both in population and geography. This also has a lot less influence by people from different continents that immigrated not very far back in history.
My prejudice is that there are only a few countries in the world (US, Canada, Australia, Mexico, possibly others I don't have experience with) where coming as an immigrant they take you in and you can be considered from that country.
I'm German. Very rarely is the issue that people will in principle treat her as foreign, there's sometimes still the stereotype that you "can never be German" but in most places in the country that's not my experience.
However what is important is that you need to elbow your way in. There's a saying "nur sprechenden Menschen kann geholfen werden*. (only people who speak up can be helped). If you think someone's gonna carry you in that's not gonna happen. That's the biggest mistake I see immigrants make. It's a private and personal culture but people respect someone from the outside who shows initiative, and nobody is easily offended by someone being assertive, that's seen as a good thing.
It's not the kind of place where you can just wait and people will read what you want off your face. Doesn't even work for Germans, if you feel left out, you'll have to stand up and say you want to be in.
Those who say stuff like "nobody makes me feel integrated" would also very much struggle to befriend people in their own country if they got dropped anywhere else other than their home cities away from friends and family.
Making new friends after school is hard, no matter where in the world.
There was no unified "German" culture before Germany, so it doesn't make sense to talk about a "German" culture. Is it the northern maritime German? The southern Bavarian German? The Rhinelanders? The Swabians? Swiss germans? Northern Italian germans? Austrian Germans?
There was the German ethnicity, and a mosaic of Germanic languages.
I actually disagree with you. If you look at the centuries before 1870 there clearly was a recognition of a common culture, this isn't really controversial.
People often laugh about the Holy Roman Empire (mostly people who have not studied it) but it did actually serve as a distinct legal and cultural tradition for much the area that is now Germany (and more).
The language are different but not that different, with some effort you could understand each other. Many Germans from different parts fought together in mercenary bands or for Holy Roman Empire armies.
During the Revolution in the 1850 they tried to establish a unified Germany, so clearly the idea had wide recognition by then. You don't have movement like that spring up out of nowhere. After the Napoleonic war, German Confederation was a very recognized and understood fact.
Sure if was not fully 'unified' but neither is French or Spanish culture.
- Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History
- Helmut Walser Smith, Germany: A Nation in Its Time
Nonsense. Just because there was no stricly "unifed" (whatever that means) German culture does not mean that German culture does not exist. There is clearly a shared core of culture and ethnicity to all the listed peoples.
But again you can continue with trying to make it seem as if everything is equal to everything else.
I'll leave you with this little thought experiment. If we put a northen German, a Swiss German and a Spaniard in a room, how long will it take for the two germans to realize they have more in common with each other than the spaniard?
> If we put a northen German, a Swiss German and a Spaniard in a room, how long will it take for the two germans to realize they have more in common with eath other than the spaniard?
Switzerland is actually quite different from Germany.
Because they've been living where they're living now for about 1500 years, speaking the same language or more precisely speaking a group of closely-related languages, descended from the same small initial population.
US culture also starts earlier but the reality is a majority of what makes up US culture only showed up in the region much later. As well as expansion into Spanish and other areas that were absorbed.
In that case, the oldest German citizens are 155 years old. Like the country.
And by that logic even many native Americans are immigrants. The Apache and Sioux people were living up in canada by the Great lakes near the time Spaniards were on the continent and then started migrating south westward. Not to even mention all of the natives who were forcibly moved out of their original places or fled due to war/famine/etc
Your argument is that a group of independent states spanning a huge part of a continent that banded together into a country in the 1800s forms a country that is also an ethnicity, but that a group of independent states spanning a huge part of a continent that banded together even longer ago is not a country that is also an ethnicity?
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 real. American values and beliefs likewise.
Is the only thing that decides an ethnicity how far back your ancestors have been procreating within a country’s current borders?
Culture and values is a better delineator, and it is pretty undeniable that America has a distinct culture and value set.
> 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.
Ethnicity is a social construct with some fuzzy boundaries, but I don't think anyone credible tries to claim that there is an "American Ethnicity". Usually when that term comes up it's from some racist overly proud that someone in their ancestry came over on the Mayflower.
Personally I think it's one of the strengths of this country that a first generation immigrant can come here and become an American. I don't think this is very common around the world.
Large numbers of people report their ancestry simply as "American."
I would actually argue this is the origin of a lot of political divisiveness in the US. It also sort of boils down to the "America as an immigrant/proposition nation" vs "America as a settler nation" debate. The former seems to be ascendant in the past few decades but it's definitely not consensus.
German citizens didn’t evolve in Germany. Any attempt to delineate ethnicity based on how long you ancestors have been in a country is just a veiled attempt to argue that you belong and they don’t.
And that is what binds them together, they all took the leap of faith, they all seperated from the old world, they all brought only their work and their spirit. The us is a phyle of choice and you must have made that choice to belong to it. This Choice is also the freedom so often referenced. Which also means you can leave the us by abandoning its values.
Which is why they are not part of the us. They should get a severance package, yhe ability to leave to a country of choice and the ability to choose to choose the us.
> excepting about 1.4% of the population - everyone here in the US is either an immigrant or descended from immigrants
Your data and percentage, is very wrong. America has significant Black and Indigenous (usually referred to as Indian or Native) populations. Around 15% Black and 3% Indigenous. Combined, they make up around 18% of the US population, with wild and vigorous arguments they are even a greater percentage than that (20% or so).
Slavery and indigenous are not considered immigration. You might want to study again about this.
Being multiracial, and of indigenous ancestry, does not necessarily mean or always count as immigrant. It is nebulous. No definitive conclusions, in regards to immigration, is made about those of mixed and indigenous ancestry. Speaking of mixed ancestry, the US has a very significant percentage in that category, from both the census and DNA testing.
There are also Canadian and Mexican indigenous people, who refute or argue about immigrant status, regardless of their present citizenship. Making the argument that their people were already in America or pushed out of their lands.
I don't know what pedantic definition you're using, but the context was clearly about indigenous or not. Insisting on a definition from a completely different context doesn't make you right, it makes you annoying.
I see what you're saying, however, the terminology used (immigrant) and then percentages given, were debatably incorrect and misleading. Please refer to reading material, where it makes it clear that slavery is not immigration[1][2][3].
Immigrants go through a set immigration process, where they make a voluntary move to a new country. A huge portion of the American population were not immigrants, but were rather subject to involuntary migration (aka slavery), going as far back as 1526 (hundreds of years before the USA was created). Thus a better term would arguably be "migrants" (without distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary).
> And that is what binds them together... they all seperated from the old world... The us is a phyle of choice and you must have made that choice...
It is a false dichotomy or representation, that America is about those who are indigenous or not, or old world choice for the new.
The percentages were fine for what they were actually saying. We can have a healthy discussion about the 1.4% and 2.9% but bringing in voluntary versus involuntary migration is a totally different topic.
Also what's the point of making "immigrant" and "migrant" apply to different groups of people? This seems like the worst way to make the distinction.
Edit: This article has a pull quote of the definitions of 'immigrant' and 'slave' and both of them apply. This is not convincing.
Edit 2: You added "Slaves weren’t immigrants. They were property." The article isn't loading but I can respond to the title. Even by the logic of them not being people at the time of the slave trade, what, the idea is that when they became people again that resets their history and we act like they just appeared in the southern US? That seems far more disrespectful to me.
But that's not what they did, they acted like people were already using that definition and started pulling out the wrong numbers.
Also can you explain why "involuntary migrant" is fine but "involuntary immigrant" isn't? (I mean I'd probably default to stronger language than "involuntary" but let's stick with that for now.)
Relative to South America, Germany is going to feel very unfriendly. I think it's a matter of perspective. Also, countries that are very homogeneous (ie everyone looks the same) are probably going to have some ethnic ideas built in their idea of citizenship so your citizenship will be question if you don't look like them or behave like them. South America and Germany are very different regions culturally sitting at opposite ends of most cultural traits so her experience isn't surprising.
As much as Europeans might find the North American notion of identity and citizenship odd and ahistorical and anachronistic, the reverse is also true. The idea of "nationhood" tied to ethnicity isn't even that old on the continent. Just dates to the modern era. People in feudal Europe were not calling themselves Germans. They could barely think beyond their village or fiefdom or whatever.
I don't even have to go far back in the history of Germany and the defunct states that preceded it to find a patchwork of languages and cultures all of which would only be colloquially called "German" but many of which would be in fact mutually unintelligible from a linguistic POV and often quite apart culturally too.
I've also always found it more than a bit absurd that I as a second generation son of a German immigrant to Canada could -- because of blood descent -- claim a German passport and citizenship despite never having lived there.
Then again with the way North America is going, if I wasn't tied down here, I'd be tempted to do that and spend my retirement there, instead.
it doesn't matter whether you call them "German" or "people whose ancestors hail from the region of modern Germany". they are unique people, ethnically and culturally different even from their neighbors, let alone from those being imported from all around the world to suppress their wages and keep their rents high.
it's not controversial, for example, to say that Ukrainians and Russians are different people. the intent behind equating our superficial similarities to us being "one people" is obviously malicious. likewise, it shouldn't be controversial to say that Europeans and South Americans/Asians/Africans/etc are different people. the notion that Hassan ibn Hassan from Mogadishu magically becomes a German if he moves to Frankfurt is as absurd as the notion that Hans Hanssen from Frankfurt would magically become a Somali if he moved to Mogadishu.
As someone who lived in the US briefly, I found Americans are just a lot more hospitable to foreigners, than Germans and most other Europeans in general.
Probably because there's no such thing as an US-American ethnicity, but there definitely is at least one or more unique and very distinct ethnicities and cultures for every European country, and simply getting the passport as a foreign adult, does not also buy you into those clubs, you just got a piece of paper, not the culture and belonging the locals with ancestry there have.
It's not something you can learn as an adult living in a big international city with lots of expats and international companies, it's something you get from growing up there surrounded by that culture and ethnic ingroup created by your ancestors.
The equivalent for americans would probably be those whose ancestors were there before the civil war but that's a smaller % of the population today vs the more recent immigrants compared to Europe. Sure, there's as much immigration to Europe as well, per-capita as in the US, but a lot of it is undesired and the native Europeans have various cultural and bureaucratic glass ceilings to keep working class immigrants in the least desirable jobs, while they kept the more desirable governmental, academic and managerial jobs.
Not knocking them for it, they're free to run their societies the way they see fit, but then they also shouldn't be surprised when, unlike in the US, the second or third generation migrants growing up in the ghettos who are full citizens now, decide to blow themselves up, shoot up a cafe or drive a truck through a crowd, because of how unaccepted and held down they feel by the native European society.
The issue I see seems to be on how US and EU treat integration of migrants. In the US you ge equal opportunities and freedom to do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt anyone, while in the EU you get endless strict rules and welfare which not only don't compensate the glass ceilings and isolation, it also pisses off the locals to see their high taxes going to foreigners who don't integrate. The other reason might be that migration to the US is more from Canada and latin america which is culturally similar to the US, while EU migration is mostly from africa and middle east which are very different culturally.
sad to see this downvoted because it is very much true. European society loves to pretend that they are these progressive, enlightened people. In reality, what they are is just better at hiding their racism and xenophobia.
Your last point is largely wrong. The primary difference between immigrants to the US and to Europe is in qualifications. The majority of US immigrants are skilled. The majority of immigrants to Europe are not skilled. It is then no surprise that immigrants to the US tend to integrate better than immigrants to Europe.
>In reality, what they are is just better at hiding their racism and xenophobia.
It's not xenofobia, it's just a rigid caste system with little to no upward mobility for immigrants, setup for the economic benefit of the locals at the expense of most immigrants. Sweden and others for example has no inheritance taxes so locals inheriting property and assets get a massive leg up at advancing in society with little effort, over even the hardest working immigrants making the system feel unfair and rigged against you if you're a high earning immigrant paying high taxes. Something less of an issue for immigrants in the US.
Xenofobia implies discrimination based on skin color or ethnicity, but that's not the case here, as white european immigrants also fall under this trap because they don't have the citizenship, language, bureaucratic system knowledge, connections, inheritance to get the chill lives the locals do, and get stuck in less desirable jobs with little to no upward mobility even if they learn the language. I'm EU native living and working in another EU country and feel this regularly across all society along with the other immigrants I know here.
> The majority of US immigrants are skilled.
Maybe in SV tech companies, but most illegals to US are not skilled, but they're tolerated as long as they don't break any major laws because they do the tough and dirty jobs for low pay the natives don't want to do otherwise they risk deportation.
The difference is EU doesn't do deportations and instead showers illegals with welfare, meaning they're not forced to integrate and become self sufficient ASAP like in US, and it's easier to stay a perpetual victim in need of state assistance.
> but most illegals to US are not skilled, but they're tolerated as long as they don't break any major laws
Define tolerated. It's quite a divisive issue in the U.S and I'd say there's a majority who doesn't want open borders or a policy that de facto lets anyone who entered the U.S stay regardless of their legality.
Please, if you do not understand the indian caste system, don't use that term, even in the context of a comparison. This is like comparing a balloon popping to a thermonuclear explosion. The scale, history, and implications are entirely different.
What you are referring to is xenophobia, not a caste system. Xenophobia can manifest in many different ways, only one of which is racism. Are you going to seriously argue that west germans and dutch people are two entirely separate ethnicities? Yet, go to the Netherlands and Hans Muller will likely be treated differently compared to Jan van Assen. The two are almost certainly indistinguishable on the surface but their names give away their origins. This is what you are getting at, but the differences between ethnicities are not sharp, rather they are a smooth continuum. Xenophobia relies heavily on perceptions. Often, differences are difficult to perceive, but sometimes they are, as in the case of Japan which is famously a monoculture.
As a counter to your last point, the UK was and is at the forefront of integrating immigrant groups into mainstream society. Most historical immigrants to the UK are well settled, although there is now a renewed push for racism and xenophobia in politics.
However, the idea that all European societies are unique snowflakes is laughable to anyone who has visited some non-European country. For all the diversity you folks are quite similar.
The whole immigrants who don't integrate seems to be a constant issue in every developed country across the globe, with the exception of maybe Japan, who is xenophobic enough that you wouldn't want to try to become Japanese anyway.
Canada, England, France, and the US, to name a few, seem to have done it wrong considering how immigration is a constant complaint and weaponized topic in their politics, but likewise Japan has too, just on the other end of the spectrum.
Immigration isn't a binary decision for a state. Its a complex set of policy decisions. What is the state of the local economy? What skills do the new immigrants have? How much experience does the local population have with the incoming culture? What is the culture of the incoming migrants? All of these and many other things comes into play when evaluating or deciding upon immigration policies. For example, taking in Catholics from northern Mexico is nothing like taking in people from the tribals of Pakistan. Most European (quite naive) immigration policies from 10 years ago seemed so poorly thought out that they were doomed to fail. The swing the other way seems guaranteed based upon how bad those previous policies were.
PS The US does it well in general but there were periods of madness recently. The political discourse of many still shows extreme madness is still possible.
PPS The very wealthy are normally the main beneficiaries of immigration and undocumented immigration just creates an underclass with few to no legal protections.
> The whole immigrants who don't integrate seems to be a constant issue in every developed country across the globe
I can't speak for the other countries, but in the US it's almost entirely an agenda being pushed. When I hear people say this, it's not because of any experience they've had, but just a repetition of talking points. Virtually none of them had a negative story to tell. I've heard far, far worse stories in some European countries.
There are notable issues in the Southwest in the United States where people don't speak any English at all, and speak only Spanish, suggesting they are legal citizens born of illegal immigrants, or are still illegal immigrants themselves.
"When I hear people say this, it's not because of any experience they've had, but just a repetition of talking points"
You pointed out a potential problem. So my followup is: "What negative experience have you had because of this?"
I'm not claiming integration problems don't exist (see my original comment). I'm claiming they are very minor, and blown way, way out of proportion. So much so that while I've known many who complain about the integration problem, I've yet to find a single person who's had direct negative experience related to this.
And, as an aside, give people in their 20s a bit more credit!
I‘m German, but I no longer live in Germany, so I can’t relate to the experience of immigrating to Germany.
I think a big part of the issue is a certain German presumptuousness.
There’s a general sense that Germany is a prosperous, influential country. The reason for that must be that things are done correctly in Germany.
I think this is an inherited attitude that doesn’t really correspond to reality anymore as systems are crumbling and a trip to many other European countries (including those Germans grew up to view as a barbaric hinterland or as holiday destinations) shows them that even small towns can have fast mobile internet, that you can pay by card at market vendors, and that the government can use computers.
I spent a day or so traveling through Germany with my parents a few weeks ago as part of a (much longer) trip and a common refrain during that day was, "So much for German efficiency." Frankfurt's airport was a tiring and frustrating experience, with long delays on the tarmac, at baggage claim, at the check-in counter, etc. One rest stop on the highway was half way dismantled, with restrooms filthy enough that everybody who got a look at them turned right around and went back to their cars. And so on. I was surprised, having expected that things would be generally more functional than in the States. (I will say that the roads were in a much better state of repair.)
I come from Finland where (in my childhood) we used to say that education in Finland is the best in the world and there's really no racism or corruption.
I'm not gonna say the claims used to be true, but at least they used to be much closer to truth then than today. And I've long felt that having these kind of national beliefs can cause people/voters to neglect those things - e.g. all the bad claims about education can be just brushed off with "well we have the best education here so no worries!" - and few decades later they're not even close to true anymore.
Reminds me of a saying in poker, when many good players changed their style radically when playing against worse players and started playing way too bad starting hands (thinking they can just outplay them on the later betting rounds), something to the effect "It isn't enough that you know how to play better than your opponents, you have to actually do it"
>I spent a day or so traveling through Germany with my parents a few weeks ago as part of a (much longer) trip and a common refrain during that day was, "So much for German efficiency."
I've heard it said that the idea that Germans are efficient is a myth. (The new Berlin airport is one example.)
Individual Germans on the whole are very efficient, possibly because they have to be to survive the awful sclerotic bureaucracy in Germany.
The country is a Darwinian training system. Possibly.
> I've heard it said that the idea that Germans are efficient is a myth.
I wouldn't say this either. Many people in Germany do care about efficiency, but they have nearly completely resignated about systemic problems where they can change nothing.
When I (German) was on vacation in the Netherlands, I found it dystopic that you could often not pay cash, but had to use card. This "I don't want to be tracked" mentality is deeply ingrained into the feeling of many Germans.
So, I would rather call this not a bug, but a feature.
Yes, I agree. Card-only, no cash allowed places are also discriminating against poor people who don't have bank accounts or who don't want to use a card, or who get paid in cash.
The "doing things correctly" mentality is the root of so many problems. Bureaucracy, "German engineering" (overengineering), cargo-culting, CYA, error culture, ...
Berlin is one the cheapest capital cities in Europe. As such it attracts a huge amount of immigrants. That low cost is reflected in the pay. An experienced full stack developer would be fortunate to get 90-95k euro annually. That is plenty of money if you intend to stay in Berlin, but is not something you can save up and build a future with or transfer to another country. Also, housing is a huge problem there and it can take 6 months to find even a basic flat. I am an American developer that lived there for many years and my co-workers were usually Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Iranian, Russian, Lebanese, and now Indian. It was rare to find an actual German coder.
I had a hard time with German work expectations and management style. Also, their engineering approach is thorough but incredibly slow and over-built. The environment is hierarchy and credential based with little room for individual initiative or creative problem solving. I was used to improvising, experimenting, and thinking outside the box. It was not a good fit.
90-95k would be impossibly high in Belgium, which is but a stone's throw away from Germany. If that isn't enough money to save, you're doing something very wrong, or your idea of a cheap city might differ from mine.
The question should be "where did they go?" - to Switzerland, years ago already.
How do I know? I've met them there. My project of close to 40 people was over 80% German. Contractors overall were mainly German as well.
And it makes huge sense - in the German part language is largely the same where it matters and salaries are much better. Also there aren't nearly enough Swiss programmers to fill all the positions.
If I were German, I would be in Zürich right now, admiring its hideous bare concrete 20-21st century architecture.
Currently the market for software developers is very complicated in Germany.
Basically, the answer is: if you have a job, you stay there (at least until hopefully in a few years the job market situation for software developers in Germany improves).
As an outsider, but hailing from Germany's eastern neighbor and one of the largest sources of immigrants:
Overall sentiment is that the juice ain't worth the squeeze any more.
Back when my country became a full member of Schengen(2008) the ratio of GDP per capita between Germany and us was around 3.3x - salaries were roughly proportionally higher, so just about any job was worth moving there and potentially going through the hoops required to establish a permanent residence.
Earlier, especially throughout the 90s that ratio didn't go below 5, so a sizeable number of people attempted to move to Germany by any means possible.
Currently it hovers at around 2.1x and most of the discrepancy in salaries is focused on the trades.
A specialist from Poland typically doesn't have access to higher tier salaries, so they don't really enjoy a different quality of life than at home, so they have no reason to move.
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 stand at the edge of a group chatting in German and they will look at you and continue, knowing you stand there not understanding, without batting an eye.
Excellent anecdote. I'm not sure if you're making a judgement about their behavior at the team event.
I'm an English native speaker, new in Germany, and learning German. I personally find it really annoying and awkward when other foreigners come into German social situations and expect or push them to speak English.
- What right do I have as the foreigner to intrude and get them to speak English?
- Social life in another language has it's own shared culture, jokes, and social cues. It's not fair or realistic to make people give that all up because some foreigner walked near the circle.
- It's my problem that I'm not yet fluent. It's not their problem that they're not speaking English.
- Some people are shy about their English skills, and they do not want to be pushed to speak English in front of others, in a group social setting.
- If you want exposure and practice, these are the golden opportunities! Take a humble learners position. Be quiet, understand as much as you can, and say what little bits you can, in German, not in English. Then study, study, study as much as you can in your time alone.
I hear fellow foreigners bemoaning the fact that they can't speak German yet, but these same people will inadvertently push English into every social situation they walk into. This just doesn't work. If you want to learn the language of the land, you have to let them speak it.
I find Germans are incredibly friendly and welcoming, especially when you come in humbly, trying to learn, and don't push everyone to speak English.
I'm definitely making a judgement :) It is not a social situation, but a work-related event in an international team, where people have varying German language skills (some have almost none, like me). In a true social situation, of course, I will not expect by default a cashier in a shop or a clerk in a bank to speak English to me (though it's appreciated).
> understand as much as you can, and say what little bits you can, in German, not in English. Then study, study, study as much as you can in your time alone
That's the whole point to add to "why people leave Germany". It's a difficult language and not everyone have time to "study, study, study". It leads to isolation, expat bubble, and leaving.
As a German, don't respect Germans who move abroad and never learn the local language because they "don't have to", either. I cut a lot more slack for people who come here, but I can't help but notice this sense of entitlement to Germany I don't see an equivalent to with other countries. There's at least one person in this thread who outright said nah, knowing English is enough, as if Germans better accept that. Honestly, wtf?
Let me play a bit of devil's advocate here. This is not what I really think but it's a point that has merit.
Germany is in deep demographic and economic crisis, mostly due to talent shortage. If it has any ambition to maintain being #3 economy (by GDP), while simultaneously paying cushy pensions to a growing pool of retirees, it must either very quickly build talent (but it has a very limited pool due to demographic), or accept high levels of immigration. The US is in better position because, let's face it, English is the widest spoken language professionally. If Germany's pitch is just "please come here to work for less money, speak German day #1, and enjoy batshit crazy bureaucracy with years to process residency", it's just not going to work. Something has to give.
That's like Germans moving to a poor country and being annoying to the waiter, then going "do you want my money or not?" When it comes to respecting someone -- which is what I'm talking about -- that just makes it worse.
> Germany is in deep demographic and economic crisis, mostly due to talent shortage. If it has any ambition to maintain being #3 economy
Countries don't have aims or ambitions, people in them do. If someone acts entitled and assumes I have to accomodate their laziness forever, not just until they'll get settled in, I won't like them, and there won't be much warmth between us. If that dooms the nation, that's totally fine. You don't make friends by blackmail, but by being friendly.
You seem to be completely missing (or avoiding?) the point.
It is widely recognised that Germany is one of the most at-risk countries in the world regarding its aging population, low birth-rate, and need for skilled workers for its economy.
If one performs a SWOT analysis of Germany from the perspective of a potential skilled immigrant, alongside the undoubted strengths, there are relative weaknesses - e.g. high taxes, awful bureaucracy (especially for outsiders and entrepreneurs), low levels of digitalisation, failing public infrastructure, and a language barrier vs. the otherwise-English-speaking professional world.
A rational response to this would be to address each weakness at all levels, from government to culture to individuals, because Germany is in competition with many other countries for the same skilled workers.
In short, put a process in place to make Germany the most skilled-immigrant-friendly country in world. And a piece of this process would be to be less intransigent around language - be much more accepting of people who want to settle in Germany and contribute positively to its future but don't want to spend large amounts of time learning a difficult new language which is irrelevant almost anywhere else.
> If someone acts entitled and assumes I have to accommodate their laziness forever, not just until they'll get settled in, I won't like them, and there won't be much warmth between us. If that dooms the nation, that's totally fine.
This is a very odd position: you're literally saying you'd rather have your country fail, fall apart, die, than get over your hurt feelings about people not wanting to speak the language fluently. (If Germany ceases to exist as a meaningful country in a few generations, few will care about speaking German then either.)
> you're literally saying you'd rather have your country fail, fall apart, die, than get over your hurt feelings about people not wanting to speak the language fluently.
"hurt feelings"? I started out mentioning to someone who I assume gets where I'm coming from, because they are not acting entitled and do not find Germans to be unwelcoming, that I don't respect Germans who don't learn the language of countries they move to. I've known a few and I hated their attitude.
If you want to make me responsible for the fate of Germany, make me chancellor, or get off my back. I'm just one person, I like open, friendly people. People who just walk past me without even looking at me, talking in English or some other language I still smile at them because that's what I do, and get nothing back. What more should I do? Berate other Germans to be "less racist" or "more accepting" until people who simply just might by entitled assholes stop being that? Nah. Over it.
And do you notice how it's just normal to talk shit about Germans and Germany, but when Germans speak their mind, and say hey wait a second, that's rude, and it would be rude if we did that, too -- that's worth nothing? You wouldn't like to be treated that way.
Frankly, if these people, people who can't be arsed to learn German, ever, are so great, maybe I'm just generous for being fine with them being a boon for some other country because as persons, I find them to be bores, the same way and for the same reason I do Germans who act that way. Many native Germans also are bores, but there isn't much that can be done about that. They also don't whine that other Germans should be more accepting of them so it's not a topic.
> not wanting to speak the language fluently.
Nice try moving the goal posts there. What's under discussion is not learning it at all, not even wanting to. Not "not being good enough" at it.
I think the misunderstanding here might be "skilled people who come to work in Germany for N years" (which Germany sorely needs) vs. "people who immigrate to Germany forever to make it their Sacred Motherland" and bring their grandma and 3 cats.
As above comment mentions, N-years people sometimes have circumstances that make language learning difficult. My initial comment proposes to be polite (in my own definition, admittedly) and make effort to include them in conversations (in work environments - you do you in social env), especially when all parties know that all parties can speak perfect English.
> accomodate their laziness forever, not just until they'll get settled in
Do expats in Germany walk around with "I've been in Germany X months" clock on their foreheads? :) Of course you learn eventually... some faster than others. And some not fast enough before "maybe I should just work in Switzerland" kicks in.
The indigenous Swiss have the same attitude; it's just that in the major cities and companies, the concentration of English-speakers is so high, it's not such a problem.
I've been there, same as in Quebec for French but I would see it as a learning opportunity to practice.
In Austria I've always made an effort to stay inclusively in English in these settings but it's probably normal to fall back to default language in most countries and cultures especially when the context is not about the work per se.
You need to listen / interject and show that you are making an effort, then people usually will meet you there and you can even fall back to English again if you have to but then steer back towards target language. Learning opportunities.
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.
It's an international team that is specifically hired this way. I wouldn't expect people switching for me in a bar or in an informal setting, but at work or work-related event, it's common courtesy (to me), especially if you're aware.
I lived there for around 6 months like 15 years ago so perhaps it's changed a lot since then.
But even as an Englishman, it was very different to home. I remember the supermarket was shut all Sunday and was only open until 12 on the Saturday, and it shut early in the week too (at like 5pm or 6pm or something?) so by the time I'd got the train back home from work it was already closed. I had to get up early every Saturday just to make sure I could get the shopping done.
I remember once I waved at my neighbours who were sitting eating in a common garden area and they acted super confused that I would wave to them.
It didn't seem like an especially friendly place and there were so many rules about everything too, like just being able to take the rubbish or recycling out you had specific days and times.
I'm from Switzerland and live in Germany and I think it is very relaxed. Too relaxed for my liking to be honest. Sometimes the bins are still out in the evening??? What kind of anarchy is this ;-)
Really, it's just what you are accustomed with.
Stores closing on Sunday is a good thing I think, it makes it easier for families to have a day together and kind of resets the week. On Saturdays they are also open until 8pm, some even until 10pm or so.
>I remember once I waved at my neighbours who were sitting eating in a common garden area and they acted super confused that I would wave to them.
You need to yell "Moin" very loudly. If you are in Southern Germany, you need to yell "MOIN" twice as loud to establish dominance.
Totally agree. Living in Berlin as Swiss person is crazy. You have shops open for so long. Late trains. Crazy partys and so on. Complete chaos with garbage and things like that.
I don't mind closed on Sunday but I wish we had a bit more stores open until a bit later. My parents were in health care so for me people working late or nights was always normal.
Supermarket opening times are definitely not that restrictive (these days, but I don't recall it ever being like you mentioned & I moved to Berlin in 2013). The ones near me are usually open early morning till late evening (8-10pm), monday to saturday.
There is a lot of regional variation, mainly between the south and the rest of the country. 8am to 8pm monday to saturday is typical for Bavaria (Munich, Nuremberg).
Not Germany, but I live in a rural part of New Zealand. I noticed that several places in my town, including the chippy, had signs posted out front saying they were open til "late." Coming from the eastern US I assumed that late was at the earliest 11 or 12. Watch my surprise when I try to go get fish and chips at 8:45 and the chippy is already closed.
This is what my German father always said. Partially why he moved to Canada in the 60s. Partially a feeling of claustrophobia around rules and regulations. And lack of uncontrolled access to nature, lack of real wilderness, etc.
I kind of get it. I found my German grandparents baffling at some level. Simultaneously extremely warm and generous but at the same time intensely critical and harsh at times. My Oma was perhaps warmer on account of being Alsatian, but we had a language barrier.
Visiting Germany for the first time when I was 19 was a bit of a brain-melting experience. Like a bunch of things about my father finally made sense.
I remember visiting London and being surprised that pubs would close at 11pm and night life, outside of clubs, would pretty much die. In the largest city in Europe! Mad stuff.
When I moved back to Italy I had forgotten that shops close between 13 and 15:30. Every country has their own little quirks
This is funny because when I moved from the USA to UK I was caught off guard by "Sunday trading laws"[0] and even where not legally prohibited, it seems like most retailers other than vape stores or corner shops close at 5:30 or 6 pm, Since covid, we have to book an appointment in advance to go to the tip.
I think things have improved a little bit over the past few years – one large retail park near us advertises "late opening" (7 pm! ha!) on Thursdays — but it's still difficult to run errands during the week. I don't understand why it makes sense economically to only have your store open when no one with a 9-5 job can shop there.
Have you visited London recently? Particularly east. It's got the unfriendliness but also complete total breakdown of the social contract and social decency
Music and video calls without headphones on all transport all the time. Shoes and socks off on train seats. Zombies barging into you constantly. Nobody letting people off the train.
Throwing rubbish on the ground. Leaving it on trains and buses.
Vaping on the tube
Pushing through the barriers at stations is normalised
Everyone does whatever the hell they like everywhere all the time. Constant antisocial behaviour. It's hell. An absolute epicenter of selfishness
I dream of a rule based society like Germany or UK of years ago
Edit: am a Brit but wouldn't live in London for love nor money. Obviously a lot of those issues aren't just in London. This isn't "foreigner repeating right wing talking points" people love trying here
I agree with the breakdown of the social contract in London, but not with the unfriendliness. I've lived in the UK for eight years and have travelled to many parts of England and Wales.
I've never felt as unwelcome in London as I do almost every time I leave it. Constant suspicious looks, questions about who I am and what the purpose of me being there is, the occasional downright xenophobia.
To give you a recent example, just a couple of weeks ago I was in a supermarket in Bangor stocking up on some water ahead of a hike in the Lake District. My train was delayed, and I am now about to miss the last bus for the next two hours (still needed the water). I explain this to the guy ahead of me in the queue, asking if I could maybe jump ahead of him. He looks at me, says "No", laughs, and then proceeds to scan his items as slowly as he can. Not everyone is like that, but this kind of thing happens all the time.
I definitely believe that you'll feel more of a sense of belonging outside London if you're a local, but as a non-local, it is not friendly at all. And the further away from Britain you are from (geographically and culturally), the worse you are treated. I noticed the difference in reaction when I told people I am Moldovan compared with my ex-partner telling them she is Dutch, and my non-white friends tell me stories that are even worse. London can be unfriendly and isolating, but I'd never live outside London and a few of the other cosmopolitan cities.
I have experience in what you describe, as I live far from London in a place I'm not from. Yes it can be very insular and can take many years to even begin being treated like a local (it's not until you have a kid, so I'm told).
I'm treated with suspicion too. A lot of it is 'not from here [the village/town/county]' (and not sounding like you're from here) rather than 'not white' or 'not from the UK' so I can't hard agree it's strictly xenophobia/racism etc.
And your anecdote about that guy: exactly what I'm saying. Everyone out for themselves. Selfish. Unrelated to racism or xenophobia etc
But are you saying in London everyone falls over themselves to hold open doors, let you skip queues, always waits for people to get off the train first, nobody barges past anyone, every single shop worker says "hello good morning" "thank you" "have a great day"...? What acts of making you feel welcome exist in London that doesn't elsewhere in the country?
edit: And you started "I agree...but not with the unfriendliness" then ended with "London can be unfriendly" so I'm a bit confused :D
I don't have any identical comparisons of politeness in London and the rest of the UK, but subjectively I do feel people in London are more likely to hold doors, let me skip queues, etc. There's just more of a feeling that we're all trying to navigate life in the city together, rather than gatekeeping each other's presence in it.
It's even more noticeable with people who are paid to be polite: bar and waiting staff, the folks working at Tesco, pub security, the kebab man. I walk into a pub in the middle of nowhere in England, they treat me like I'm intruding or inconveniencing them. I do that in London, they just ask "What are you having love?".
There is definitely a lot of veiled and outright racism and xenophobia though. I've heard things like "your English is actually pretty good" (I was a BBC journalist, it's better than theirs), "at least you're not on benefits", "at least your people are not as bad as X". I've never been told these things in London.
> It's even more noticeable with people who are paid to be polite: bar and waiting staff, the folks working at Tesco, pub security, the kebab man. I walk into a pub in the middle of nowhere in England, they treat me like I'm intruding or inconveniencing them. I do that in London, they just ask "What are you having love?".
It's funny I find the complete opposite. I've been in London visiting for a week and it's been an absolute chore getting anyone to respond to "good morning" in a cafe or shop. Too many who barely speak English, don't tell me what the total is, do little more than grunt. Every order even for a simple black coffee involves an annoying back and front of "warmorice?" "Sorry?" "warmorice". Oh you mean "is that hot or iced coffee?"
A lot of it is racism and xenophobia (and I do acknowledge you may have been on the receiving end too). Many shops are staffed 100% by Asians now.
Yes HN, racism against white people / xenophobia towards British people exists.
Which part of London do you usually frequent out of interest? North or South West...?
I very much can imagine if you hang around with a lot of foreigners/non Londoners in London there's a shared experience there and a support network. You have a common background and 'struggle' of surviving London. What did you have shared with the man in Bangor or the pub staff elsewhere in England? Do you understand their perspective? Their struggles? Something to ponder perhaps
> I have experience in what you describe, as I live far from London in a place I'm not from.
Me too, but people have been pretty friendly and welcoming, and i have not been here long.
> A lot of it is 'not from here [the village/town/county]' (and not sounding like you're from here) rather than 'not white' or 'not from the UK' so I can't hard agree it's strictly xenophobia/racism etc.
People in the north seem to make a bigger deal me being a southerner (and my accent) than non-white. Of course there is a bias because expressing the former is a lot more socially acceptable.
And Northerners have real, genuine grievances with the south (ie London/Westminster) and it's not for us to wag our fingers and say they ought to have open arms and love one and all. Understanding is key.
Agree with the bias. They're far less obvious about their issues with race. Eg there are people on my street who, if the local corner shop were the only shop in the country, would sooner starve than spend any money at a business run by a Pakistani family. I frequent it but not much because: most prices are not displayed, things are often out of date, offers are not honoured etc far more than any other shop in the area. (This is of course racism xenophobia etc blah blah to point this out.) When I nicely tried to raise the various issues the whole family turned against me - they take my money but that's it
Of course it's people who don't even live in London who paint completely skewed pictures of the city. It's sad to see how much negative propaganda is being spread to induce fear, uncertainty and doubt. Why are you doing this?
Yes, almost everything you mentioned happens. You're probably going to come across some of it if you spend a bit more time here, and in some areas more than others. But you are exaggerating it all significantly - in reality these things are sporadic nuisances and it is SO far away from "everybody does what the hell they like" (implying lawlessness). Shameful really that you participate in this spread of bullshit about an amazing city.
Present your credentials. I'm from the south of England, my family lives in London, I spend plenty of time in London. I don't need your blessing to criticise the capital of the country I was born in.
Are you even British? If not, who the hell do /you/ think you are to accuse me of propaganda? I can tell you're not a native English speaker
>But even as an Englishman, it was very different to home. I remember the supermarket was shut all Sunday and was only open until 12 on the Saturday, and it shut early in the week too (at like 5pm or 6pm or something?) so by the time I'd got the train back home from work it was already closed. I had to get up early every Saturday just to make sure I could get the shopping done.
If it were the Anglosphere that had very restrictive laws about store hours/days of operation, and Germany/Austria with pretty much unlimited hours, this would be the #1 topic brought up in any online discussion whatsoever about the US/UK/etc. But because of DACH's smaller cultural visibility, it isn't brought up nearly so often in actuality.
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 regarding how quick you pick up the local language. For Germany and France this tolerance is almost 0, for Netherlands it's much higher.
Anecdotally I've noticed that among the coworkers I've had from other countries, the ones who manage to learn danish and stay, have generally been in areas with lower density of foreign workers.
My theory is that in areas with lower densities of foreign nationals, you'd benefit more socially form learning the local language.
This makes sense. By default, foreigners stick with their fellow countrymen pretty much everywhere. Not having them around gives foreigners a reason to socialise outside their bubble. I believe this is the reason why Denmark has the so called guetto laws.
In Germany, if you are an non-software Engineer, you MUST have an excellent level of the language. I have not seen a single Engineering position that doesn't require C1.
> 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
I disagree: for many jobs, it is expected that you have a decent level of English, but at least in Germany, you are often not immersed a lot in English. So you have to get decent in English with barely any immersion.
I thus have a feeling that because many Germans had to learn hard to get somewhat decent in English on their own, they have the same expectation on immigrants to learn really hard on their own to get good in German fast (without demanding immersion).
Some level of english is required in every country. And you are exposed to it quite frequently in a way or the other (which european country doest start teaching it from elementary school? ).
My uni required me to follow course in english and write and defend a thesis in English. You are exposed to english a lot.
And on top of that it's a simple lanuge.
Try to lean polish, or chinese. Or german as a Japanese native.
Won't be that easy.
Your argument ignores one important aspect - incentives.
English is the global lingua franca, hence the incentive to learn English is incredibly strong. Outside of Germany, what exact benefit does the German language get you?
> Outside of Germany, what exact benefit does the German language get you?
German is also official language in Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. In many neighbouring countries it is also often well-understood and/or there exist language minorities.
> English is the global lingua franca
From my professional experience I can tell that depending on the countries or persons from countries that you deal with, Spanish, French, Russian or Chinese can be much more important than English.
So, calling English the global lingua franca is in my opinion rather based on a selection bias on specific countries.
"So, calling English the global lingua franca is in my opinion rather based on a selection bias on specific countries."
In software, if you don't speak English, you don't really exist. Same for pilots and some other industries. Spanish programmers will need to learn English even for jobs in Spain. I have no idea what you are talking about.
Other big industries. Finance and banking switches to English the moment you deal with anything international. Academic publications and conferences in many fields are heavily tilted towards English. You have more specialist textbooks in English than in any other language in many fields.
> In software, if you don't speak English, you don't really exist. Same for pilots and some other industries. Spanish programmers will need to learn English even for jobs in Spain. I have no idea what you are talking about.
I know from programmers from Russia that in this country, you can pretty much do software development without knowing any English, Russian suffices (to the surprise of programmers from other countries). This is also why it cannot taken for granted that a programmer who comes from Russia knows English (at least more than minimal, shallow knowledge from school).
I heard similar things about programmers in China.
Dude, software itself is written in English, not just English but it is most often (but not always) encoded in a character set that is English specific (can't even do French). The docs for every single platform, API and language are in English. You can get translations for some stuff and auto-translate the rest. But you can't even file a bug without English. The people you know probably don't write software, they are probably using computers to scam people and deploy software written by others to aid in that.
Yes the keywords are in English, but that does not mean much. You can not understand them and just use them as magic incantations. The docs often exist in translated versions, and there are also books about the same platform/language so you're not stuck with only the official docs.
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.
As someone who moved from the U.S to Germany and has been here for ~15 months, I figured I would drop a few comments while I'm running a NixOS rebuild.
Let me start with the wonderful things: Public transportation is nice, at least compared to the U.S. I like the shared sense of responsibility that Germans have with things like recycling. The directness is quite nice, in the U.S I often had to question if someone was being genuine or not, and that is not really a problem here. If you're into various hobbies, clubs, etc., Germany has really incredible communities and clubs for so many things, and they're very organized about this, it's quite nice. The nature is great, and I've really enjoyed exploring different areas.
As for the negatives, it's clear in Germany that you're looking at buying into their system, for life so to speak. You don't find yourself getting equity, trading stocks, buying a home, etc. You generally are expected to work, keep your head down, and hopefully acquire an apartment where the rent won't increase while you support the social system (for the record, I am more than okay with paying my share, but I was shocked at the difference in take home pay, and particularly how it feels compared to the U.S). Buying a home is likely not going to be in the cards for most, and there is so much paperwork, painful and expensive driving courses, and strange decisions as well with starting your own business. I have for instance a few projects where I could be taking revenue, but I specifically am not as it would make my visa situation more complicated, and am instead waiting for a year or two.
Germany is really not a convenience culture, I consistently find myself exhausted. This might sound stupid, but in the U.S, I can simply hop in a car and grab a reasonably healthy Chipotle bowl or similar, get enough protein and vegetables, etc. In Germany, there really are not so many places for quick food to grab, in general the food is actually quite poor, I don't find myself eating out at all.
Additionally, the language is brutal, it's hard to explain just how exhausting it is to learn while you're working full time. I have probably spent ~600 hours practicing yet I am still only about an A2 speaking level, with my understanding generally being a bit higher.
All in all, I'm happy I made the switch, it's been incredibly rewarding, but it truly is exhausting. I can see how this would add up, and I often think about how easy my life might be in the United States, and I miss this easy, casual life that's been replaced for something that really expects and demands so much from me, every single day and interaction.
Germans tend to differentiate between getting takeout (something like kebab/pizza/asia box to go or delivered home) or eating out (going to a restaurant and eating there).
But I'd argue for most people getting into the car to get takeout is not very common.
Yeah and honestly, it shouldn't be. It was really strange going back to the U.S and having family members suggest we drive to get ice cream. It's incredibly wasteful.
That being said, I've noticed that these takeout meals tend to be pretty low quality and unhealthy and I miss this middle ground that I could lean on once or twice a week.
> Yeah and honestly, it shouldn't be. It was really strange going back to the U.S and having family members suggest we drive to get ice cream. It's incredibly wasteful.
Side remark: In Germany "drive" (in this case: to get ice cream) can often also mean "go by bike" (in Germany, the word "fahren" is both used for cars (Auto fahren) and bicycles (Rad/Fahrrad fahren), leaving it open which vehicle is meant, because both choices are plausible, even though I would claim that for getting ice cream, a bicycle is the more natural choice.
Thinking about my Swiss village, the only takeout worth thinking about is the delicious kebab downhill which doesn't do delivery. Otherwise it would be all eat.ch and similar. Why should I drive when I can get it delivered for no extra cost? I guess it's just a cultural difference, not a drawback (in either direction)
Maybe you need to live somewhere with more options to compare?
As one example, Tokyo has 160,000 restaurants. NYC has 21k. Divided by population that's 5x more in Tokyo.
Other example would be most major Asian cities. Taipei for example has 20-30 night markets each with 50 to 500 stalls. Kuala Lumpur has mamak food stand areas all over, often open till 4am.
Cool numbers, so are you making an argument for eating out, for getting take out, or for ordering delivery? Or for moving to Asia? Sorry I don't know what to do with all that information.
> In Germany, there really are not so many places for quick food to grab, in general the food is actually quite poor, I don't find myself eating out at all.
That is wildly false. First of all the availability of eating out options is directly influenced by where you are (e.g. in Berlin there is incredible variety of cuisines, price ranges and healthiness), and secondly almost every food or grocery you buy in Germany is of higher quality than the US equivalent.
I remember my shock when every single food item I bought in the US had sugar in it.
I mean there are exceptions in cities with a higher immigrant presence like Berlin, but for a lot of Germany you're simply looking at low quality kebab, pizza, or burgers.
There also seems to be this general perception of food in the U.S being so bad, this is true for areas that are strongly lacking access, i.e inner cities, rural areas (much of the country to be fair!), but if you're in an agricultural hub in the U.S you can have absolutely incredible access to farmers markets and fresh produce. A lot of regional grocery stores have fresh sourdough and other breads similar in quality to the stuff you can find at Lidl/Aldi/Edeka.
You are definitely right that there are places in the US with great produce e.g. rural cali - much better than Germany's - but I still feel that on average there is higher quality food in Germany, less ultra processed food and a healthier food culture in general.
Of course I haven't scoured the states (not even Germany for that matter), so.. :)
I don't know German produce but I'm pretty confident California, where I'm from, doesn't compare to Paris' farmers markets. The variety and quality there were way beyond all the farmers markets and produce stands I've been to over my life in California. That said, I certainly noticed a difference between California and Maryland, at least at the time. But, having experienced better I no longer consider California good. As one example, I have very bad luck trying to find a tomato with any flavor.
In the US, a lot of "farmers" markets are just people selling wholesale produce they bought from a warehouse or maybe Costco or similar. There's not really any regulation (though I don't know about California, specifically).
I'm from a "southern" country and I lived in Germany for 10 years. My kids were born there.
Last year we decided to move to my home country because of "too many things" but also fed up of feeling an immigrant.
Few months ago I met a German family living around here in a coastal area. I asked them why they moved here and they answered me straight to my face "Because in Germany there are too many immigrants". I think the joke tells itself.
> I asked them why they moved here and they answered me straight to my face "Because in Germany there are too many immigrants".
This reminds me of those UK elderly living out their pensions in Spain voting for Brexit to reduce immigration. Thanks to outrage media, I think this public perception of immigration ruining everything is almost everywhere now.
I moved to Germany 15 years ago from Scandinavia. Integrating here is really tough. The bureaucratic systems are very opaque and small mistakes in paperwork can cause a lot of problems...
Here in DK we have a law with my family name in it .. which the fuckers spelled wrong. I asked them to correct it but they refused. This is the story about how I became a citizen.
I would hardly call it "world class". Most of the world is much harsher place to migrants than any EU member country. Privileged, well paid expats may be treated nicely in most of the world, but that does not apply to refugees and people who move for low-paid manual labor.
Well paid expats wearing a hijab, who definitely aren't refugees, will not be treated nicely in Germany. Lived and worked in Germany and saw it a lot. It's a low bar indeed to treat skilled labor coming to your country nicely that sadly Germany can't even pass.
You are kind of expected to adjust yourself to the culture of the country you’re immigrating to. If you fail (or refuse) to do so in the most obvious/visible ways possible (like clothing), I think you shouldn’t be surprised when people look at you weird because you look out of place.
Sure, but I think what grates on people with Germany is the "they should know better" aspect of it. People have (or had) expectations of EU countries they don't have of "the harsher places".
No I don’t think so. The “Germany should know better” is more akin to irony
Soft bigotry of low expectation is not open hostility so much as a giving up on a people—-X people are inherently incapable, so just let them be, don’t expect anything from them. As a result of painless low expectation, no one strives, no one offers them opportunities, the people don’t move forward, and the low expectation fuels further low expectation based on poor performance.
Mor maybe you were referring to expectation of other EU countries to be unwelcoming?
I mean... yes discrimination doesn't feel nice... but it's not as if people who come to Germany where forced to do so by the germans.
I'm not from Germany, but the vibes in some of the high-muslim density parts of Germany I've been to have likewise felt unwelcome, unsafe and hostile (towards me as a scandinavian).
So it feel a bit more complicated than "germans are racist, BAD".
Anecdotally I've heard that it's hard for any other nationality to do business in germany, simply because they prefer to do business with other germans. It's their country, we just need to accept those cultural differences, and their right to do as they please in their own country.
There's plenty of countries whose laws or attitudes I don't agree with, and that I just don't visit or have any ambition of staying in. China, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Chad are a few examples.
Not to mention the fact that all of those home countries are equally if not more openly racist and restrictive of immigrants from the other direction
The question is, is any country “perfect” in this regard, showing zero degree of self-selecting and internal favoritism? I suspect not, because it’s not really possible to have a country without focusing on, well, itself, first and foremost. Of course integrated immigrants ARE part of “the country”. But if immigrations swells too fast and/or immigrants are not well integrated, then of course that can present obvious non-racism-based problems for the county’s finances, infrastructure, economy, and culture.
Is anyone outside the west throwing the word “racist” around so liberally? It seems to west thinks it’s somehow evolved beyond the natural constraints of state/tribe. But, of course, it can’t.
No country is "perfect" in this regard, just as no human is perfect. It often strikes me as ironic how people label an entire country or a people as racist, immediately showing their own level of generalization and ability to apply prejudice.
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 perception, their lack of assimilation or integration into the prevailing local faith/religion/cultures, and their relentless persecutions, expulsions, and genocide.
Nevertheless, all that ugly history doesn't seem like it's put a damper on their ambitions or status through the 21st century.
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.
Races don't exist on any biological level. Racists evidently do. Believing in the false construct of biological race doesn't necessarily make you a racist; it doesn't really even seem to be a precondition anymore.
But it was the foundation for sociopolitical racism, so if the concept of race guides your thinking about people's characteristics, especially their non-physical characteristics, you are at least somewhat in danger of racist thinking.
> Finding the right donor for a patient isn’t simple. Donors and patients are matched largely based on genes called human leukocyte antigens (HLAs). These genes code for proteins—or markers—found on most of the cells in your body. When it comes to matching HLA types, a patient’s ethnic background is important in predicting the likelihood of finding a match. That’s because HLA is inherited. Some ethnic groups have more complex tissue types than others, which makes finding a close match more difficult.
> there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable
Any educated person with access to the internet who never was even curious about this I'm suspicious of. If you don't arrive at it by the thought experiments a bored teenager might do, it takes like 5 minutes of reading, and then that's done.
This whole discussion is exhausting, isn't it, but it worries me because it seems we have fully gone backwards if people are back to saying "OK biologically you are of the black race, we can prove it".
But like... no one claims there's some essentialist and typological race. Everyone knows that it is lossy but a real category. Whom are you attacking here?
Any educated person knows that there's no one to one mapping between DNA and how the word "Asian" is used. There's a good predictive power for DNA and a high correlation. But that's how language works.
Between a "hill" and a "mountain", there's no concrete boundary. So even this is not essentialist. But no educated person would claim that hills and mountains don't exist as categories.
I think this is what you have done: you want to signal that you are against racism. So you end up using a strawman definition of race and then deny that race as a category itself doesn't exist.
Advice: don't create this strawman. Argue against the real thing: race is a category albeit a fuzzy one that humans use through language and this category has a biological basis.
There is one human race, you can divide them in groups by whatever markers you want, doesn't make it a race. "Tall people" is no more a race than "white people" is.
> I think this is what you have done: you want to signal that you are against racism.
To whom? If you had any idea the spats I got into (let's say with "liberals", as a shorthand) because I heard and understood Body Count before they were even born, and same for MLK and Frederick Douglass. I don't do sides, and I'm not aware of any that would have me, so don't assume about me to get away of the scientific facts on race when it comes to humans.
And this isn't 1950s, so "not being racist" is not a flex to me. It's not something to be proud of, but rather grateful for. Like not sacrificing children to volcanos anymore or whatever doesn't make us better people, it makes us better off. We're lucky to have the opportunity to be less ignorant is all.
> Advice: don't create this strawman. Argue against the real thing: race is a category albeit a fuzzy one that humans use through language and this category has a biological basis.
Advice: the above is essentially indistinguishable from the false scientific argumentation that white supremacists use to make their case. It has no meaningful basis in science.
Essentially indistinguishable? That's going so far. Please don't do this. It's so counter-productive to provide evidence for the "they call everything racist/white-supremacist" accusation.
> Advice: the above is essentially indistinguishable from the false scientific argumentation that white supremacists use to make their case
Wow. You make things worse by calling people who think race is a fuzzy category white supremacists. This kinda thing is part of the problem. Please reconsider - its childish and everyone can see through this.
> That article doesn't mention the word "race" once.
Are you being intentionally obtuse by pretending ethnicity and race can't be used interchangeably on a broad level? The entire point of requiring "diversity in bone marrow donation" is that you can't just take bone marrow from an ethnically caucasian ("white" in racial classification terms) and expect the transfer to be successful for an African American person ("black" in racial classification terms). Yes "white", "black" et al are imprecise terms but they broadly align with certain ethnic groups, and there ARE biological differences between ethnicities.
I think this discussion won't be productive because for them, dismissing race as a concept is a way to combat racism itself and prove higher moral ground.
No, I think racism is mostly one of the ways in which little fish get played off against other little fish, and the best way to combat it is also the best way to combat a lot of other big issues, and that is holding the big fish to account. We're angry fighting over table scraps because consolidated power consolidates further and takes all our oxygen. Like in that meme image with a rich guy and a plate with hundreds of cookies, telling a worker "careful, the immigrant wants to steal your cookie".
I think similarly about other "culture war" issues: there are always two sides that have at least one 2+2=5 article of faith, e.g. races being real and super important, or white old men being the source of all sin, or some religion or other, or biological sex being a spectrum. But there's always something, you always have to hand off your brain and reduce yourself below the level of a moderately intelligent and curious teenager. Otherwise, you're "the other", and what that is depends on the group, not you.
So how you instantly have an image of me in your head, simply because I "talked back" or whatever, is hilarious to me. You have no idea about me, and and couldn't guess in a million years how I actually am, but you know your enemy, so I'm probably that. And the most fun part is, I will get told I'm "fash" or MAGA with exactly the same ease. From my perspective, I know with 100% certainty y'all are talking about each other, because none of it even begins to describe me or my conduct, and is always the same dumb shit, very little variation or originality.
Races exist at the biological level. I'm surprised this is even contested. IDK what makes you think white person is different from a black person? Is it vibes? Even a kid knows that a white person has different DNA.
Black and white are not races. They are racial discrimination categories. People with black skin are not one identifiable group except "black skin". Which is a heritable trait that affects pigmentation used to create a social discrimination category. It does not make a single meaningfully identifiable group in any other sense. (It's not even consistently the same trait, on a biological level)
You are talking about sociopolitical race discrimination and suggesting it has absolute, immutable biological mappings. It does not. This actually is quite close to real racism.
I make no claim to be smart and calling a high school diploma an education is a stretch. That said, human sex overwhelmingly clusters around two categories, albeit with some intersex outliers. Additionally, Bimodal sex has endured for as long as recorded history, so it appears to be an immutable trait insofar as the species is a stable species and not taking into account that somewhere along the timeline we share a lineage with single-celled organisms.
Race on the other hand, does not neatly cluster into discreet categories that any responsible person would define, draw boundaries around and count. Furthermore, race has not remained stable over recorded history. Populations mix, join and split. Which race were the Old Kingdom Egyptians? Our modern notions of Asian, Caucasian, etc. probably did not even exist during their era.
Using "Race" like this is really bad in Germany and Sweden. As is pointed out in this thread [1] how we use words differs. TIL race has a different meaning in English and Swedish. I use it in both but I've never thought about the difference in how I use it in different languages.
Categories are not fixed between cultures, even colours and numbers are hard to get right. So when you hear a word you can not be clear it is used in your broad meaning, or the narrow meaning.
This was actually my favourite way of nerd sniping back when I was young.
Can you see the fallacy you are doing here? The parent tried to suggest this: simply because a thing can be in a spectrum doesn't make it unworthy of being a category. You've twisted that analogy into this nonsensical book example.
The genders have always been bi-modal, but the well has been poisoned by people calling it "a binary" (hence "non-binary" people). A sad state of affairs.
The implication of what you say — that white and black are races — is that indigenous Australians and African Americans are the same "race", because they both have black skin?
There's no need to torture semantics. We all understand how the terms "black" and "white" are used in the English-speaking world. They are umbrella terms with varying usage depending on what superset/subset of people you are talking about in the moment. E.g. in the US, "black" usually refers to dark-skinned people of African descent (I assume you know this), but other dark-skinned people might be included depending on context. Yes, biological/genetic "race" is a many-dimensional spectrum, in which context it's fine to argue that "race" doesn't exist, but that doesn't make the colloquial words used to describe "race" meaningless. It just makes their borders fuzzy when mapped onto a biological context.
Biological race does not, indeed, exist. Really at all. Defining it as a many-dimensional spectrum just so you can to continue to use the word "race", now that is torturing semantics.
The semantics I am referring to are the suggestion that "white" and "black" exist as races on a genetic level.
The example I am introducing is to test the understanding behind that suggestion.
I think what its trying to say is race as a defined biological categorisation doesn't really exist, at least not to the extent its been described in past. The biological variance between humans is more of spectrum than categories.
race as a cultural / social concept does exist though, and that biology certainly correlates to an extent due to geography and how human society has traditionally functioned.
I.e, the cornish are a race, falling under celtic, which originate from Iberia, but is there a modern biological difference to their surrounding English people? Are they more biologically similar to the modern people inhabiting the Iberian peninsula or those in Kent? And even then, are they really all thatthat biologically different from the modern spanish anyways?
Ah, but it gets messier than that. What's a Celt, anyway? It was traditionally believed that Celts were in some sense a single ethnic group, but the genetics don't _really_ support that, in particular for British and Irish Celts.
> I think what its trying to say is race as a defined biological categorisation
Proof? What do you think the people were asked in the survey? Normal people use race in the normal way. I think white people exist. I think black people exist. Everyone knows this - I don't need any academic to prove me wrong.
And I don't think it makes me racist when some one asks me "are there different human races" and I answer "yes".
Sorry, but most Europeans don't use the term anymore since the Nazis tried to impose a catastrophic societal order based on their race ideology.
White people were only white if they could show bloodlines reaching back generations. One jewish great-grandfather would make you intelligible for the Arian race. They would laugh at your notion of white vs black.
Physiognomic appearance does not equate with genetically discrete populations, so while we can obviously visually identify that people have broadly asian, african, european, polynesian dissent etc; this doesn't equate with other factors stereotypically associated with those 'races'. Race is a folk taxonomy. Ethnicity and genetics are complex - like most things when you make more than a cursory investigation.
So while you might not be racist for thinking so, you're at best misinformed.
Duello, T. M., Rivedal, S., Wickland, C., & Weller, A. (2021). Race and genetics versus ‘race’ in genetics. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, 9(1), 232–245. https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eoab018
Herd, P., Mills, M. C., & Dowd, J. B. (2021). Reconstructing Sociogenomics Research: Dismantling Biological Race and Genetic Essentialism Narratives. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 62(3), 419–435. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465211018682
Hunt, L. M., & Megyesi, M. S. (2008). Genes, race and research ethics: who’s minding the store? Journal of Medical Ethics, 34(7), 495–500. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2007.021295
Lujan, H. L., & DiCarlo, S. E. (2024). Misunderstanding of race as biology has deep negative biological and social consequences. Experimental Physiology, 109(8), 1240–1243.
https://doi.org/10.1113/ep091491
Aren't haplotype groups essentially "race"? Certainly there is not white/black race, but a southern costal Indian would self differentiate from a central one, you can spot the difference visually,culturally and lingustcally and there is also well understood predispositions of different groups to specific ailments (see diabetes). Not my area of expertise so might be way off
I'm no expert on haplogroups either, but cursory googling seems to indicate they are far more numerous and nuanced than the late victorian, scientific-racism derived classifications used today - i.e.: black, white, asian etc.
But we don't need to be specialists in population genetics to observe that human cultures interbreed. We can't reliably correlate visible biomarkers with genetic origin, especially in contemporary multicultural societies or any of the places where numerous land invasions over thousands of years have ensured continual group mixing. For example Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan, Mongolian steppe etc. My nephew is half 'Irish', half 'Indian'. But what does that mean exactly? His ancestry is likely to contain contributions from hundreds of subgroups and linguistic populations across South East India, as well as Ireland and the UK more broadly. Visibly he looks 'Indian', but what does that mean for a determinant of race?
These concepts were engineered in the colonial era. Only the names have changed. In college my friends and I picked up a cut price set of colonial era British encyclopedia. They had lots to say on racial groups, with detailed descriptions of the personality types, intelligence and appearance of groups like 'negroids' and 'hibernians'. Of course none of this was based on what we'd today term scientific reasoning or measurement - and yet the conclusions and stereotypes persist in our culture. Irrespective of powerful counterexamples demonstrating that culture and economics determine an enormous amount of educational and attainment potential. e.g.: Nigerian American economic success [1], the explosive boom and continual exceptional economic performance of Ireland [2], or the absurd difference in educational outcomes of countries which are ethnically homogenous but politically divided - e.g.: North and South Korea, Haiti and Dominican Republic etc.
Remember interindividual differences radically outpace intergroup differences. Which is not to suggest that highly homogenous ethnic groups (e.g.: askinazi jews, or certain West African populations) can't have significant differences in athletic ability. But such differences are on population levels much smaller than observable 'races' per say.
> Physiognomic appearance does not equate with genetically discrete populations
The idea that race affects EXACTLY things that appear on the surface and nothing else is laughable. You need mountains of layers of cognitive dissonance to believe this. For example: different races are susceptible to different diseases.
Instead of hitting tackling racism properly, you are putting fingers in your ears and shouting that race itself doesn't exist. Do you really think you can beat racism like this?
The fact that you can have categories that span bigger spectrums doesn't preclude the category from existing. You can have dark and light colours. But you can also have dark blue light blue and so on. That doesn't mean colour doesn't exist.
> this doesn't equate with other factors stereotypically associated
who is suggesting this? what do you think the people in the survey are asked? They were asked if races exist and they definitely do. White people exist and Black people exist. Normal people won't read your research papers lmao. Colloquially, races do exist and normal people should think that races do exist.
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 will tell you.
What you seem to be arguing is that ethnicity, and the genetic effects of ethnicity, are real. They are. Race as biological construct, with consequent societal effects is also not real. White people are not inherently more intelligent that Black people.
The other person is technically right, but is one of those people who seem to believe that biological differences do not matter in society, one of those "i don't see colour" types. Race as a social construct is very much real.
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.
Race theory was always pseudoscience to imply the generalized differences between people who looked differently were genetic and thus inherent traits.
It's an extension of a much older, more insidious idea - blood purity. There are still people who would pretend to trace their own lineage back through every scholar, king, and prophet to Adam, while choosing to believe that everyone else is a mongrel line, inferior and subservient to them in some way.
Way to mix completely different things. Its like saying: Gender exists hence men are better. No one suggests this kinda thing.
Race is not pseudo science. Race is real. White people are meaningfully different from Black people. Its not bad to be different. It doesn't mean one is different from the other. You can't beat racism by claiming race itself is not real!
Skin color and (facial) bone structure for example. Like it or not, but humans have adapted to living in different climates and have different ancestral lines. Take a picture of an average black person and edit to white skin, it will still not look like a white person.
As the commenter above you already said, this is not a bad thing. People on _hacker_news should be able to understand that being able to define the ==/!= operators on something does not automatically mean that you can define < and >.
It is more obvious with some and a bit more nuanced with others, but in general yes. Just like you can typically see the flat/wide nose in Africans and Asians but not Europeans. Again, there is no implication of one being "better" than the other here, but don't pretend it's impossible to categorize people like this.
You seem to keep suggesting that boundaries have to be perfect for categories to exist. This is not the case. White colour and dark colour exist as categories yet are blurry. Yet no sane person suggests colours don’t exist.
There’s no sharp boundary between a hill and a mountain. There’s no sharp boundary between dark and white colours. There’s no sharp boundary between male and female either at the edge cases when you consider intersex. Language has its limitations and it’s obvious to most of us and we don’t have to play semantic juggling each time.
Does the way people use race as a word have biological basis? Absolutely yes. For example you take people who self identify as black and white and try to find whether their DNA can predict their self identified race. You would agree that it can predict to a good extent I hope.
On a side note: I think you have fallen into this popular rabbit hole where you expect sharp boundaries for commonly used words/categories. Such sharp boundaries never exist and every normal person from a child to an adult knows and works around this. This kind of rhetoric is popular with some extremist academic types to signal their in group presence. Tip: if you want to solve racism, don’t get into debates on esoteric definitions of race and pretend race itself doesn’t exist. Normal people aren’t convinced.
What even is biological race? Race as used sociologically has a biological basis. And normal people think that race is real, the same way colour is real.
You have said this
> Races don't exist on any biological level
And it is completely untrue. Sociological race does exist at a biological level. DNA of blacks and whites are different.
Just like wavelength emitted by black and white colours are different.
The survey asked whether race is real - of course race is. Just like colour is real.
White and black are not biological races but words used to describe real clusters of people, even if its lossy. In the entire conversation, you have made a complete strawman, as if people are talking about some made up definition of biological race you have come up with and then claim that "ha that made up definition is not real!"
>race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences
You said
> Races don't exist on any biological level
My suggestion: separate your moral claims and virtues from objective facts. I think you are spiralling into a maze of arguments that you yourself can't keep up with.
You have taken the phrase "real biological consequences", which is talking about the illness, healthcare, stress, poverty etc. impact of racism on centuries of people and used it to support your essential thesis that race itself can be detected on some biological level.
This is shameful.
> I think you are spiralling into a maze of arguments that you yourself can't keep up with.
Race != Race. Race as a social construct exists but biologically speaking there is no such thing.
In the US the term "race" always refers to the social construct. The german word "Rasse" did not undergo that same change in meaning. Even the most extreme right wing in Germany, the most openly racist people you can find would not dare to use that word in this manner in public. This is far more offensive than using the n-word.
So having germans agree to such statements especially so many is genuinely quite shocking.
It would really just save everyone a lot of time if we just said "branch" instead of "race". We all branched off from some shared ancestors somewhere back in the mists of time. We're all cousins from different branches of the family.
TBH I think the word is often used without much consideration. So where people should say ethnicity or ancestry e.g., they say race instead, because it is just simpler, not because they carry much meaning with it. This is true in German and English..
Also I think given the context you know how people mean these words. But all I see is wild jumping on some words without much context all the time.
> Race as a social construct exists but biologically speaking there is no such thing
Mountains of layers of cognitive dissonance are needed to believe this. Race is absolutely biological. To think otherwise is fooling oneself. You are doing a disservice to combating racism by negating the existence of race itself. Do you really think racism will just go away by suggesting black people and white people are exactly the same internally? Get real man.
The situation is kind of similar in my country (France).
My partner and I lived together in Czech Republic for 7 years where I was working as a scientist (EU to EU, pretty much no paperwork involved). She is american and obtained a "partner of EU citizen" long stay permit. We decided to move back to France and now we have to deal with bureaucracy and it is exhausting.
There are many paths by which an non-EU citizen can get residency in europe and it includes:
- Student visa (9 months, needs to apply long in advance)
- Entrepreneur (need to pitch a business, needs 30k€ of savings)
- Refugee
- Married (the easiest one)
- Family member of EU citizen (only applies when the EU citizen is not native to the country you apply to)
- Family member of native citizen
We had to apply to the last one, because we only have a civil union (it's a french thing called PACS and it's not recognized as a "proper" union for permits).
We also needed to prove that we had lived together for more than a year (which we also had to do in Czech Republic) so that she could get her one year permit. The fees are opaque (the website says 350€ of tax + 100 € of processing fee but the final bill was 650€). Any document must be translated (cost us around 1000€) and official documents must be verified by apostille (which we learned when we celebrated our civil union in at the french embassy in Czech Republic).
At the end of her permit, she will need to validate an A2 level of profciency in french to apply for a multi year permit (2 to 4 years). Once she has lived 5 years here, she can apply for a permanent residency if she has a B2 level, pass a civil exam and show proofs of involvement in civic life.
All of this to say that the requirements to immigrate in Europe require either a lot of money or a lot of dedication. This really changed my view on the whole "Europe has free border, anybody can get in to steal our job" rhetoric.
Anecdotal and more for unskilled than skilled workers, but having traveled to Germany a bunch, I found that taxi drivers and delivery drivers seem pretty unhappy there. They mention not feeling accepted, feeling constantly looked down upon, etc. There's a bit of that in every country, but generally, the immigrants I've found in Germany seem a lot less happy than the ones I've met in other countries.
1. A "meta-problem": While many Germans agree that things are bad, people favour completely opposite solutions.
My meta-solution to that would be decentralisation and letting more things be decided locally, but unfortunately Germans are united in favouring centralisation these days.
2. There's a strong superposition of "things are bad" and "we are still the best"; a high degree of defensiveness and stubbornness. This was accurately described as "presumptuousness" in another comment.
I like Germany, studied German a bit in college, etc but when my family and I decided to move somewhere that suited us because we could work from anywhere Germany really failed to impress. We ended up in the Netherlands which offers a a lot of the perks people associate with Germany (perhaps wrongly, good trains were one of the things we wanted) without as many of the downsides.
It's interesting how quickly any discussion about immigrant/expat life in Germany becomes about language. That has to account for something.
After my tenure of 11 years in the country, my impression is that there is a deeper sense of "us" v/s "them"; the language is the most PC way to express it.
If you're in the category of "us" you don't complain about the taxes or things being closed on Sundays, because you're supposed to "understand" that there's a welfare state (which has been a myth for a while now and cracks are showing up since covid). If you're in the "us", you don't claim bureaucracy is treacherous, because the language should have equipped you to fight it. You might be in the "us", if you believe with every bit of your being that rules and regulations is the best way to ensure everyone behaves properly and everything works efficiently.
If you dare challenge (m)any of these and you don't speak German good enough, it's the language. If you speak the language, then you're not "integrated". Maybe that's immigration everywhere, but I feel in Germany, there is a rather narrow band you get to be in "acceptably".
1. Defensiveness; one could describe it as "Stockholm syndrome"
2. What outsiders don't understand about the language thing is that it's not about how much German you need to get along in daily life. That's a similar challenge everywhere in the world.
The crux is that in Germany, correct use of the language is a social status thing, more so than in other places.
Any person, whether German or foreigner, who appears to have difficulty with the language, is easily looked down upon.
The point about correct use being a status thing is such a good point, that you almost never see mentioned, but definitely feel it.
Recently I saw a discussion on Reddit where the author made a minor mistake in the title, that sounds perfectly fine and understandable to me, as a non-native speaker. They used "Mit was" instead of "womit". And more than half the comments were people pointing out the mistake and making fun of the person due to it, rather than engage in the topic that was raised in the first place.
Yes. I don’t want to invalidate people’s bad experiences, but I think it’s a more general problem and not specifically xenophobia. What you describe can happen to anybody!
The same is true for speaking English, which is considered very high status in Germany. If someone has a strong German accent, they’ll be made fun of. I always find this ironic because the people laughing usually don’t speak much better. (Not that I would care; I love people’s accents.)
I have like a dozen different german friends, and it's nothing like you say: everyone in the country curses the bureaucracy, every sunday is like "oh let's quickly get something from the shops oh no wait it's sunday uuuugh"
The taxes seem largely fine relative to the cost of living there, with people living in poorer regions at an advantage even due to the Freibetrag.
Complaining about the bureaucracy is sure everyone's favourite trauma bonding exercise, but I never hear about the solution to it. It's in the political agenda, but the solution is almost always, let's form a committee to decide the agenda of the report about it that would be 1500 pages long and be done in 72 weeks from the day of conclusion of committee's proposal. I feel the issue is the mentality towards problem solving.
Taxes are fine till Herr Merz isn't busy proposing a rug-pull on half of the things you learnt were supported here. Many of our "expat" friends faced this first hand when they lost their Kindergeld unplanned. There was a sudden hue and cry about dependents' insurance being scrapped, not sure of what's latest on it. And the English speaking, tech and finance working expats are not in poorer regions.
I don't know all Germans and maybe it is my circle, but in general I felt if I didn't mirror their hobbies, opinions, and preferences, I wasn't going to have a chance to be on the same table as them or have a heart to heart conversation with them. It's almost like it's too inefficient use of their social time and I'm pretty sure I ain't alone.
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.
I know the US gets a lot of flak due to the current administration's policies and actions. Despite that it is still the best country for immigrants with the caveat 'Assuming the immigrant makes every effort to integrate (learning the language, respecting local people/customs etc)'
More generally, I'd say the Americas are a step above Europe when it comes to ease of integration. In South America, people often assumed I'm immigrating, and made it clear I was welcome. In Europe, where I actually tried to immigrate, I'm treated as just a long-staying tourist. (Not blaming anyone here, they can run their countries however I want, but it's just silly to expect that people who have choice would come to Europe.)
Despite the whirlwind of media to the contrary, the US is very welcoming to foreigners who follow the laws (that is, don't enter illegally) and make an effort to integrate by learning the language and customs.
Immigrating to Canada was a breeze for decades until the last 2-3 years when they started to reduce immigration numbers in response to citizen concerns.
Eh it's not as black and white as you make it look. Colleague of mine is in ICE detention, because ICE acted on courts being held up in appeals so they can ignore his ongoing asylum case and deport him back to Russia. He followed the rules, had a work permit and everything, but did not matter in the end.
The green card interview snatching is also messed up, if your existing visa expired, while you were being processed, USCIS was understanding and it did not affect your application. (Processing time is slow, so that can happen). Now it's if your visa ever expires your Freiwild for ICE. They're technically not wrong with this, but they're essentially throwing the book at people getting a visum legally too.
That doesn't contradict what I'm saying. They aren't going to do anything that might depress the economy—it's just a sufficient cruelty to satisfy their base.
> It seems the world is turning hostile to immigration in general
Not the concept itself, but the insane numbers. Even South Africa is having "anti-migrant" protests (by the _black_ population; important detail, due to history).
Having 1-2% of your population come in as migrants* is pretty nuts; no negative migration afterwards; number only goes up. I cannot see how this is going to end well in the long run.
*: This is for the Netherlands, for the last 5 years since 2024 (that's the latest numbers I got from our Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS)). That is _just_ economic migration. It's insane. I made some visualizations: https://tbataafschebroederschap.nl/projects/autochtoonse-ned...
Lots of people want to migrate from one country to another, so they clearly think their own lives would be improved (bar a few doing it altruistically).
As for including the locals lives, how? You might be bringing skills they need, or money. Do you mean purely socially? That is very subjective.
I think the media exaggerate the hostility. IMO most of the hostility here in the UK is aimed at 1) illegal immigrants and asylum seekers and 2) Muslims. There is also rising hostility to Jews, but usually from an entirely different group to those hostile to Muslims.
Do you mean purely socially? That is very subjective
True. I remember walking the streets of NYC with a friend. We played a game, if we hear anyone talking, we'd try and identify the language. In less than 20 minutes, I think we counted like 10, and they were only the ones we were sure of. That level of diversity is possible only with immigration.
Some people might be good with diversity. Some people might hate it. Immigration is a complex, nuanced topic. Personally, I am in the camp of letting people move around freely (as long as they are not doing crime and are being respectful to locals). This is 2026, we can fly from one corner of the world to another in 24 hours. We are more dependent on each other than ever - so why not let people move freely too?
But I also realize some people might not want immigrants, there are people who don't even want tourists (and tourist money)
Because it’s quite difficult to tell whether someone is in the UK illegally just by looking at them, I imagine some of that hostility isn’t very well contained.
> is there any country an immigrant can move to, and better their lives as well as the locals' life/economy?
The United States.
> It seems the world is turning hostile to immigration in general - or maybe it is just the impression I get from the media?
The world is turning hostile to immigration because the media (and social media sites) highlight and repeat the bad anecdotes, while barely mentioning the actual data showing positive outcomes.
Yea but the visa law is horrendous tho. 60 days hard deadline if unemployed, CBP invalidating H1B for reasons, can't return if you got laid off out of country, and whatever Trump did recently that made people worry to fly outside the country. Not to mention the brutal green card line.
What data suggests there is a positive outcome for the first world in integrating with the third world? Because my data suggests we're enthusiastically recreating the conditions that led to the Yugoslav civil wars.
And even you know it; I saw your other comment before you deleted it. You are well aware that there is a tipping point, and expressed disappointment that natives are resistant to the path that leads to it. It's like you want there to be ethnic violence.
For better their lives as well as the locals' life I think it is most of them. For feeling rewarded or fulfilled for doing that, I think depends on both the person and the country, but probably quite rare.
I tried two countries so far (>5 year in both) and there were pluses and minuses in each. Which are different to the pluses and minuses in my home country.
I think that one will (generally) evolve and adopt some habits of the country you immigrated too, while giving up some habits you had before. The result? You might be a more complete person (because you become aware of the habits, and can choose to some extent) but on the other hand you will not belong anywhere any-more (you will not adopt some stupid habits of the new country, but you did gave up some stupid habits that you had).
Get born outside the western world and migrate to Europe as a skilled worker and your live increases significantly as well as that it your family. Same goes for the society you live in.
That really depends on what country are they coming from, and how established they are in life. As an extreme example, someone from Sudan would benefit by moving out, if only by being in a stable place that's not being ravaged by civil war.
Why don’t people migrate to developing countries instead to help them directly. This form of migration makes it appear that Western countries are better.
There is a big problem with mass migration and people entering a country with antithetical values and beliefs.
Immigration does generally improve the economy, but it doesn't happen overnight, and this is an incredibly easy anxiety to exploit for short-term political gain.
We aren't really talking about this loneliness epidemic that is not contained to any one particular country. I can imagine how difficult it is to move to a new place now, no matter where it is, and especially in the future if the trend continues.
> is there any country an immigrant can move to, and better their lives as well as the locals' life/economy?
Not really anymore. All the good ponds have all been fished out by now.
Housing is in short supply in every livable city in the western world and the job market is tight right now, so if you move there now, you're one, increasing labor competition for the locals, and two, rising housing prices for the locals. THe only locals happy with this arrangement are the corporation hiring you and the landlord taking your money.
The world has min-maxed itself into oblivion that it's already reached saturation point. We're way passed the balance point, everything is fucked, there's no magic place on the planet where things are nice for everyone.
It's too bad that no immigrants work in construction to build more housing. If we could import lower cost laborers to build houses, that would greatly improve the housing affordability problem, but sadly, every time I go past a construction site, all I see are white guys whose great-great-great grandparents came over on the Mayflower.
Your parent was trying to be sarcastic that native WASPS are above working on construction sites and only migrants can do that.
Here in the EU where I was talking about, it's different, it's mostly European whites on construction sites, not WASPS, but intra-European migrants from balkans and eastern europe.
So here we literally gained nothing from the mass migration from africa and middle east except more housing demand instead of more skilled labor for building houses, contrary to the pro-migration propaganda.
This is spot on. Even if the opportunity is still better in the West than elsewhere, the trend is to the worse. It feels much more rewarding to have a less tasty slice of a growing pie, than a tastier slice that's shrinking. (And the others behave with less toxicity, to boot.)
> 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.
There's been a lot of pressure to break the EU for quite some time, and now even the US is also aiming for this.
It's a lot of misinformation and funding from too many countries, for a long time.
What's impressive is how much this tension had actually been holding on, which goes to show that education actually plays an important role when dealing with misinformation.
This is a very sensitive topic. I think anyone moving to a different country has to learn the native language. That's the biggest barrier for proper integration and to feel fully at home in a new country. Whenever something is broken, needs help or in an emergency one cannot expect to have an English speaking person on the other-side.
That being said, German is not an easy language to learn. In my experience, native German speakers are quite patient and help you with practice compared to let's say French, still it would take ages to be fluent in German unless you're studying the language full time. However, if you're a skilled worker you would be working in an environment where English is used and the amount of time you'd get to learn German would be way less.
In that aspect I think Anglosphere is way more attractive for migrants to settle down and it's natural people would come to Germany, work, save some money, travel around Europe and move on to US, UK, Australia, etc. to settle down.
One of the reasons is that Germany is not a friendly country for non-german speakers (and/or if you dont have the right profile); I've worked for a while in both Berlin and Munich. In berlin you get away with english, except anything official - from opening a bank account to any interaction with the city council or government services. They will go out of your way to make you feel unwelcome if you are not a fluent german speaker. In Munich is even worse - in many "non-immigrant neighbourhoods" they wont even acknowledge you if you speak english (eg. In the supermarket), though often they understand it perfectly.
Learning german is not easy, but it is absolutely essential if you want to call it home; Id suggest anyone planning a move to start learning beforehand - the idea that you will "wing it by talking to people" is not enough.
It is a personal issue for sure. But people from "warmer" cultures often struggle with the "colder" culture, at least in Northern Germany. And that sometimes leads to people from other countries seeking or making friend group with other migrants.
Various combinations of "they didn't know", "still better than the place they left", "their experience wasn't that bad", and "needed for their resume".
It's interesting that the B1 language requirement is discussed here mostly in terms of fairness. Is it reasonable or not, to require an immigrant to speak the language of the country they're immigrating to?
Whether it's fair or not is trumped by how _easy_ it is. You can get a B1 German certification in a matter of months with SRS and cheap tutors online.
This is a B1 English question:
“This is a nice bathroom.” “Yes. It’s the one _ we’ve just redecorated.”
a) when b) who c) which
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.
This feels rather naive in taking all the complaints at face value. The truth will be much more nuanced, and ultimately countries should be more welcoming to the genuine whilst far more discerning with the deceitful
This reminds me that I got fired from a German company (operating in DK) because I asked too many questions and would not stop complaining about the software architecture which was terrible.
The company culture was clashing with the Danish culture that I was used to and also I didn't give a fuck.
Small companies are usually flat, but my experience is that larger companies turn into departments/teams until someone realizes that more leadership on paper doesn't add any value.
Wow, lots of generalisations are being made in the comments. I'm German and have lived in the south-west for most of my life. I hope it goes without saying that Germany is a big country, both by space and population. We have some very dense urban areas (Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin come to mind) but also very open "arsch der welt" hinterlands with villages of 100 people or fewer. This creates huge diversity in standard of living conditions as well as life experiences (and expectations). Some places are better than others, this isn't unusual. Thus, many experiences that people have written about can't be applied with any certainty to large swaths of the populace.
Regarding the DW article, yes language is a constraint and does cause issues with finding/keeping a job and integrating into one's area. Believe it or not, this can also affect us locals too [1]. The bureaucracy is often _difficult_ and people behind the counter can be unhelpful.
We definitely suffer from institutional inflexibility, leading to absurd situations, for example with our population of economically active refugees who will probably be forced to leave, which will lead to an even bigger job market deficit and possible economic decline [2], or how we blunder large scale projects like Stuttgart 21 (or 35 or 70?!?!)[3]. The German concept of identity and unity is also very complex [4,5], and sadly this reflects somewhat on our interaction with migrants. Couple this with complex domestic and international economic and political issues [6,7], and we now have a situation that is far from ideal for people coming here to work and build a life.
All this can be difficult to deal with for you who are planning to come here or those who already live here, and I really wish that weren't the case. Please don't be discouraged, we want and need you, for more than just helping to prop up our economy and welfare state (by the way, thank you!). I believe that the diversity of experiences and ideas you bring is a boon to our future.
Emigrating is hard. Expect language issue, culture issue, bureaucracy issues. Other countries are not your country but with a different language, living somewhere is not the same as visiting as a tourist.
Emigrating is a generational project, you will forever be a foreigner, your children will be immanent children and only your grandchildren will be true locals.
This is not a government issue, right wing issue, racism, or what not its just a fact of life. Be prepared for it when making the decision.
When people came to the country to work then retire somewhere else, isn’t it not a net benefit for Germany? Less burden on the social net, healthcare system etc.
Medical and long-term care expenses outweighs by a large margin the loss of consumption or tax revenue for retirees, especially for a welfare state like Germany. Many studies in Germany have showed exactly this constellation of cost-benefit.
I wonder how many move back to Germany when fragile though. requires citizenship though? unless your permanent residency stays valid when you move abroad.
what would I have to use as search terms on Google scholar to find the many studies?
My partner and I went to Germany and then left. We found that while they are desperate for skilled labor, they do essentially nothing to accommodate once people have come. Every step of the immigration process felt like another grift. Our Auslanderbörde appointment was borderline hostile, and our lawyer was a certified buffoon. Then daily life was beset with petty corruption. We couldn’t get an appointment at the burgeramt to register until we paid a fixer to go in on our behalf. Germany was full of petty annoyances and indignities that made it clear they want immigrants, but will not put in the effort to retain them. The U.S. is lately no friend to even skilled immigrants, but public government services are at least available in most major European and Asian languages. Go to the Netherlands instead. That’s what we would have done, if we had it to do over again.
Germany is literally disappearing as a nation (too low a replacement rate and other problems). Pretty awful situation. Here's Peter Zeihan's assessment of Germany's future (or lack thereof):
They joined verein but didn't notice it's two years contract with auto renewal, cancellation three months in advance by letter. Left the country after receiving Mahnbescheid. Have fun in this asshole-verein.
I've been living in Berlin for about seventeen years. My German isn't great but usable in an emergency. I get by with it. Most work related stuff is English.
Bureaucracy is an annoyance in this country. But the flip side is that if you persist, you'll manage. It's also not something that's necessarily a lot better in other big countries. But Germany could do a lot better by just moving a lot of the key processes online, cutting down on asking for the same information over and over again via paper forms, and speeding up decision processes. That's slowly happening.
With AI translations, doing things in German (or any language) is a lot easier these days for foreigners. Also making sense of the complex processes with AI is helpful. Insistence that everybody should learn German is understandable from a nationalistic point of view. But you get quite far without that. Easier than ever now. Germany could be a bit more accommodating for this.
And the reality in factories, on construction sites, etc. is that you hear a lot of other languages being spoken. Lots of eastern Europeans active in the construction industry, for example. And lots of nurses and doctors from abroad are active in their hospitals. Packages are being delivered by people from India and Pakistan. And of course German companies that sell to foreign companies have to deal with the notion that their customers mostly won't be speaking German. Germany is already a lot more international than it might like to admit.
But it's undeniably true that you need to speak German in order to interact with especially older Germans and their companies. They simply don't speak anything else. Kind of weird because many of them are super dependent on import/export markets and yet they are mortally afraid of having to be in a meeting with non German speakers. I've experienced this several times. However, the baby boom generation is retiring and younger generations are already much more internationally focused. Most younger college educated people here speak English at this point. It's not that much of a problem as it used to be.
And even talking to people is getting easier now that we have AI translations and transcriptions. I've worked my way through a few meetings in Denglish. Ugly, but it works and if you have a shared business goal, people get more flexible.
Germany has been in and out of a recession for several years now and it's working population is on track to shrink and things like its pension and healthcare system are becoming a problem financially. It will need to work smarter to get out of that and that probably is going to require working with people that won't be speaking German from outside of Germany. Easy fix for that recession is just embracing the future. Many of Germany's problems are of its own making and very fixable.
I am the son of a (Cuban) immigrant and a German woman. Once, the police asked me if I spoke German, probably because my hair is dark and my eyes are brown. Germany has a bias against “southerners”—the darker your skin, the worse it is. If your skin is light and your eyes are light-colored, you won’t even be perceived as an immigrant as long as you keep your mouth shut. But if you look southern or Asian, you’ll always be a “Kanake” or “Fitschi,” even if in every other respect you’re more German than most Germans.
Racism here isn’t so severe that it leaves you with bruises, but you notice it in the little things. For example, this year I was looking for a new apartment with my partner, and when I first made contact, I used her German last name instead of my foreign one—just to be on the safe side. Whenever I do have to deal with the police—for example, because of a traffic accident or something similar—it seems like who gets blamed depends on skin color. If some guy named Hans Müller cuts me off, the police are still on his side. If I cut off someone named Achmed, strangely enough, they’re on my side. The last startup I worked for as a developer really played up its left-liberal, progressive image. Even so, the bosses were blond and blue-eyed, and the janitors were Black Africans. I could fill an entire book with impressions like these.
All the bureaucratic hurdles mentioned in the article are probably intentional. The aim is to make it difficult for foreigners to come here and stay, because these people are not wanted here. In recent years, even politicians deep within the left-liberal spectrum have touted the fact that the so-called migration problem has been brought under control. In other words, they have adopted the right-wing premise that migration itself is a problem, rather than the way migrants are treated and integrated.
The tragedy is that we’re running out of people of working age. We’re having too few children and are turning into an aging society. Over the next twenty years, this will hit us like a bus driving toward a cliff, while none of the passengers see the impending disaster. Immigration could be our salvation, but we just don’t want brown people.
At the same time, German society is tearing itself apart through policies that lack solidarity. Life is meant to be made as difficult and harsh as possible for people with average incomes. The last remnants of the welfare state are being gradually dismantled over successive legislative terms. Everything is being ruined by austerity measures. There is no longer any awareness that collective investments in education and public infrastructure are, in fact, investments that will yield a real return later on—for example, in the form of well-educated people, transportation networks that allow goods to be transported smoothly, or nationwide internet access when you need it. Instead, everything must be milked dry by the private sector, or it’s simply left to rot (or both).
Another comment here mentions that sclerotic forces are at work in Germany. I think that’s an apt description. It frustrates me immensely that society can’t pull itself together to take bold steps toward shaping a positive future. Instead, we have to watch as the country slowly withers away, while one idiot after another takes the reins of government to orchestrate the next round of bloodletting.
It's gotten to the point where I've now lost faith in democracy. Things aren't getting better—they're just getting worse and worse. And all I can do is try to position myself in my personal life in such a way that I can hopefully protect myself and a few people around me from the worst damage caused by this decline.
You are (as am I) in the 30% of Germans (40% in major cities) with a Migrationshintergrund.
At that point, it barely makes sense to call that a minority, it's just normalcy. If you find yourself in a pocket of unusual backwardness where it feels otherwise, you should probably leave.
I pass as German based on looks, but my name is weird and my wife doesn't look or sound German at all. I don't think her or I have ever noticed any adverse consequences from that.
If your German is good, you can just act and feel like you belong here and no one will challenge that.
The people saying they're having trouble getting by with just English though are weird to me. What did they expect? Different countries are different, that's sort of the point.
I do actually agree that Germany isn't the best country when you're looking for economic opportunity, but that isn't really what people are optimizing for here. You might disagree with this, but it's mostly not directed against immigrants.
Regarding your political points: Ironically, they sound very German to me. Yours is a standard left of center critique in German politics. The countries that have a long history of being targets for immigration largely don't work that way, probably because extensive social safety nets are bad for the acceptance of recent immigrants by locals.
> It's gotten to the point where I've now lost faith in democracy. Things aren't getting better...
"it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" - unknown, often attributed to Churchill
Rah-rah democracy advocates, and patriots of countries which imagine themselves democratic, often attribute all sort of mythical virtues to democracy.
But the reality is no more than "statistically less bad than the alternatives".
These days, the by-far worst problem for most supposed democracies is the excessive financialization of wealth. A century ago, the personal fortunes of most better-off people were tied to the overall fortunes of the country, the province, the city, and the neighborhood in which they lived - giving them huge incentives to care about those collective fortunes. Vs. now, the prevailing attitude seems far closer to "when this place goes to shit, I'll just pack up and leave".
I think that the financialization of wealth is a problem of education not of the political system. People just do not understand how that is a problem and how it affects them.
For me the best thing in a democracy is the fact that is supposed to have some dynamics. I am more afraid of a fixed set of people taking continuously worse and worse decisions. Many dictatorships started with the dictators managing fine the country, and people being fine to give them more and more power. Then, in something like 10 or 20 years things go to shit, but there is no "mechanism" to replace them.
It’s a good recipe for consensus. I find it easier to reluctantly submit to the will of the majority than I would to the will of a minority. There are certainly a few opponents of democracy who feel exactly the opposite, but most people probably feel the same way I do. That is precisely where the stabilizing effect of democracy lies: it makes people compliant. But it is a misconception that democratic decisions are intrinsically better than others in terms of substance. A majority can pass nonsense just as easily as a minority can make wise decisions. What’s important in a democracy is that people truly believe that the will of the majority prevails—or, even more importantly, the common good. If they lose that belief, a democratic society slowly dies.
If German people move to African or Eastern countries, how long till they can get full citizenship rights? My understanding is never in most of these countries.
They got millennials from post-Communist countries after all transition periods for new EU members have passed sometime around 2011. Were already lucky because they didn't open the market straight away in 2004 like Ireland, UK, and Sweden. Germans were overconfident because their largest demographic boom was in their 40s back then.
Treated that immigration wave like shit. They left.
Germans worked really hard for every single nasty thing which is about to happen to them.
So, I have lived in Frankfurt for a couple of years now, and after talking with so many other expats, I think I have come up with a solid reason why this happens and why I am also thinking about leaving Germany. My TLDR is that Germany makes it really hard to settle down. When you are a skilled worker and you decide to come to Germany, you feel that things in your home country are holding you back, so you move here to step up, to upgrade, to move forward. And that is not what you find here.
- You drove in your previous country? Good luck getting your driver's license in Germany (I know people living in the Netherlands and Italy who have been driving since their first month there), and good luck paying so much for parking. And then, you might say: "but use public transportation". And I reply, good luck going for a dinner with your gf when it 0 degrees outside and raining to get the metro that has less availability (because it is evening already) or they are doing some maintenance in the line. In my experience here, public transportation is only good when is working hours. In Frankfurt, after working hours they reduce itinerary of a metro and during weekends - hahahaha - you would cry with me.
- You want to buy a house? Good luck finding a bank that wants to finance you without a credit history in Germany (a friend already bought a house in the Netherlands, btw). Want to rent a place? Good luck finding someone to rent their house to someone who just arrived in Germany.
- Do you have doubts or problems with bureaucracy? So cute... good luck with that too. Workers in public service do not speak English, and those who do don't want to speak English with you (and that is with me living in Frankfurt - one of the most international cities in Germany). Not even in the Ausländerbehörde do they speak English. (I am ok if the waitress in the cafeteria doesn't speak it, but not in the Ausländerbehörde).
- Then you think: "ok, let's learn the language...". Germany is the most expensive country to learn its own language that I've ever seen. I studied in France and they were teaching French for free there. All the free/cheap German courses here are not for skilled workers, because with a skilled worker's wage, you are above the threshold for social benefits and all the cheap alternatives are out of the question. Then, you might say: "but you can learn online". Fair point, but how do you expect people to connect with your country by learning online? For me, it was way cheaper to pay a professional teacher in my home country online to have individual classes than to attend a German class here.
- You have a problem in your house? Good luck waiting years for it to be "solved". I have full experience with this: we had an issue with the roof of the building and it literally took them more than 2 years to solve it. Because the roof belongs to the building and not the apartment, it is not the landlord's responsibility, and you need to find out who is responsible for it, etc.
And, on top of all this, Germany is not a cheap country to live in, and the infrastructure is far from ideal: trains are always late and expensive, and you cannot rely on DB anymore. Internet is super expensive and slow (we have a bunch of data centers in Frankfurt, but you have no fiber connection in the houses here). Energy is stupidly expensive now (due to German politicians eating shit for breakfast).
So... overall, I think skilled workers think about leaving after some years because small issues stack up, and in the end, you are not able to build a life here. And I don't even want to get into the topic of making friends here, maybe in another post.
I'm a Canadian/German dual; a praire, hockey-playing, hard-O Canadian at that.
There is nothing German about me, apart from some family myths.
Every 8 or 9 years my passport renewal at the German embassy plays out like that scene in Inglorious Basterds, where Brad Pitt's character Aldo Rain tries to pose as Italian stunt-man Enzo Gorlami.
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 reading before judging). We have lived here for more than six years, and you know what? I still haven’t obtained either permanent residence or German citizenship simply because I don’t have a B1 certificate. So first things first: regardless of how much you contribute to the country, German is a must today if you want to obtain residency and stabilize your life here.
I was honestly devastated when the officer told me that I was not eligible for permanent residence. That was also the moment when I started to feel that maybe I don’t actually need permanent residence in this country after all.
Story 2: In an international working environment, German may not matter much at the IC level. But I’ve seen countless situations where Germans exchange a glance with each other, and suddenly the final decision is not what was agreed upon in the meeting. Over time, I’ve learned that there are many unwritten rules behind the scenes, and when you speak their language, you start to understand them.
One bright thing is that maybe we’re still lucky. We bought our first home without fully understanding the laws, the government system, or the tax rules. We simply worked hard and played the game in a way that we believed would be sustainable in the long run. Whatever happens, we know there are still many other places we could go.
Our children speak German natively, but they are also willing to go the extra mile to speak our mother tongue at home.
If you ask me for one piece of advice for immigrants and emigrants in Germany, I’d say: life is short—play naked!
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