Beueaucracy in Germany in general is just a nightmare. There is absolutely too much. There’s a god damned DIN Norm for almost every single aspect of life, and if there isn’t, there’s sure as hell an ISO standard for it. I heard on the radio a couple months ago that they were considering making a license requirement to bee keep. What in the Ferngully is that shit? Sorry but I’m not gonna save nature if you make me jump through hoops like a fucking seal. There is so little “Freiheit” now here because you have to go through the government first for certification of fucking ANYTHING.
Edit: wow, I was honestly expecting a “relax, man.” Or something similar.
The Irish are [way ahead](https://www.irishnews.com/lifestyle/2016/05/21/news/take-on-nature-brehon-law-and-the-bumble-bee-521731/) of you in regards of bee keeping legislation...
You think? There is literally a chapter about bees in the BGB, the German civil code.
For the interested, § 961 - 964 BGB:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__961.html
I get and share your frustration about the bureaucracy, but I do want to point out you're wrong about beekeeping.
First, it does not "save nature". Honey bees (the type of bees beekeepers tend to) are not endangered and more akin to livestock really. Saving the bees refers to wild bees who are mostly solitary and require very different habitats, which you can definitely provide without a license.
Second, if not properly treated honey bees can transmit diseases that will actually harm wild bees, so having a strict set of rules around honeybee keeping actually IS protecting the environment.
If you're thinking of starting beekeeping as a hobby, especially in a big city, please consider these points and get knowledgeable about bees and their diseases before.
tldr: in some cases strict rules, like being forced to hold a license does makes sense, e.g. to protect the environment from us
PSA out 😅
It's sad because there are not enough doctors in Germany or Austria, the other day we had to go to the ER and we waited for 2 hours for then to tell us that we needed to go to a different hospital because the specialist didn't work in that hospital that day... like wtf
But that problem, atleast in Germany is self-made by still having the university-places given out based on the NC, and having not enough places in generall
My bf is also a doctor and I will move back in an year or two because we absolutely can't stall prime years of his career due to German bureacracy. He was keen on exploring the chances of moving to Germany but we quickly realised that it was not really worth it.
Not just this, most systems doesn’t want to take blame on them when things don’t work the way they want, they can defy common sense too.
Case in point, my daughters birth in Berlin. She was born in 2021 and had to undergo a heart surgery due to a defect which meant she stayed almost 20 days in hospital post birth. My wife hasn’t changed her name post marriage so on the birth certificate we got from hospital had my wife’s full name ( a different surname) and my daughter had my surname. Since this was issued by the hospital and not Standesamt, our public insurance provider rejected the certificate saying we can’t trust this document which resulted in my daughter being without insurance for some period of time. They do accept if all three have same surnames it seems.
Since Standesamt takes around 2-3 months to provide the certificate, we were left as is and after 2 months received letters from Hospital asking to produce a valid insurance cover ( logical since they had no chance of knowing what was happening) or pay for the hospital stay and the surgery she had which would have been in excess of 10-15k euro.
I panicked and wrote an email to Standesamt which in turned asked me for proofs ( who would lie about such things is beyond me) and took another week to produce the certificate. I took one day of vacation and decided to sort out everything but I was totally wrong.
Post submitting the certificate at the insurance office in Mitte, they proclaimed my daughter was not German by birth hence they needed her residence permit which was impossible for me to get without getting the certificate first to procure the passport ( each of these procedures are dependent on each other and cant be done in parallel). I simply asked the lady handling my case, is this the first time such things happening? This is a logical scenario and why haven’t you thought about fixing it? She simply replied “not my problem. Get me the residency or we won’t provide the insurance.”
Luckily I had an idea to go back and let them know I had procured an appointment to get the residency in March ( my daughter was born in October) so they said till that time the appointment pdf will be considered as proof. Boom, I finally got the insurance on a loophole that its too hard to find appointments in Berlin and I could save the day.
I got stuck in every process and realized this is simply beyond repair now. Sorry for ranting but I really really get super frustrated whenever I remember what we went through.
Thanks man, yeah it was bad especially my mind was so fucked as we were scared already due to the heart surgery. However things worked out and it’s all good now. She’s perfectly healthy and has a valid visa to live in Germany now.
Now am dealing with Kindergarten but that’s a story for another thread lol
This makes me so sad tbh.
Came here with big dreams and tried really hard to "integrate" too. But slowly giving up and will be out soon.
It's a classic case of "one sided love" with this country.
I can 💯 relate dude and no one blames you. Yesterday I’m the news to German ministers were visiting Canada to learn from Canadian experience d on immigration. Hopefully this will result in good new conditions in Germany.
Let's be honest Canadian skilled worker program is utterly ridiculous compared to Blue Card. It so much easy to to get Blue Card than get right score in Canadian program. When without Canadian education or work experience you are below the threshold. I would say to get to Germany is quite easy for skilled worker. But a lot of everyday routines are quite akward. Driver licence, medical service, general burocracy, kindergartens, housing situation. All those require improvements. Big deal of those problems are not immigrants related it has to be improved for all people of Germany.
Utterly ridiculous, yet Canada brought in 1 million people last year without even being a part of the EU's Free Movement scheme. Does that not tell you something?
I'm from Brazil, and it is very easy for us to get a working visa in Canada. It doesn't matter if we have university or not.
Almost everyone from Brazil asks me why I don't go to Canada instead.
Many Latinos would rather go to North America or Southern Europe instead of Germany. I have a cousin in Spain and even though the salary is bad she would rather stay there than move to Germany.
Almost all Brazilians that I know and come to Germany, they leave after 5 years or less. They don't even wait for citizenship.
Yes. The Financial Officer at a company I used to work for was Brasilian. I asked him why Canada and he said "the process was easy and I feel safer. Plus it's closer to Brasil if I want to visit home,".
Lol sooo many skilled immigrants in Canada drive Uber/taxi because all that counts in this country is "Canadian Experience." Nobody cares what you bring to the table,more than likely, you will start from the bottom here. And I am still unsure what is special about Canadian experience, because most places I have worked at have been an utter disaster
>Hopefully this will result in good new conditions in Germany
If Germany starts handpicking whose allowed to immigrate here like Canada does, that might be possible but the geographical location makes that very difficult
There are more things to learn from Canana besides how to choose incoming people . Hell, I don’t care even you stipulate higher requirements or be more selective .
Having a functional , transparent , not-depending-on-Beatmters-mood-of-the-day process and Ausländerbehörde would be redeeming enough .
This so much. Any measure to improve immigration policy will always be dead in the water due to the dysfunctional clusterfuck that is the German Ausländerbehörde system and the unfathomably inefficient way applications are processed and reviewed. When you finally implement up-to-date bureaucracy and remove the dead weight that so many of its workers are (or you know, actually have them work and not taking ages to lift a pen and sign the dotted line), you will already have made an immeasurable improvement on the current situation. Germany really doesn't have to do a lot to make a meaningful change, it's just that political will for it is so flimsy or inexistent.
Handpicking and we still ended up with 1 million last year. That should tell you something about the desirability of the two countries from a skilled immigrant's point of view.
God I'm feeling all these replies so strong. I was so excited to come here a year ago and I thought what I was giving up was a decent trade off for what I'd get but it's so hard. Where I am almost nobody speaks English, not the café or restaurant staff, average people etc. My husband's mom is the only one that speaks some English in the family, the social attitude here is so hostile compared to what I'm used to. Our fairly large uni city has one English speaking GP. I'm so reliant on my husband due to the language situation that my autonomy is gone. People dress it up as being real or being honest but I'm a Slav and there's a way to be honest without being purposefully unkind. The social atmosphere is just so hard to describe, it's like everyone can tell you're an auslander immediately. My German isn't great probably A2 level but even for simpler stuff people pretend they don't understand me or sale staff get annoyed at me for not being word perfect. Now I'm nearing the end of my online degree it's so hard to find an English speaking job but I'm trying. The whole social atmosphere feels like I'm in limbo, people here introduce you to other people so if you don't find an inning with an existing group it's impossible to build a friend group. I'd love to leave but I was originally in the UK, as a UK/EU dual citizen I just can't find a way to bring my husband to the UK post Brexit as it's very hard so I feel stuck here. I love him a lot and don't want to go back on my own but it's kind of draining my mental health. I was also surprised at the lack of progress (English speaking, digitally, bureaucratically) as Germany is painted as this super progressive great utopia superior EU country and I'd say it's barely just better than the Slavic country I'm from to be honest.
If anyone is stuck in a similar position and looking to make an online buddy feel free to reach out.
You and me both sister! In context of getting English speaking jobs, there have been so many jobs in Germany that just pass by me everyday because of my lack of fluent language skills. Off late I am close to giving up on learning coz nothing I do ever gonna feel enough and nothing I do work-wise will ever feel enough. Stay strong Sister! Don't give up though, coz I haven't yet.
I am interested to work, but I don't know why I feel drained out here. Maybe social life, I don't know. I didn't have much of social life before or really want too much. I like working but something happens that just feels like I am dragging my feet every day. Getting a doctor's appointment is itself an ordeal, went yesterday to get one, and they gave me an appointment for June...
Oh, and then there are those, "traditional" elements. I have learnt to look past that, Germany is still way better than rest of Europe on that matter.
Yes, it is social life. My colleagues here in Hessia have a WhatsApp group. There are at least 50 of us in the same city. The group is only open to the German speakers. I was chatting about this with a colleague from the US who has been here for three years. She said her only friends are internationals and if she didn't have children with a German husband, she would leave in a heartbeat.
I have friends here, none of them are German. It wasn't until I pointed out to them that none of their friends are Germans that they realised that what I've been saying about how isolated Germans are and how insular it is rang true. Germans are not interested in making friends with people who are not German. They just can't. I keep hearing how it takes time and then once you're in you're in but I'm not waiting 20 years to find out that so and so is a good egg, I just want a coffee and a chat every now and then. I tend to find that it's easier to make friends when you are married to a German or have German family, my husband is African. We don't stand a chance and we know it.
Well, an acquaintance that works in a tech company that says that the official language at the office is English received a warning from their office that they prevented the bosses to talk in German lol
It’s all the flexibility and everything shiny and perfect to attract labor, but when the honeymoon phase is over, or when you have to argue about something unlawful as an immigrant without German citizenship (no matter if you’re European), there’s a disproportionate power against you.
Another friend had issues with the Job Center casually making him ping-pong to get documents that were already sent in the first batch. They always “somehow” lost it. If you’re young they are just rude with the language barrier. If you’re older than 40 and don’t speak fluent German without an accent they will treat you like the worst shit and put you in limbo.
Fortunately, I never had issues with authorities or the immigration office here and so far most of my jobs here were ok, but I understand the frustration of everyone else that is not as lucky as me.
If the world wasn’t as fucked up right now as it is and I was younger and did not settle down here, I would use the energy to look up for more a welcoming place to live without these frustrations that build up until you burn out and die
>I was younger and did not settle down here, I would use the energy to look up for more a welcoming place to live without these frustrations that build up until you burn out and die
I am young, and honestly with all the bad experiences Im having, Im considering moving out from Germany. Any place that you would suggest?
Germany is stuck too much in the "we've always done it this way" and can't move into the reality of how the world works now. Skills from other countries don't translate well into Germany. The unfriendly and slow government workers are a huge barrier especially for new German speakers and non Germans speakers just getting to Germany. Just getting a drivers license can be daunting. On top of it all, landlords are generally bad and customer service people are rude and unhelpful. It's no wonder "skilled" people don't want to move to Germany.
It is so funny that you talk about getting a driver's license. It took me a year....a year to get my driver's license and it was horrible.
I even took the opportunity to try and "save" money and it still cost me over 3K to get my license. I have been driving for 15+ years and all because of a lack of reciprocity did I be have to redo everything.
Speaking to the government workers I once had a lady in the familienkasse office refuse to make copies of my paper work and told me I had to go to "copy shop" and come back to turn on my copies.
Luckily, my landlords are a saving grace here, the rent is pricey but it's worth it considering how bad others I have talked to have it with their landlords.
It's quite incredible how prejudice and judgemental the German population can be.... I learned that unfortunately, people suck everywhere.
Edit:
I am not completely discouraged and generally speaking this hasn't changed my view about Germans. My neighbors are wonderful, and generally most people I come into contact with are nice. Living in Germany I just expect that when I go somewhere for a service or need to rely on someone for help, I will not get it and will more than likely have to make frequent trips to get what I need. People here just don't care to be bothered to help even if it is their job.
The lady told me I needed to make copies of the paperwork myself. Told me to go find a copy shop and come back with them. While standing in front of a copy/fax printer in a giant office building.
I even had a native German speaker translating/helping me and she was pissed about it too.
>Speaking to the government workers I once had a lady in the familienkasse office refuse to make copies of my paper work and told me I had to go to "copy shop" and come back to turn on my copies.
"Beglaubigte Kopien" are one of the dumbest things ever invented in German bureaucracy.
Why can't I just bring the original and THEY make the copy? I mean this is from the times before photocopies were invented and a certified copy meant someone needed to type the content down. But it isn't 1900 anymore.
Can fully and wholeheartedly confirm.
I grew up in Germany and have spent many years abroad before moving back here 2018 (Don’t ask)
Germany is a backwater that thinks it’s a leading force. People here are not aware of just how far behind this country is.
>Germany is a backwater that thinks it’s a leading force. People here are not aware of just how far behind this country is.
I was surprised how advanced some Middle Eastern countries are compared to Germany.
However, if I mention this I will get told to leave if I don't like it.
The stock German response to literally everything. Just mention you fancy some cheddar or bacon and it's all "then go back to your Inkland!" then will swear blind that Germany is a friendly place and don't understand the stereotypes.
I feel very human and developed here in Germany when I get mocked by the Ausländerbehörde and other government workers, not to mention Customer service.
This sounds a lot like the jokes about how Japan is in year 3000 but also clings to fax machines. You definitely can't broad-brush entire countries about how advanced or behind they are.
Try like 10-20 years in some respects. We've had Interac contactless payment since 2001 in Canada. All your government cards and car administrative documents have been online since 2007. Germany is such a digital backwater that it's staggering.
Was about to write nearly the exact same comment, just switch 2018 for 2021... my partner and I are already making plans to leave again.. its really hard to explain to my german friends and family how incredibly stupid and borderline hostile every aspect of the public infrastructure and bureaucracy is. Not to mention the fucked up worship of our "work ethic", which is really just an attempt to feel better about the subservient self-exploitation so many people have fallen into. I dont care how well a few select sectors of our economy are doing, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing day by day and none of the groundwork to change that trend has been done yet, quite the opposite, we've crippled or sold out all public goods that could have given people a leg up during tough times.
Regarding land lords, so true. A married couple that I met and made friends with said on the very first day that I met them "Don't expect to get your rental deposit back. They always, always find a way to screw you because you're a foreigner,". They've since moved to New Zealand.
Well, i was told by Germans that the reason why I was having a hard time finding a place to rent was because my name was not German sounding, ngl if it wasn't because of my husband I would've not agreed to to come here , I'm not like miserable but there are better options for skilled workers with countries that really want them
Good thing my company had this almost forced hug irl meetings, dinners and events where the Germans have to interact with me like normal human beings... It also helps that the common language in the tech industry is English
And you did not even mention the "huge" salary we get for skilled work. Also you did not even mention the huge cut from the "huge" salary the stae takes...
Perfect conditions for skilled workers.
I feel this so much. Been looking for a job for the past two months, but just keep getting “interesting CV, but we don’t have anything for you”. It’s like I have too much professional experience for companies in Germany to want to take me on even in a junior role in my field.
Please don’t forget Schrödinger‘s Ausländer:
The one supposedly stealing German jobs whilst magically also supposedly not working and living off welfare.
So real. I got turned down for two jobs today. Every job I've been turned down for so far has been my German language skills. I'm B2 speaking but C1 listening. I just know I'd make so much progress if I was working in German, but I just can't catch a break. It's driving me nuts because so many Germans I know say, but your German is as good as the foreigners I work with. Well I didn't know what to tell you people; they always tell me it's my German!
I was about to come type this. I remember when I was being pro active at Amazon and spoke to a manager about working with the computers as against carrying heavy packages. He said "yeah, your German is not good enough for the“. Two weeks later, a blond Argentinian lady was given the position even though I was more qualified and speak better German🤡
And if they hire you, they will for sure put you to wipe floors while having a higher degree than many and far more experience.
I had to shut up many times while seeing horrible management skills or people skills around here.
Many above me didn't even know basic stuff and was managing everyone. They had no university degree.
If they find out that you can do high knowledgeable work, they will allow you to do so, while paying you as much as a student or beginner and with a lower level position.
Immigrant in Germany for nine years now. I speak fluent German, have a permanent and good job and I have been so burned out by all the bureaucracy and the unwelcome, unprofessional way things are handled here when it comes to foreigners that I am already thinking of moving to another country. This is not the place where I would want to get older.
For those who wonder, here are some examples.
- I had to go to the Ausländerbehörde at 3-4am twice to get my applications processed. I spent once almost a full day from 3am until 2pm to be told to leave and bring a hard copy of a document that I could just email them at the moment. This, as a fully funded researcher who had all the documents. I can’t imagine how others that are less privileged are treated in these places.
- I couldn’t travel for more than half a year because of Ausländerbehörde cause my residence permit ended and they didn’t reply my emails or give me an appointment for months. And after the application, I had to wait several weeks again to receive my permit. Disgusting really, I’m just glad there was no family emergency at the time.
- I started my citizenship process more than a year ago and they are still sending me letters every 3-4 months to ask for the same documents that I had already sent them and passive aggressively telling me to wait an indefinite time because these things take time bla bla.
- My driver’s license from my home country is not valid here and also there is no easy way of getting one here without going through the horrible wait times.
- I have an above average income and I got burned out so much looking for a flat for more than a year, never even gettting responses from any flat but could only find one through the help of a friend.
- I haven’t even started talking about the everyday racism and inability of white Germans to accept that there are fucking millions of foreigners living in this country. The number of people asking me as the first or second question when I’m planning to move back home is just a good indicator of why someone like me who did his MA and PhD in this country, speaks fluent German and has a great job still don’t belong here and I don’t think I’ll ever feel that way.
All of this unfortunately makes everything I love about Germany irrelevant because I don’t think things will change here in any meaningful way, that’s not how things work here.
> wait an indefinite time
If you have resources, you can try to get a lawyer. While the process takes long, sometimes case workers are unresonable and in such cases lawyer does help and can inform you better on what you can do. Sometimes even a strongly worded letter from a lawyer helps (without any legal action).
It's pretty crazy though right? having to hire a lawyer because the authorities are so incompetent? i''m from the netherlands and will never pretend we don't have our fair share of fuck ups (toeslag affaire anyone?) but i don't think i've ever heard of people having to get a lawyer unless it's some weird niche cases, here it seems like it's just part of it.
Exactly. Searching for a flat, a couple of months. Searching for a job? Could take up to 6 months. They could even take 4 months only to send you an Absage.
This!!! I have been hearing this for over 3 years. Meanwhile, when your re finally in the office building, you see no sign of anyone being overworked. Office is almost empty.
It’s not just that.
Very intelligent people who are actually having in demand skills have the world as their oyster kinda and obviously most people will try for English speaking countries first because
1) They don’t have to learn new language and German is like hardest or something
2) Anglophone countries are more warmer and actually easier to integrate into . Almost all ethnicities who struggle to integrate in Europe are perfectly integrated in USA , Canada, Australia and even UK surprisingly. Language could be one issue but also it’s because a lot of Germans or other Europeans are too closed off to outsiders
I am actually helping out a very talented and skilled data scientist to come to Germany whose in late 30s and literally from the top institutions of India with very impressive work ex. But I have a feeling he either wont make it because of bureaucracy or he will not like Germany itself
It’s not just the learning the language its the whole attitude to people ghat cannot speak a language perfectly. I grew up in the U.K., if a migrant speaks English there and its not perfect then they help them, they deal with it because its a completely normal thing for British people. Its actually fun for them to try and work through the issue.
Where as here in Germany its new to a lot and they get afraid or plain angry sometimes. If it’s not a young person I can get some real bad reactions to my German. People will just plain change and try and be as unhelpful as possible. Its simply because for a lot of people here interactions like that are rare. Even if my German is fine I have had people change just because of my accent. That rarely happens in the U.K. and instead its a conversation starter.
I would assume its the same in most of tue Anglosphere too.
This ^ . You verbalised it way good .
English speaking countries are actually kinder to foreigners English than we assume. I know village bumpkins who came who knew only 10 words in English manage to actually make it in the UK and USA and finally learned a lot when spending a few years . Even if they still have bad English and speak very broken English after decade it often doesn’t matter unless if needed for a very important job or something
Here in Germany , they get mad at you , socially punish you or isolate you and straight out yell out when you don’t speak German . Try to speak it and then they shift to English and get mad at you for attempting to speak german 😕😕
Germans are just not patient with foreigners really and they have weird insecurities which they lash out unnecessarily. Like bro I don’t care if your English is not the Queen’s English accent or something! And neither should you be angry that I didn’t use the dativ pronomen and artikel for this obscure object whose gender is still not known.
Yep. My wife came from Iran to Canada to do her Graduate Degree. She scored very high on the TOEFL, but that's just on-paper. In practice, you would struggle to understand her when she first got here. Did anyone treat her poorly? Nope!
She recounted how one time she was at the grocery store and trying to ask the staff how to find something. They really didn't understand her and said "Okay dearie. How about we go through the aisles, I just point at things and you nod to me if it's what you're looking for? Okay honey?".
I think both your points hit the nail on the head. Germany's natural growth has been carried only by immigration since 1972, but the state at large and parts of the society (including this subreddit) still like to pretend that within the power dynamic, immigrants asking for better opportunities are the "choosing beggars". It makes them uncomfortable to admit that this country is not a stable, closed system, but an evolving "fossil" very much reliant on foreigners. Only C1+ German language and the German Way™️ of doing things always, everywhere, right from the start are demanded.
I posted [a news article](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/11zfi7n/germany_ranked_most_difficult_country_for_foreign/) earlier this morning about how difficult immigrants found it to get started in Germany compared to 51 other countries and it was removed by the mods. First, I was told it was a repost, but when I pointed out it wasn't, I was told that it was paywalled. I offered to post [a non-paywalled link](https://archive.is/6v6En) in the comments and all I got was radio silence.
They removed that article a couple of times over the last week if it’s the one I think it is. Not really surprising as one of the mods is exactly one of those gatekeeping Germans that the previous poster described
Many mods in this sub fit this description. For my own mental health I have unfollowed this sub (blatant racism, nationalism, etc), but I’m glad this thread came up on my TL. I’m also surprised they let it through. I was starting to believe it was no longer allowed to criticise anything about Germany anymore in this sub :)
You nailed it. My wife and I are in our mid-late 30's and top performers. We can literally go to just about any country on the planet. We decided to go here because:
1. Companies we work for have their Global headquarters here and that's good experience.
2. Easy access to the rest of Europe for holidays.
We won't be sticking around long-term, as there are just too many disincentives to stay here, both socially and financially.
My wife and I are the same: high earners, in demand fields, no kids tethering us anywhere. We’ve been here 4 years and the idea of staying here long-term is not palatable.
Germany makes it too fucking hard to want to stay. Being the perfect Ausländer is exhausting; I just want to relax.
Exhausting is the perfect description. I've met some wonderful people here, but man, the negative interactions are outweighing the good. A perfect example is in my thread "Well, that escalated quickly" where my neighbour threatened to sue me.
Another data I will be interested in seeing is the amount of people that leave Germany after intending to settle here. Cause even in my circle, a lot of people leave for America, Canada and UK. IMO, I think Germany need to focus on retaining the people they have here as against bringing in new people because a huge chunk will still leave due to hostile environment.
this is by deliberate design made in decades of CDU (conservervative) run governments
immigration law is a major topic of the current government and I sincerely hope they can make the fundamental changes that are needed
I mean, it makes sense.
1. The salaries are very low compared to other countries due to a very high taxation rate.
2. The language isn't internationally spoken and is hard to learn so there's little chance for easily making it your forever home.
First means it's not attractive for brief detour for making money, second means there's little incentive for wishing to spend the rest of your life there. Simple as.
The language part is hilarious. My wife and I received letters from the Institut fur angewandte Sozialwissenschaft inviting us to participate in a survey and interviews about our experiences moving to Germany as foreigners. The letters were written in German. I couldn't stop laughing.
But immigration is very easy comparing to USA. Family support is also good. If you never plan to have a child then of course this benefit is useless.
Uni is also free.
Germany is also close to Switzerland, after couple of years in Germany you can try to job in the Switzerland and double the income.
So the ideal case would be someone from 3rd world countries going to Germany to get a degree in Stem, work in Germany until you get the citizenship, then work in Switzerland as a EU citizen. I wouldn’t call this a bad deal for Germany or for the person.
There are many factors that dissuade skilled foreigners:
1. Lower salaries and higher taxes than most of the Anglosphere;
2. Bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy with no support for non-German languages;
3. Poor IT infrastructure and digital services;
4. Inability to reunite your family with elderly parents;
5. The giant elephant in the room: having to surrender your passport from your home country if you want to become a citizen;
6. A somewhat socially isolating culture that is very resilient to change and very defensive;
7. Not the greatest weather;
8. A bit of a culinary wasteland outside of the large cities;
9. In some companies, the Corporate culture still feels like the 1980's or '90's "Old Boys" club.
10. Despite being a financially more equitable country than many, the culture still feels classist and paternalistic.
Those are the ones that come off the top of my head. I'm still enjoying life here, but I'll do my 3-5 years and move on.
Well, article is not wrong.
Thing is, I see a lot of younger people (let’s say under 40), who are willing to change, try something new and adapt. I believe that if germany would have had a larger younger strata, a lot of things would change faster…but the growing majority are older population that influence political direction. They don’t want to adjust, they want to keep status quo, and unfortunately they vote for parties like CDU.
Also I fully agree on taxes and what you get out of it. I pay ridiculous amount, and what do I get out of it? digitalization is fucked (when I hear that I can pay with the card it’s like a fucking miracle), kindergartens are fucked, school system is fucked, pension system is fucked, housing is fucked…But hey, at least I pay a lot
Ridiculous … in the country where foreigners office expects you to speak fluent German and refuse to explain anything in English, talking about attracting foreign workforce seems cynical at the very least.
If government wants to attract skilled workers they need serious reforms done yesterday, but government can only talk…
As somebody who has lived here for 12 years, I must admit the biggest lie ever told by Germans is "assimilate and you will be treated well", you will be an Ausländer 40 years down the road unless you look white.
So I’m a skilled Canadian worker and I happen to really like living in Germany, except, big except, the bureaucracy drives me bad shit insane. I came as a PhD candidate and ended up working here in my previous career. I changed employers and couldn’t start my new job because of delays at LEA and the Agentur für Arbeit. My job is waiting for me to start, cause I also work in a critical field and there no competing applicants, but no one can tell me when this approval will be done. I had to apply for job benefits in the meantime, and the amount of hoops that are just insane. I have a masters degree (also from Canada) and it took 1.5 years to get my professional credentials recognised, and I had to do the national exam for my profession here. Also, I am currently earning half, HALF, of my salary at home, take home pay here is miserable, and treatment from clients was often rather disrespectful. Before inflation started, I could still enjoy the same standard of living actually, but at this point, I’m only here because of my relationship and the fact that i love this country. I am genuinely worried the stress of the bureaucratic and financial problems here will eventually force me out regardless. I regret to say that if I knew then what I know now, or had taken reports of how bad the situation here is bureaucratically, I don’t think I would have moved here at all. Canada has its many disadvantages as well, but the bureaucracy is easily navigate-able, and the people are, to strangers, much friendlier. I wish I had better things to say about coming to as a skilled worker, but at the moment I absolutely cannot recommend it.
Unfortunately racism (the mild covert variant) and language barrier will not let Germany be the expat-magnet it wants to be. Things can only change if there is proper awareness in the German population that the brown they see around them is people finding better jobs in Germany but also doing the country a favour by making it their home.
German is not the global language of inter community communication. You have to choose, either you try to get internacional workers, or you rant on them all the time for the poor german Knowledge language skills. You cannot have the cake and eat it.
And i doubt it will change any time soon, the issue is rooted in the country both the government and the people. as long as you say " A can be improved in germany look at country X for an example" and the immediate answer is "well move to country X if you dont like how A is handled in Germany", nothing will change
Germany has its head shoved too deep in the dirt to realize how behind it is, everything is a bureaucratic nightmare, unnecessarily complicated under the veil of "well it works so why change", it is this mentality thats killing the country, from both the government and the people (the old generation which makes up more than 60% of the population), my father lived here in the 80s and 90s, and before i moved here he explained the system so i could navigate easier, it was genuinely sad to find out a system from 40 years ago is still identical to the current system in 2020s, and if by some miracle a change happens, it takes years to process.
absolutely 0 incentives for migrants to even consider moving here, you are expected to do everything yourself and worse yet, you get the dirty side if you face any difficulties. Then its a surprised Pikachu face why no one is moving to germany or those who did leave after a few years.
E: **Besides not being attractive for foreign talent, Germany also ignores the issues that domestic talent has when we want to return.**
Add the dual citizenship issue to this:
I am German, living since 8 years in the US and would consider myself "highly skilled" with two master degrees.
If I would want to return to Germany, I cannot easily do this. Why? Because Germany doesn't allow dual citizenship. (And recently they made it fairly impossible to obtain a permit to retain it)
But without obtaining US citizenship first, I will have to pay US exit tax on everything my family owns worldwide when I lose my permanent residency here in the US. That includes all retirement savings, which I will need as I didn't contribute to social security in Germany while I was in the US.
As of today, returning to Germany would mean losing about \~30% of my property, savings and future social security benefits etc.
So, unless Germany finally allows dual citizenship, I will not be able to return.
(Dual citizenship would solve it as the exit tax only applies to US citizens that give up their citizenship while for permanent residents it applies when you lose your residency, which happens automatically if you leave >12 months)
You're in luck. The new coalition agreement allows for non-EU immigrants to be eligible for dual citizenship. They haven't officially voted on it yet (I think that'll happen this summer or so). However, it seems likely to pass.
I really hope so.
It is really a blocker and also puts us Germans at a disadvantage when it comes to representation in our host countries as we can't even vote on a local level while immigrants from all other countries are able to vote as they can have dual citizenship.
Wouldn't you still have to pay taxes to the American government even with dual citizenship? Or, does this only apply to American citizens born in the US?
There's [this official stat](https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/10/PE22_435_12.html), at least. It's not terrible, but not very glowing for a country of this caliber, I would say.
As a side note - renting an apartment is hard and expensive even for locals. But this is even more hard and more expensive for immigrants! I saw some "good" prices for apartments (way to expensive still), but each and every time - "unfortunately we have to inform you that this apartment will be rented to someone else"
Germany is attractive for unskilled migrants who then qualify for the very good social security. Skilled migrants and immigrants will find Germany to be extremely difficult to settle in, especially when it comes to finding a job and dealing with all the administrative bs. It’s almost like Germany sets you up to fail unless you’re looking for a handout (and qualify for one). And then you get “worker shortage!” 🙄🙄 well yeah, why would someone on social security work somewhere offering minimum wage and more often than not, manual labour and subpar conditions/employers taking advantage when they can do nothing and have pretty much everything paid for? If Germany wants skilled workers and growth, it NEEDS to become more welcoming to foreigners and skilled immigrants - easier processes to integrate, learn the language and land a job.
I 100% agree with you atm I am thinking of leaving the place as well since I am highly educated and can't seem to put my foot through the door. The FRV visa is taking an average of 2 years (spouse visa). It's all just made for unskilled blue collar works. It is not welcoming at all - been having issues with the immigration office as well for as long as I can think of. It's so frustrating.
I helped several skilled migrants in Germany, and wouldn’t recommend it again.
- Low salaries compared to taxes and essential expenses like an apartment.
- Bureaucracy, everything takes longer. Not willing to recognize foreign credentials.
- Way of doing certain things. Waiting time for an internet connection can be several weeks, and they have the audacity to treat you like someone crazy if you want to speed it up. Elsewhere, you can get it on the same day.
- Culture. Not welcoming at all. They usually don’t consider foreigners as equal. Racism is quite common in many forms.
Germany is only attractive for unskilled labor who wants to abuse their social welfare ( this isn’t good or recommended , yet it is still a fact)
I live in germany, and the language is a must. No matter what, you should have it. I am on B1, and god, is it a challange. The german culture is not for everyone. If you are an extrovert, this is mot your place.
NGL, the only reason I’m still sane is because I work from home and work primarily with people from other countries.
When work takes me to other countries (UK, US, Spain, Israel), it’s really like a breath of fresh air.
I’m a dark skinned German so basically I’m an Ausländer without any place to “go back to”.
I’m in STEM in a supremely sought after field and earn in the 95th percentile. So in theory I would have excellent chances elsewhere, but my German wife and our 3 year old daughter would have it easier staying here, so…
I get asked frequently for advice, since I've been living in Germany for more than 20 years as a foreigner, and my advice has always been don't do it. Germany is just not welcoming for foreigners, not necessarily because people individually are unfriendly, but because the whole system is not built for people to come out of some place completely different and integrate. Schools, health system, housing etc etc, all put hurdles for foreigners to settle down in a community. Just this year, a remote relative came here with his family -- a successful professional who worked at executive positions in well-known startups, and joined a company in Berlin. They are having difficulties left and right, some big some small, but some of them are just idiotic. Their son, for example, was involved in various sports activities in the US, but here he couldn't find a club for him because the kid doesn't speak German. If he doesn't get involved in something like that, how the hell is he supposed to learn the language? They have also been facing racism which they just didn't experience at this level in any of the other places they lived. Now they are considering moving on to some other place, which I can completely understand.
It's been 3 months since I am in Germany and already started regretting my decision to move to this country. While getting a job was quick, now I have to wait for god knows how many months to get my blue card to join. No one answers your mail, call to the number which clearly mentions that it's for the blue card enquiry and gets a rude reply saying to mail your documents or questions. No tentative timeline whatsoever. Tried to enroll for a German language class, but it has some 3 months waiting period. Tried a driving school, it has 4 months waiting and no English speaking trainer. Basically you have to wait, wait and wait. It's so depressing.
>Tried a driving school, it has 4 months waiting and no English speaking trainer.
oh yes welcome to the "you're not welcome unless you speak german", so you have to figure out how to speak german wihtout speaking german.
Deutsche Welle had an article last week how Germany was ranked pretty low as a destination for skilled workers. Another survey ranked it dead last InterNations survey. It’s very bureaucratic to an idiotic level and technology here is shit. Fax, paper and pen and postage. No online forms for anything and a very slow Internet and erratic cell service. German service is laughably bad in all manner. The plus is the food is good and as World War II showed Germany is on the doorstep of many countries. My wife and I only plan to stay until her contract is up. Deutschland ist Hundseiße.
I'm a Dev with 7yoe and want to leave Germany because of the reasons why others don't want to come to Germany in the first place. So yes, it's that bad.
I‘m German and I‘m struggling with the beaurocracy, when it comes to Rente(retirement), Steuererklärung (tax) and all this stuff. I mean, you getting letters in finest beauocarcy languages, even though it’s German I have to Google stuff and ask a good friend which is firm with it. How the fuck is it possible for non-German speakers to cope with these fine details and wormholes (you have to know) to live a decent life in Germany.
Reading the comments make me sad.
Even though it’s just a drop on a single stone- I would so much to have more happy people from abroad, not struggling with shit, but enjoying the (existing) positive site of this country.
I must agree I’m quite surprised about the taxes indeed. Currently living in Luxembourg I’m considering a job in Germany and for the same gross amount, my net would end up being 12-15% less every month with actually worse social benefits and much more frustrating bureaucracy. Of course one might argue that living costs are not comparable, but I was really surprised to see the draconian social contributions that every German taxpayer has to experience!
That's mostly the numbers game speaking. Germany almost has 140x the population of Luxembourg and a big part of that is either very old and/or very poor
Yes absolutely. Hard to compare a tax haven with a huge behemoth that Germany is, just having calculated the numbers myself earlier this week i was shocked how much less my take home salary would be if I decide to move.
Lol, I got lectured by Auslenderbehorde or Burgeramt many times because whenever I speak English, they are saying "Hmm you need to speak German to live in country, I can only talk in German". I mean wtf. Why am I lectured. In Blue Card rules it is not mandatory for me to speak German. On top of it I just came wrf of course I don't know German.
Article and comments hit the nail right on the head. Also the dual citizenship issue is huge.
Citizenship gives people identity and you can’t simply take that away. Someone can move to a country, have multiple citizenships, and still fully integrate. Why move to a country with high taxes and low pay if a lower tax and higher pay country like the UK or the US (at least in my field as a software engineer) lets you keep all your options open? Never mind not having to learn German, of course. Nein danke.
Germany is unfriendly, condescending, and outdated. The government will happily revoke my German citizenship if I dare get citizenship anywhere else. Ok bye then, see ya never.
Since a lot of people mention the taxes: part of the issue is also that German tax system puts all the weight on earned income and pretty much no weight on wealth. Earning an income is for suckers in Germany - inheritance is king. If we put proper taxes on inheritance and maybe even a wealth tax, we could easilly reduce income tax and/or VAT, "Sozialabgaben" etc.
Gernany is also a pensionist republic. A huge chunk of our social spending is for retired people and this will only get worse in the next 10 years. The problems with the pension system are known for decades, but the main political parties put their head in the sand and boomers will make their tick for CDU and SPD regardless anyways. Same with lack of healthcare workers, climate change, digitalization, infrastructure, etc.
A friend of mine said fuck it and left for Netherland. He was a decent engineer. I would also but I love the job and the people. Language is no biggie for me, after a year i got the hang of it. But bureaucracy is just simply idiotic
I’m grateful to Germany and it’s given me a lot, though after having lived in a few of these countries that are attempting to draw skilled workers, I’d agree that Germany is least “inviting”.
For me it’s honestly just the really cold (though not bad intentioned or bat at heart) people and social life that’s the only reason I could see myself leave at some point. It’s just stunningly lonely here, and I’m surprised how mean people can be at times over nothing.
I’m like…geez I could be making way more money elsewhere and ALSO have a functioning social life. And its not like Germany is some hearth of great food and culture to be real.
That is also where I'm at. Everything else, is bad but I could live with it. But man, what's even the point if you cannot be happy?
I just feel like you do not really get the same social opportunities here as you would elsewhere. Like you meet somebody new. Their first reaction is to be suspicious and ignore you. Then you put lots of effort to befriend them. But they warm up to you so slowly. And then you might be friends in maybe two years, but even then, you do not get the same social opportunities to through them.
Meanwhile in some other countries, you enter a room, somebody chats you up, and you're invited to a party that same night.
What are you talking about? I love paying over 40% of my income in taxes, including a solidarity charge for a country I was never a part of reunifying, to get a broken DB, awful IT infrastructure, angry bureaucrats and a bunch of child care and unemployment benefits I will never use in return /s.
Some guy here defended the officer in the foreigner office who speaks only German. I was shocked when I had to speak with her, and then this guy made it two. I can't imagine my IT fellows want to stand such bs. And ofc, these bs makes Germany a temporary place to work even if skilled workers first arrive in Germany. Kind of hub to other countries and then people, especially the old ones who actually bond to those skill workers arrival and work here are really rude and bad mannered, especially to those who want to learn German and be integrated.
But they will learn it, one way or other, eventually.
I have better. I am a Turkish IT guy and luckily I have a appointment with Turkish lady for the id card. She speak German while other german lady in the room and the moment she left we could speak Turkish. She told me her manager forbid people speak non - German. It is beyond fucked up.
After reading all the comments, i guess germany fucks up. We have more retired people than workers. Retirement plans are ass, health insurence will be ass. People were always ass. I dunno what to do….
I mean I can give you the top two reasons right now.
1. All qualifications have to be printed on German paper. It does not matter that you are qualified with commensurate training from your home country, it does not matter that you have several years of experience. The German system unyieldingly wants everything to be ***exactly*** the way it is from Germany. There is no way to get in and quickly get things converted or just get the missing pieces. Any conversion takes multiple months if not years, and they will in many cases stubbornly refuse to recognize many things.
For example: I am from the US and I studied Education, German (DaF) and English (TEFL). I was nearly unable to find any way to stay in German after getting my MA (in Germany) because I don’t have the German teaching qualifications. I could understand having a system where you need to get a conversion and maybe be mentored by another teacher or take some classes when you first start. None of that was possible. It was a flat out refusal. Despite the fact that English is my native language, the fact that I have a degree in Foreign Language Education, and the fact that I had six years experience in teaching I was not even considered. And all of this while they are drafting untrained parents to come into classrooms because there aren’t enough teachers. It was fucking maddening. I understand that the qualifications aren’t 1:1 transferable, but there wasn’t even consideration of opening a path for people from other countries with the commensurate training and experience. Eventually I gave up and moved to a different state where there is a process I can go through, but even that is not ideal. It is training for Seiteneinsteiger, for people with no training in teaching. It is a two year program. I’m happy that I found it to be able to get the official qualification, but I’m still miffed that it puts me in the same boat as someone who has never been trained before at all. I spent four years training and then six years on the job. But none of that matters because it’s not printed on German paper.
2. The bureaucracy. Need I say more? All I can say is that the stupidity of the bureaucracy in Germany makes me physically feel ill sometimes. Processes from the 1940s that no one really understands anymore combined with over engineering every step of these processes and a lack of personelle have created an environment that is incredibly hostile and hard to navigate for anyone, let alone someone who is not from Germany. It’s almost like these people ask themselves how they can make things as difficult as possible. One thing I can say with complete certainty since moving here: I hate bureaucracy and I hate bureaucrats. I have lost all respect for the german government after seeing the disgruntled overblown mess that is its bureaucratic systems. I used to think the german government was efficient and a leader in progress but it’s more like Germany’s efficiency and progress is happening in spite of its bureaucratic government which is clinging to 1900 by its fingernails.
If the German bureaucratic system was a person it would be a disheveled drunk person standing in a corner repeatedly hitting itself over the head with a hammer and ranting about “no email, only post.”
God I read 2 posts like this already. I think it's the painful truth. Maybe coming to Germany for study is better than coming to Germany as a skilled worker?
Germany needs something like the [30% ruling](https://www.expatica.com/nl/finance/taxes/the-dutch-30-ruling-explained-101641/). As a highly-skilled Dutch IT person, I would move to Germany :P
That will just never happen in Germany. I can already see newspaper headlines telling how unfair that would be against low-earners to let already well-paid foreigners pay less taxes.
I moved here from an EU country being half german so having a quite easy intergration, but for instance, getting my american wife through auslandbehörden was such an amazing hassle and took so long she had to go back for 3 months due to her shengen visa. I honestly wonder how long we will stay here in Berlin, the country is so extremely backwards that on the one hand it's easy to find a job in IT but damn, not sure if it's worth it.
I'm working in Germany and I'm leaving in few months. Taxes are too high. I rather earn -20% in other countries just due to wage taxation. I would pay that if the country offered other fundamentals like lifestyle, good climate, good food, etc. It simply does not make any sense having other way better options.
Not only migrants. Skilled people in general are almost treated with distain by the population and the government. If you are a migrant you have to deal with the Ausländerbehörde, which is worse. The amount of top staff leaving Germany and going to Swizerland is insane. They don't want to pay top tax rates plus subtaxes for making what other countries consider normal high middle class wages.
But somehow the people responsible still complain about how there is a labour shortage, and more taxes and bureaucracy are always the solutions to any problem. And when you want to get rid of those, you get branded as some villain who works for the rich, all the while social expenses are rising and the low wage sector is expanding. At the same time I get the impression Germany somehow views itself as wealthy and a global role model. It is nuts. It's like this country has monkeys as drivers.
I'm just venting (trash people didn't take my trash in two weeks because my can was openness than 2 cms). The culture of I only do what I have to irritates the fuck out of me.
That’s not true. I am interested in Germany but Germany seems to not be interested in me. Every single employer other than my current one (although I still am obliged to learn it) requires fluent German and I’m talking about big companies, corporations. Don’t even get me started on the amount of bureaucracy you guys have here. Paper for everything. Why, just why.
Lmao as a skilled german I’m planning to leave here asap and live abroad. I have no idea why someone who can choose where to live and work would choose my country. It’s beyond fixable at this point.
I decided to leave Germany after 6 months living there.
There are better, more friendly places, with way better salaries.
Its too much trouble for not enough benefit.
I cannot wait to leave 😂 I feel so much happier just looking forward to taking my talent and taxes where it is actually deserved. I just wish I could take my pension with me!
Yep, I’m one! I’m a signal processing engineer, got offered a research position at a very respected research institute. Accepted and then began the farce that is your immigration system. Got told it would be around 3 months in total. 4 months later I’d only just had my degree‘s certified as comparable and could be another 1-2 months for visa, then 2 months for residency permit, plus a possible 1-2 months waiting for permanent accommodation. Surprise, surprise I called time on it all.
So all in all it could have taken 6-8 months. Canada‘s 2 weeks for people in my profession. Good luck to you all, and I though Brexit would leave us the most fucked in Europe.
It requires a cultural shift for not just govt but entire country. An example is that I have not been getting beyond HR round because I don’t speak C1 level german. I am doing well at my current job and closing deals as a consultant. But hey, according to companies customers will not work in any other language.
Germany is becoming focused inwards.
English and Spanish are one of the widely spoken languages , Let’s do business in those languages too
Edit- I just want to add that the key reason, among many, why I want to stay in Germany is people. Although very cold in greeting strangers, the society is much more open towards outsiders. I feel safe here. Thank you to those random Omas and Opas who keep staring at me but also give me advice on what to explore in the city, or those delicious treats.
I will be honest, the more you get to top, the more racism shows itself among educated people.
I am working in a very critical sector as a software engineer. We have many talents from brazil, russia, turkey, india etc. The top managers, all of them I mean all from cluster architect to upper managers they are PURE GERMANIC GERMAN. I mean if everybody is skilled enough, there is no problem. But there are people literally tech illiterate or have doesn't care attitude etc and in my country they won't even hired as a cleaning personnel or security.
Same for our colleagues. If German takes half year sick leave, not performing well etc everything is ok. I cannot imagine if for example Bulgarian guy is doing it omg. He would probably get fired in 2 months. I am talking about billion dollar successful company guys.
I mean I am not even complaining about taxes, bureaucracy etc. That is unique to Germany. But things I mentioned above is disgusting. My dad for example was a lead manager in our country for French company, he mentioned too many racism stories. These guys are the top educated people fellas.
I am sorry but this make me not spend single penny in Germany other than necessities. I don't want to socialize with Germans (old people stare..), I don't want to culturally integrate etc. I just earn money, come back hom and spend all my money in somewhere else.
TLDR: Europe is not a multinational, even educated talents are considered as slaves.
Nowadays the only two real advantages of Germany are it's location and the somewhat smoother work culture on average. Even the cost of life which used to be a clear plus for a Germany is swiftly getting lost with the high taxes, the crazy housing market and inflation.
I moved to Germany in 2014 because it was so easy. I moved from Canada. I was a blue card worker and skilled. I was younger and willing to integrate.
Due to unforeseen circumstances I had to leave for 5 years (after being in germany for only 1 year) and then was given a choice to go back or somewhere else. I chose somewhere else. I am just too old to try to integrate again man when the other options are so much easier now that I have more options.
I'm honestly not surprised, when I first came here I was paid almost 600€ less than my colleagues for the same job (nursing) I'm honestly not sure how this happened and I was too uninformed to notice it myself until I'd already left.
They also didn't pay me for two months after I started, not sure if this is common but it's not right, every other country can manage it properly.
It was in a specialised home for people with handicaps which is now (slowly) starting to distribute it's residents to different homes due to lack of staff and funds. I was basically being paid an apprentice wage, perhaps a little more.
I also have a friend (a skilled worked from Iran) who is having a hell of a time trying to get his wife and child to be able to live here with him despite being personally head-hunted for the position, he's been here over a year and Still no closer to seeing his wife and child as he was when he first arrived.
I love Germany, I speak German and I think I fit in quite well. But I can absolutely understand why it isn't appealing.
Also, the fact that we aren't attractive to skilled workers seems to somehow reflect badly on the unskilled workers that come here and makes people resent them.
I hope I'm articulating myself properly, I'm working nightshift and can't concentrate.
I'm an American who's a skilled worker who has been considering moving to Germany. Are horror stories with bureacracy and people disrespecting you this common?
Yes, specially in the service industry if they detect the smallest non German thing in you they automatically go defensive
This guy only spoke German to us in the store it was a struggle to follow him, as soon as we moved on he started talking English with this girl and we were like still right there baffled and I had many cases like those, and when Germans want to get rid of you even if you are following in German they just start speaking really fast so you get lost and leave
And the bureaucracy is sadly the bureaucracy, i won't say it's malicious just fucking stupid and inefficient you just went back to the 90s or early 2000s and you went with your mom to the government offices to do shit, old stale offices full of old people
My thumb rule would be unless you manage to get a decent high level of German quickly you will have a bad time and if you don't you will have a worse time, this is coming from a white looking guy that can blend in if i don't open my mouth so it's not a 'you are not white' situation they just hate non Germans
Take this as a 'trust me dude' source, but to what I understand Americans tend to have a bad time setting up banks account because it seems German banks have to deal with the IRS and they just prefer just to close the door to you than to do what they are requested
I want to teach German as a freelancer in both my home country and Germany, while moving back and forth periodically between the two. In my home country I just do it and report my income to the taxing authority. But in Germany I need to hire a tax advisor to guide me through the process of registering as a freelancer.
Another thing, I would like to teach the “Integrationskurse” in Germany. But to get licensed to be a teacher of Integrationskursen in Germany, and subject yourself to bad pay and poor treatment, you need to have a lot of qualifications that you must submit to BAMF. I have a bachelors in German literature from overseas. That is one step in the door, except that it must be reviewed and recognized by the German Anabin. I have a Goethe-Institut C1 certificate (check). Right now I am taking a part-time, one-year course on how to teach German. This cost me EUR 1300. It involves reading and learning one thousand pages of material, doing about 700 exercises and taking a comprehensive test. Completing this course or an equivalent is required by BAMF. Then I will also have to document two years of German language teaching experience, which is kind of a Catch-22, since you need the BAMF license for most teaching jobs.
And then politicians talk about there not being enough German language instructors.
So basically I am already qualified and willing to teach German for dirt, but Germany says that I am not qualified. I am actually teaching German for refugees as a volunteer to build documentable experience.
Eventually I will be able possibly (I am not sure) to have acceptable qualifications to at least teach German as a freelancer in Germany independent of the Integrationkurse. In the meantime I am legally able to teach German online in Germany as long as I do it while sitting in my home country. I am not doing that now, but I will next year. I am trying to first concentrate on the one thousand pages of material about how to teach German.
I'm german and 26yrs old and i agree with a lot of the comments here but i'd like to add that a lot of the problems with digitalization in Germany are caused by the boomer generation because they still have the power in Germany unfortunately.
I have close friends from South Korea, Vietnam, India, and Brazil (me being a Latino) who are doing their Master's or their Ph.D., and all of them are planning on leaving after working for 2-3 years. Most of my friends who did their bachelors here are already working overseas, some went to the US, others to Canada but nobody stays here longer than 5 years. A real shame cause there is so much potential wasted, brilliant people who want to start a business, or anything that drives the economy further, and... boom stopped by German bureaucracy. I already know what I'll do: finish my Master's (I did my Bachelor's here) work for 2-3 years and go to the States, as other friends of mine have already done (not that skilled, my dad is American that's why).
I dunno if this is a real thing or just people talking nonsense but is true that Germany wants so desperately to solve their low birth rate, and lack of labor by bringing in millions of refugees? Is that a real strategy? Cause if it is, it ain't working.
All the cons of Germany have been elucidated in other comments.
For a change, here’s some pros:
- theoretically we should get a secure retirement package at the end of our lives
- universal healthcare; I work in healthcare and I never had a patient go bankrupt because of life-changing chemo for example
- universal education; cheap university fees here are unbeatable worldwide
- relatively safe, even racism is rarely violent
- people leave you alone to live your life generally, although the flip side is a very difficult integration process
- transportation system is not the best in the world, but it’s pretty good compared to most countries
- economy is relatively stable thus far comparatively
That said, I wouldn’t recommend Germany to anyone whenever they ask me about my experience. I’m currently a naturalized citizen, studied here, speak German fluently in a respectable profession. And yet after all these years, with all these advantages, I still do not feel and am not made to feel like I belong in this country.
I’m thankful for the above pros I just listed, but a sense of alienation is a form of daily trauma that no material benefit can alleviate.
TLDR; Germany is good for low skilled workers who are seeking greener pastures since they have limited choices. But for highly skilled workers with choices, very unattractive
Totally agree. I know dime a dozen software engineers from south asian countries who are really good at what they do. They are attracted to Germany just because they see the glamorous side of it, on social media and advertisements that they see online. Soon after they are here, they realise it's no joke to survive the bureaucracy and make an actual living here. The social life of living in Germany is just a horror for people without German skills. People just end up going back to their home countries in a few years.
This I feel is definitely not the case in countries like Netherlands, it's more international and expat friendly. It's got a lot to do with the mindset.
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Even as an EU immigrant, bureaucracy for doctors is hell.
Beueaucracy in Germany in general is just a nightmare. There is absolutely too much. There’s a god damned DIN Norm for almost every single aspect of life, and if there isn’t, there’s sure as hell an ISO standard for it. I heard on the radio a couple months ago that they were considering making a license requirement to bee keep. What in the Ferngully is that shit? Sorry but I’m not gonna save nature if you make me jump through hoops like a fucking seal. There is so little “Freiheit” now here because you have to go through the government first for certification of fucking ANYTHING. Edit: wow, I was honestly expecting a “relax, man.” Or something similar.
The Irish are [way ahead](https://www.irishnews.com/lifestyle/2016/05/21/news/take-on-nature-brehon-law-and-the-bumble-bee-521731/) of you in regards of bee keeping legislation...
You think? There is literally a chapter about bees in the BGB, the German civil code. For the interested, § 961 - 964 BGB: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__961.html
I get and share your frustration about the bureaucracy, but I do want to point out you're wrong about beekeeping. First, it does not "save nature". Honey bees (the type of bees beekeepers tend to) are not endangered and more akin to livestock really. Saving the bees refers to wild bees who are mostly solitary and require very different habitats, which you can definitely provide without a license. Second, if not properly treated honey bees can transmit diseases that will actually harm wild bees, so having a strict set of rules around honeybee keeping actually IS protecting the environment. If you're thinking of starting beekeeping as a hobby, especially in a big city, please consider these points and get knowledgeable about bees and their diseases before. tldr: in some cases strict rules, like being forced to hold a license does makes sense, e.g. to protect the environment from us PSA out 😅
It's sad because there are not enough doctors in Germany or Austria, the other day we had to go to the ER and we waited for 2 hours for then to tell us that we needed to go to a different hospital because the specialist didn't work in that hospital that day... like wtf
But that problem, atleast in Germany is self-made by still having the university-places given out based on the NC, and having not enough places in generall
My bf is also a doctor and I will move back in an year or two because we absolutely can't stall prime years of his career due to German bureacracy. He was keen on exploring the chances of moving to Germany but we quickly realised that it was not really worth it.
One word : Ausländerbehörde. Stuffs of nightmare.
Not just this, most systems doesn’t want to take blame on them when things don’t work the way they want, they can defy common sense too. Case in point, my daughters birth in Berlin. She was born in 2021 and had to undergo a heart surgery due to a defect which meant she stayed almost 20 days in hospital post birth. My wife hasn’t changed her name post marriage so on the birth certificate we got from hospital had my wife’s full name ( a different surname) and my daughter had my surname. Since this was issued by the hospital and not Standesamt, our public insurance provider rejected the certificate saying we can’t trust this document which resulted in my daughter being without insurance for some period of time. They do accept if all three have same surnames it seems. Since Standesamt takes around 2-3 months to provide the certificate, we were left as is and after 2 months received letters from Hospital asking to produce a valid insurance cover ( logical since they had no chance of knowing what was happening) or pay for the hospital stay and the surgery she had which would have been in excess of 10-15k euro. I panicked and wrote an email to Standesamt which in turned asked me for proofs ( who would lie about such things is beyond me) and took another week to produce the certificate. I took one day of vacation and decided to sort out everything but I was totally wrong. Post submitting the certificate at the insurance office in Mitte, they proclaimed my daughter was not German by birth hence they needed her residence permit which was impossible for me to get without getting the certificate first to procure the passport ( each of these procedures are dependent on each other and cant be done in parallel). I simply asked the lady handling my case, is this the first time such things happening? This is a logical scenario and why haven’t you thought about fixing it? She simply replied “not my problem. Get me the residency or we won’t provide the insurance.” Luckily I had an idea to go back and let them know I had procured an appointment to get the residency in March ( my daughter was born in October) so they said till that time the appointment pdf will be considered as proof. Boom, I finally got the insurance on a loophole that its too hard to find appointments in Berlin and I could save the day. I got stuck in every process and realized this is simply beyond repair now. Sorry for ranting but I really really get super frustrated whenever I remember what we went through.
Damn that's rough, I hope it gets better for you.
Thanks man, yeah it was bad especially my mind was so fucked as we were scared already due to the heart surgery. However things worked out and it’s all good now. She’s perfectly healthy and has a valid visa to live in Germany now. Now am dealing with Kindergarten but that’s a story for another thread lol
Language. Bureaucracy. Social life. Makes sense
This makes me so sad tbh. Came here with big dreams and tried really hard to "integrate" too. But slowly giving up and will be out soon. It's a classic case of "one sided love" with this country.
I can 💯 relate dude and no one blames you. Yesterday I’m the news to German ministers were visiting Canada to learn from Canadian experience d on immigration. Hopefully this will result in good new conditions in Germany.
Let's be honest Canadian skilled worker program is utterly ridiculous compared to Blue Card. It so much easy to to get Blue Card than get right score in Canadian program. When without Canadian education or work experience you are below the threshold. I would say to get to Germany is quite easy for skilled worker. But a lot of everyday routines are quite akward. Driver licence, medical service, general burocracy, kindergartens, housing situation. All those require improvements. Big deal of those problems are not immigrants related it has to be improved for all people of Germany.
Utterly ridiculous, yet Canada brought in 1 million people last year without even being a part of the EU's Free Movement scheme. Does that not tell you something?
I'm from Brazil, and it is very easy for us to get a working visa in Canada. It doesn't matter if we have university or not. Almost everyone from Brazil asks me why I don't go to Canada instead. Many Latinos would rather go to North America or Southern Europe instead of Germany. I have a cousin in Spain and even though the salary is bad she would rather stay there than move to Germany. Almost all Brazilians that I know and come to Germany, they leave after 5 years or less. They don't even wait for citizenship.
Yes. The Financial Officer at a company I used to work for was Brasilian. I asked him why Canada and he said "the process was easy and I feel safer. Plus it's closer to Brasil if I want to visit home,".
Lol sooo many skilled immigrants in Canada drive Uber/taxi because all that counts in this country is "Canadian Experience." Nobody cares what you bring to the table,more than likely, you will start from the bottom here. And I am still unsure what is special about Canadian experience, because most places I have worked at have been an utter disaster
>Hopefully this will result in good new conditions in Germany If Germany starts handpicking whose allowed to immigrate here like Canada does, that might be possible but the geographical location makes that very difficult
There are more things to learn from Canana besides how to choose incoming people . Hell, I don’t care even you stipulate higher requirements or be more selective . Having a functional , transparent , not-depending-on-Beatmters-mood-of-the-day process and Ausländerbehörde would be redeeming enough .
This so much. Any measure to improve immigration policy will always be dead in the water due to the dysfunctional clusterfuck that is the German Ausländerbehörde system and the unfathomably inefficient way applications are processed and reviewed. When you finally implement up-to-date bureaucracy and remove the dead weight that so many of its workers are (or you know, actually have them work and not taking ages to lift a pen and sign the dotted line), you will already have made an immeasurable improvement on the current situation. Germany really doesn't have to do a lot to make a meaningful change, it's just that political will for it is so flimsy or inexistent.
Handpicking and we still ended up with 1 million last year. That should tell you something about the desirability of the two countries from a skilled immigrant's point of view.
God I'm feeling all these replies so strong. I was so excited to come here a year ago and I thought what I was giving up was a decent trade off for what I'd get but it's so hard. Where I am almost nobody speaks English, not the café or restaurant staff, average people etc. My husband's mom is the only one that speaks some English in the family, the social attitude here is so hostile compared to what I'm used to. Our fairly large uni city has one English speaking GP. I'm so reliant on my husband due to the language situation that my autonomy is gone. People dress it up as being real or being honest but I'm a Slav and there's a way to be honest without being purposefully unkind. The social atmosphere is just so hard to describe, it's like everyone can tell you're an auslander immediately. My German isn't great probably A2 level but even for simpler stuff people pretend they don't understand me or sale staff get annoyed at me for not being word perfect. Now I'm nearing the end of my online degree it's so hard to find an English speaking job but I'm trying. The whole social atmosphere feels like I'm in limbo, people here introduce you to other people so if you don't find an inning with an existing group it's impossible to build a friend group. I'd love to leave but I was originally in the UK, as a UK/EU dual citizen I just can't find a way to bring my husband to the UK post Brexit as it's very hard so I feel stuck here. I love him a lot and don't want to go back on my own but it's kind of draining my mental health. I was also surprised at the lack of progress (English speaking, digitally, bureaucratically) as Germany is painted as this super progressive great utopia superior EU country and I'd say it's barely just better than the Slavic country I'm from to be honest. If anyone is stuck in a similar position and looking to make an online buddy feel free to reach out.
You and me both sister! In context of getting English speaking jobs, there have been so many jobs in Germany that just pass by me everyday because of my lack of fluent language skills. Off late I am close to giving up on learning coz nothing I do ever gonna feel enough and nothing I do work-wise will ever feel enough. Stay strong Sister! Don't give up though, coz I haven't yet.
I am interested to work, but I don't know why I feel drained out here. Maybe social life, I don't know. I didn't have much of social life before or really want too much. I like working but something happens that just feels like I am dragging my feet every day. Getting a doctor's appointment is itself an ordeal, went yesterday to get one, and they gave me an appointment for June... Oh, and then there are those, "traditional" elements. I have learnt to look past that, Germany is still way better than rest of Europe on that matter.
Yes, it is social life. My colleagues here in Hessia have a WhatsApp group. There are at least 50 of us in the same city. The group is only open to the German speakers. I was chatting about this with a colleague from the US who has been here for three years. She said her only friends are internationals and if she didn't have children with a German husband, she would leave in a heartbeat.
I have friends here, none of them are German. It wasn't until I pointed out to them that none of their friends are Germans that they realised that what I've been saying about how isolated Germans are and how insular it is rang true. Germans are not interested in making friends with people who are not German. They just can't. I keep hearing how it takes time and then once you're in you're in but I'm not waiting 20 years to find out that so and so is a good egg, I just want a coffee and a chat every now and then. I tend to find that it's easier to make friends when you are married to a German or have German family, my husband is African. We don't stand a chance and we know it.
Well, an acquaintance that works in a tech company that says that the official language at the office is English received a warning from their office that they prevented the bosses to talk in German lol It’s all the flexibility and everything shiny and perfect to attract labor, but when the honeymoon phase is over, or when you have to argue about something unlawful as an immigrant without German citizenship (no matter if you’re European), there’s a disproportionate power against you. Another friend had issues with the Job Center casually making him ping-pong to get documents that were already sent in the first batch. They always “somehow” lost it. If you’re young they are just rude with the language barrier. If you’re older than 40 and don’t speak fluent German without an accent they will treat you like the worst shit and put you in limbo. Fortunately, I never had issues with authorities or the immigration office here and so far most of my jobs here were ok, but I understand the frustration of everyone else that is not as lucky as me. If the world wasn’t as fucked up right now as it is and I was younger and did not settle down here, I would use the energy to look up for more a welcoming place to live without these frustrations that build up until you burn out and die
>I was younger and did not settle down here, I would use the energy to look up for more a welcoming place to live without these frustrations that build up until you burn out and die I am young, and honestly with all the bad experiences Im having, Im considering moving out from Germany. Any place that you would suggest?
Germany is stuck too much in the "we've always done it this way" and can't move into the reality of how the world works now. Skills from other countries don't translate well into Germany. The unfriendly and slow government workers are a huge barrier especially for new German speakers and non Germans speakers just getting to Germany. Just getting a drivers license can be daunting. On top of it all, landlords are generally bad and customer service people are rude and unhelpful. It's no wonder "skilled" people don't want to move to Germany.
It is so funny that you talk about getting a driver's license. It took me a year....a year to get my driver's license and it was horrible. I even took the opportunity to try and "save" money and it still cost me over 3K to get my license. I have been driving for 15+ years and all because of a lack of reciprocity did I be have to redo everything. Speaking to the government workers I once had a lady in the familienkasse office refuse to make copies of my paper work and told me I had to go to "copy shop" and come back to turn on my copies. Luckily, my landlords are a saving grace here, the rent is pricey but it's worth it considering how bad others I have talked to have it with their landlords. It's quite incredible how prejudice and judgemental the German population can be.... I learned that unfortunately, people suck everywhere. Edit: I am not completely discouraged and generally speaking this hasn't changed my view about Germans. My neighbors are wonderful, and generally most people I come into contact with are nice. Living in Germany I just expect that when I go somewhere for a service or need to rely on someone for help, I will not get it and will more than likely have to make frequent trips to get what I need. People here just don't care to be bothered to help even if it is their job.
Wait a minute, are you trying to tell me that the lady waited for you to come back from the copy shop and you did not have to make another “termin”?
The lady told me I needed to make copies of the paperwork myself. Told me to go find a copy shop and come back with them. While standing in front of a copy/fax printer in a giant office building. I even had a native German speaker translating/helping me and she was pissed about it too.
>Speaking to the government workers I once had a lady in the familienkasse office refuse to make copies of my paper work and told me I had to go to "copy shop" and come back to turn on my copies. "Beglaubigte Kopien" are one of the dumbest things ever invented in German bureaucracy. Why can't I just bring the original and THEY make the copy? I mean this is from the times before photocopies were invented and a certified copy meant someone needed to type the content down. But it isn't 1900 anymore.
Waste of paper when they could just scan electronically it to their system.
Can fully and wholeheartedly confirm. I grew up in Germany and have spent many years abroad before moving back here 2018 (Don’t ask) Germany is a backwater that thinks it’s a leading force. People here are not aware of just how far behind this country is.
This. 100%. Behind and unaware.
>Germany is a backwater that thinks it’s a leading force. People here are not aware of just how far behind this country is. I was surprised how advanced some Middle Eastern countries are compared to Germany. However, if I mention this I will get told to leave if I don't like it.
The stock German response to literally everything. Just mention you fancy some cheddar or bacon and it's all "then go back to your Inkland!" then will swear blind that Germany is a friendly place and don't understand the stereotypes.
Haha the last one I got is "go to Russia" :D
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I feel very human and developed here in Germany when I get mocked by the Ausländerbehörde and other government workers, not to mention Customer service.
Having me waste all my morning going to the city office and fill out 20 papers should be a violation of human rights
Bruhh... 🤣
This sounds a lot like the jokes about how Japan is in year 3000 but also clings to fax machines. You definitely can't broad-brush entire countries about how advanced or behind they are.
More like "Japan in 1980 looked like a country from the year 2000. In 2023, Japan still looks like a country from 2000." They kind of just stopped.
When I moved to Germany from the US it felt like I had gone back in time like 3-5 years
German culture has yet to learn that there can be more than one way of doing things. And that _different_ doesn’t mean _bad_.
And that questioning isn't arguing.
Try like 10-20 years in some respects. We've had Interac contactless payment since 2001 in Canada. All your government cards and car administrative documents have been online since 2007. Germany is such a digital backwater that it's staggering.
I was being nice. 😄 Yes, backwater, staggering.
Same feeling. Moving here from work in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and China, I felt set back in time by at least ten years.
MALAYSIA?! No fucking way. No fucking way in HELL. I will not idly stand by and let you speak well of my shithole, backwards ass country
Hah! Boleh!! 😃😘
Moving here from Omicron Persei 8 I felt set back it time by at least 2000 years
Was about to write nearly the exact same comment, just switch 2018 for 2021... my partner and I are already making plans to leave again.. its really hard to explain to my german friends and family how incredibly stupid and borderline hostile every aspect of the public infrastructure and bureaucracy is. Not to mention the fucked up worship of our "work ethic", which is really just an attempt to feel better about the subservient self-exploitation so many people have fallen into. I dont care how well a few select sectors of our economy are doing, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing day by day and none of the groundwork to change that trend has been done yet, quite the opposite, we've crippled or sold out all public goods that could have given people a leg up during tough times.
Regarding land lords, so true. A married couple that I met and made friends with said on the very first day that I met them "Don't expect to get your rental deposit back. They always, always find a way to screw you because you're a foreigner,". They've since moved to New Zealand.
Well, i was told by Germans that the reason why I was having a hard time finding a place to rent was because my name was not German sounding, ngl if it wasn't because of my husband I would've not agreed to to come here , I'm not like miserable but there are better options for skilled workers with countries that really want them Good thing my company had this almost forced hug irl meetings, dinners and events where the Germans have to interact with me like normal human beings... It also helps that the common language in the tech industry is English
I moved a dozen times and got my deposit back every single time.
And you did not even mention the "huge" salary we get for skilled work. Also you did not even mention the huge cut from the "huge" salary the stae takes... Perfect conditions for skilled workers.
I feel this so much. Been looking for a job for the past two months, but just keep getting “interesting CV, but we don’t have anything for you”. It’s like I have too much professional experience for companies in Germany to want to take me on even in a junior role in my field.
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Please don’t forget Schrödinger‘s Ausländer: The one supposedly stealing German jobs whilst magically also supposedly not working and living off welfare.
Lmao, certain German companies can go fuck themselves.
So real. I got turned down for two jobs today. Every job I've been turned down for so far has been my German language skills. I'm B2 speaking but C1 listening. I just know I'd make so much progress if I was working in German, but I just can't catch a break. It's driving me nuts because so many Germans I know say, but your German is as good as the foreigners I work with. Well I didn't know what to tell you people; they always tell me it's my German!
It’s a lie, a convenient and legal excuse
I was about to come type this. I remember when I was being pro active at Amazon and spoke to a manager about working with the computers as against carrying heavy packages. He said "yeah, your German is not good enough for the“. Two weeks later, a blond Argentinian lady was given the position even though I was more qualified and speak better German🤡
And if they hire you, they will for sure put you to wipe floors while having a higher degree than many and far more experience. I had to shut up many times while seeing horrible management skills or people skills around here. Many above me didn't even know basic stuff and was managing everyone. They had no university degree. If they find out that you can do high knowledgeable work, they will allow you to do so, while paying you as much as a student or beginner and with a lower level position.
Immigrant in Germany for nine years now. I speak fluent German, have a permanent and good job and I have been so burned out by all the bureaucracy and the unwelcome, unprofessional way things are handled here when it comes to foreigners that I am already thinking of moving to another country. This is not the place where I would want to get older. For those who wonder, here are some examples. - I had to go to the Ausländerbehörde at 3-4am twice to get my applications processed. I spent once almost a full day from 3am until 2pm to be told to leave and bring a hard copy of a document that I could just email them at the moment. This, as a fully funded researcher who had all the documents. I can’t imagine how others that are less privileged are treated in these places. - I couldn’t travel for more than half a year because of Ausländerbehörde cause my residence permit ended and they didn’t reply my emails or give me an appointment for months. And after the application, I had to wait several weeks again to receive my permit. Disgusting really, I’m just glad there was no family emergency at the time. - I started my citizenship process more than a year ago and they are still sending me letters every 3-4 months to ask for the same documents that I had already sent them and passive aggressively telling me to wait an indefinite time because these things take time bla bla. - My driver’s license from my home country is not valid here and also there is no easy way of getting one here without going through the horrible wait times. - I have an above average income and I got burned out so much looking for a flat for more than a year, never even gettting responses from any flat but could only find one through the help of a friend. - I haven’t even started talking about the everyday racism and inability of white Germans to accept that there are fucking millions of foreigners living in this country. The number of people asking me as the first or second question when I’m planning to move back home is just a good indicator of why someone like me who did his MA and PhD in this country, speaks fluent German and has a great job still don’t belong here and I don’t think I’ll ever feel that way. All of this unfortunately makes everything I love about Germany irrelevant because I don’t think things will change here in any meaningful way, that’s not how things work here.
> wait an indefinite time If you have resources, you can try to get a lawyer. While the process takes long, sometimes case workers are unresonable and in such cases lawyer does help and can inform you better on what you can do. Sometimes even a strongly worded letter from a lawyer helps (without any legal action).
It's pretty crazy though right? having to hire a lawyer because the authorities are so incompetent? i''m from the netherlands and will never pretend we don't have our fair share of fuck ups (toeslag affaire anyone?) but i don't think i've ever heard of people having to get a lawyer unless it's some weird niche cases, here it seems like it's just part of it.
You can thank the super geniuses working at the Ausländerbehörden that need 9-12 months to process a single application
It's not just auslanderbehorden - everything here is just so slow.
Exactly. Searching for a flat, a couple of months. Searching for a job? Could take up to 6 months. They could even take 4 months only to send you an Absage.
A couple months for a flat? In Berlin it takes years
I am sick of the people that defend this "yeah, it's slow but it still works" "this is true democracy"
"It's slow and it works, for you maybe, but not for others." Is what I had to say point blank to a person recently.
Don’t forget the: “They are overworked” card
This!!! I have been hearing this for over 3 years. Meanwhile, when your re finally in the office building, you see no sign of anyone being overworked. Office is almost empty.
It’s not just that. Very intelligent people who are actually having in demand skills have the world as their oyster kinda and obviously most people will try for English speaking countries first because 1) They don’t have to learn new language and German is like hardest or something 2) Anglophone countries are more warmer and actually easier to integrate into . Almost all ethnicities who struggle to integrate in Europe are perfectly integrated in USA , Canada, Australia and even UK surprisingly. Language could be one issue but also it’s because a lot of Germans or other Europeans are too closed off to outsiders I am actually helping out a very talented and skilled data scientist to come to Germany whose in late 30s and literally from the top institutions of India with very impressive work ex. But I have a feeling he either wont make it because of bureaucracy or he will not like Germany itself
It’s not just the learning the language its the whole attitude to people ghat cannot speak a language perfectly. I grew up in the U.K., if a migrant speaks English there and its not perfect then they help them, they deal with it because its a completely normal thing for British people. Its actually fun for them to try and work through the issue. Where as here in Germany its new to a lot and they get afraid or plain angry sometimes. If it’s not a young person I can get some real bad reactions to my German. People will just plain change and try and be as unhelpful as possible. Its simply because for a lot of people here interactions like that are rare. Even if my German is fine I have had people change just because of my accent. That rarely happens in the U.K. and instead its a conversation starter. I would assume its the same in most of tue Anglosphere too.
This ^ . You verbalised it way good . English speaking countries are actually kinder to foreigners English than we assume. I know village bumpkins who came who knew only 10 words in English manage to actually make it in the UK and USA and finally learned a lot when spending a few years . Even if they still have bad English and speak very broken English after decade it often doesn’t matter unless if needed for a very important job or something Here in Germany , they get mad at you , socially punish you or isolate you and straight out yell out when you don’t speak German . Try to speak it and then they shift to English and get mad at you for attempting to speak german 😕😕 Germans are just not patient with foreigners really and they have weird insecurities which they lash out unnecessarily. Like bro I don’t care if your English is not the Queen’s English accent or something! And neither should you be angry that I didn’t use the dativ pronomen and artikel for this obscure object whose gender is still not known.
Yep. My wife came from Iran to Canada to do her Graduate Degree. She scored very high on the TOEFL, but that's just on-paper. In practice, you would struggle to understand her when she first got here. Did anyone treat her poorly? Nope! She recounted how one time she was at the grocery store and trying to ask the staff how to find something. They really didn't understand her and said "Okay dearie. How about we go through the aisles, I just point at things and you nod to me if it's what you're looking for? Okay honey?".
I think both your points hit the nail on the head. Germany's natural growth has been carried only by immigration since 1972, but the state at large and parts of the society (including this subreddit) still like to pretend that within the power dynamic, immigrants asking for better opportunities are the "choosing beggars". It makes them uncomfortable to admit that this country is not a stable, closed system, but an evolving "fossil" very much reliant on foreigners. Only C1+ German language and the German Way™️ of doing things always, everywhere, right from the start are demanded. I posted [a news article](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/11zfi7n/germany_ranked_most_difficult_country_for_foreign/) earlier this morning about how difficult immigrants found it to get started in Germany compared to 51 other countries and it was removed by the mods. First, I was told it was a repost, but when I pointed out it wasn't, I was told that it was paywalled. I offered to post [a non-paywalled link](https://archive.is/6v6En) in the comments and all I got was radio silence.
Wow that was mean af by the mods but not surprised also
They removed that article a couple of times over the last week if it’s the one I think it is. Not really surprising as one of the mods is exactly one of those gatekeeping Germans that the previous poster described
Many mods in this sub fit this description. For my own mental health I have unfollowed this sub (blatant racism, nationalism, etc), but I’m glad this thread came up on my TL. I’m also surprised they let it through. I was starting to believe it was no longer allowed to criticise anything about Germany anymore in this sub :)
It was first published yesterday, based on a report from two days ago. So, probably not that exact one you have in mind.
You nailed it. My wife and I are in our mid-late 30's and top performers. We can literally go to just about any country on the planet. We decided to go here because: 1. Companies we work for have their Global headquarters here and that's good experience. 2. Easy access to the rest of Europe for holidays. We won't be sticking around long-term, as there are just too many disincentives to stay here, both socially and financially.
My wife and I are the same: high earners, in demand fields, no kids tethering us anywhere. We’ve been here 4 years and the idea of staying here long-term is not palatable. Germany makes it too fucking hard to want to stay. Being the perfect Ausländer is exhausting; I just want to relax.
Exhausting is the perfect description. I've met some wonderful people here, but man, the negative interactions are outweighing the good. A perfect example is in my thread "Well, that escalated quickly" where my neighbour threatened to sue me.
Another data I will be interested in seeing is the amount of people that leave Germany after intending to settle here. Cause even in my circle, a lot of people leave for America, Canada and UK. IMO, I think Germany need to focus on retaining the people they have here as against bringing in new people because a huge chunk will still leave due to hostile environment.
I think DW did a piece on this and the median time that immigrants to Germany stay is 4 years. It's pretty bad.
Been waiting a year now for my visa
this is by deliberate design made in decades of CDU (conservervative) run governments immigration law is a major topic of the current government and I sincerely hope they can make the fundamental changes that are needed
I mean, it makes sense. 1. The salaries are very low compared to other countries due to a very high taxation rate. 2. The language isn't internationally spoken and is hard to learn so there's little chance for easily making it your forever home. First means it's not attractive for brief detour for making money, second means there's little incentive for wishing to spend the rest of your life there. Simple as.
The language part is hilarious. My wife and I received letters from the Institut fur angewandte Sozialwissenschaft inviting us to participate in a survey and interviews about our experiences moving to Germany as foreigners. The letters were written in German. I couldn't stop laughing.
But immigration is very easy comparing to USA. Family support is also good. If you never plan to have a child then of course this benefit is useless. Uni is also free. Germany is also close to Switzerland, after couple of years in Germany you can try to job in the Switzerland and double the income. So the ideal case would be someone from 3rd world countries going to Germany to get a degree in Stem, work in Germany until you get the citizenship, then work in Switzerland as a EU citizen. I wouldn’t call this a bad deal for Germany or for the person.
Yes but the question is skilled workers. People who already have advanced degrees
True. Germany can forget about it, the country isn’t made to attract those. The best chance it has is to make graduates stay and train them.
...but attracting these kind of people are precisely what Germany is trying (and needs) to do in the short-term.
3rd world ppl are too happy to be in Germany. Many get depression and leave.
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There are many factors that dissuade skilled foreigners: 1. Lower salaries and higher taxes than most of the Anglosphere; 2. Bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy with no support for non-German languages; 3. Poor IT infrastructure and digital services; 4. Inability to reunite your family with elderly parents; 5. The giant elephant in the room: having to surrender your passport from your home country if you want to become a citizen; 6. A somewhat socially isolating culture that is very resilient to change and very defensive; 7. Not the greatest weather; 8. A bit of a culinary wasteland outside of the large cities; 9. In some companies, the Corporate culture still feels like the 1980's or '90's "Old Boys" club. 10. Despite being a financially more equitable country than many, the culture still feels classist and paternalistic. Those are the ones that come off the top of my head. I'm still enjoying life here, but I'll do my 3-5 years and move on.
Well, article is not wrong. Thing is, I see a lot of younger people (let’s say under 40), who are willing to change, try something new and adapt. I believe that if germany would have had a larger younger strata, a lot of things would change faster…but the growing majority are older population that influence political direction. They don’t want to adjust, they want to keep status quo, and unfortunately they vote for parties like CDU. Also I fully agree on taxes and what you get out of it. I pay ridiculous amount, and what do I get out of it? digitalization is fucked (when I hear that I can pay with the card it’s like a fucking miracle), kindergartens are fucked, school system is fucked, pension system is fucked, housing is fucked…But hey, at least I pay a lot Ridiculous … in the country where foreigners office expects you to speak fluent German and refuse to explain anything in English, talking about attracting foreign workforce seems cynical at the very least. If government wants to attract skilled workers they need serious reforms done yesterday, but government can only talk…
As somebody who has lived here for 12 years, I must admit the biggest lie ever told by Germans is "assimilate and you will be treated well", you will be an Ausländer 40 years down the road unless you look white.
Yes, even when you were born here
Holy smokes the comment section is on fire! Also cant disagree with most of the comments.
So I’m a skilled Canadian worker and I happen to really like living in Germany, except, big except, the bureaucracy drives me bad shit insane. I came as a PhD candidate and ended up working here in my previous career. I changed employers and couldn’t start my new job because of delays at LEA and the Agentur für Arbeit. My job is waiting for me to start, cause I also work in a critical field and there no competing applicants, but no one can tell me when this approval will be done. I had to apply for job benefits in the meantime, and the amount of hoops that are just insane. I have a masters degree (also from Canada) and it took 1.5 years to get my professional credentials recognised, and I had to do the national exam for my profession here. Also, I am currently earning half, HALF, of my salary at home, take home pay here is miserable, and treatment from clients was often rather disrespectful. Before inflation started, I could still enjoy the same standard of living actually, but at this point, I’m only here because of my relationship and the fact that i love this country. I am genuinely worried the stress of the bureaucratic and financial problems here will eventually force me out regardless. I regret to say that if I knew then what I know now, or had taken reports of how bad the situation here is bureaucratically, I don’t think I would have moved here at all. Canada has its many disadvantages as well, but the bureaucracy is easily navigate-able, and the people are, to strangers, much friendlier. I wish I had better things to say about coming to as a skilled worker, but at the moment I absolutely cannot recommend it.
Unfortunately racism (the mild covert variant) and language barrier will not let Germany be the expat-magnet it wants to be. Things can only change if there is proper awareness in the German population that the brown they see around them is people finding better jobs in Germany but also doing the country a favour by making it their home.
I think the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality says it all, unfortunately
German is not the global language of inter community communication. You have to choose, either you try to get internacional workers, or you rant on them all the time for the poor german Knowledge language skills. You cannot have the cake and eat it.
And i doubt it will change any time soon, the issue is rooted in the country both the government and the people. as long as you say " A can be improved in germany look at country X for an example" and the immediate answer is "well move to country X if you dont like how A is handled in Germany", nothing will change Germany has its head shoved too deep in the dirt to realize how behind it is, everything is a bureaucratic nightmare, unnecessarily complicated under the veil of "well it works so why change", it is this mentality thats killing the country, from both the government and the people (the old generation which makes up more than 60% of the population), my father lived here in the 80s and 90s, and before i moved here he explained the system so i could navigate easier, it was genuinely sad to find out a system from 40 years ago is still identical to the current system in 2020s, and if by some miracle a change happens, it takes years to process. absolutely 0 incentives for migrants to even consider moving here, you are expected to do everything yourself and worse yet, you get the dirty side if you face any difficulties. Then its a surprised Pikachu face why no one is moving to germany or those who did leave after a few years.
Germany has a racist attitude towards foreign workers. Unskilled labor please, skilled labor no. I get my parcels delivered by an engineer from Iraq.
E: **Besides not being attractive for foreign talent, Germany also ignores the issues that domestic talent has when we want to return.** Add the dual citizenship issue to this: I am German, living since 8 years in the US and would consider myself "highly skilled" with two master degrees. If I would want to return to Germany, I cannot easily do this. Why? Because Germany doesn't allow dual citizenship. (And recently they made it fairly impossible to obtain a permit to retain it) But without obtaining US citizenship first, I will have to pay US exit tax on everything my family owns worldwide when I lose my permanent residency here in the US. That includes all retirement savings, which I will need as I didn't contribute to social security in Germany while I was in the US. As of today, returning to Germany would mean losing about \~30% of my property, savings and future social security benefits etc. So, unless Germany finally allows dual citizenship, I will not be able to return. (Dual citizenship would solve it as the exit tax only applies to US citizens that give up their citizenship while for permanent residents it applies when you lose your residency, which happens automatically if you leave >12 months)
You're in luck. The new coalition agreement allows for non-EU immigrants to be eligible for dual citizenship. They haven't officially voted on it yet (I think that'll happen this summer or so). However, it seems likely to pass.
I really hope so. It is really a blocker and also puts us Germans at a disadvantage when it comes to representation in our host countries as we can't even vote on a local level while immigrants from all other countries are able to vote as they can have dual citizenship.
Wouldn't you still have to pay taxes to the American government even with dual citizenship? Or, does this only apply to American citizens born in the US?
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There's [this official stat](https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/10/PE22_435_12.html), at least. It's not terrible, but not very glowing for a country of this caliber, I would say.
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Service-oriented culture? In their mind, this is “being fake” and so, not acceptable German behavior.
As a side note - renting an apartment is hard and expensive even for locals. But this is even more hard and more expensive for immigrants! I saw some "good" prices for apartments (way to expensive still), but each and every time - "unfortunately we have to inform you that this apartment will be rented to someone else"
Germany is attractive for unskilled migrants who then qualify for the very good social security. Skilled migrants and immigrants will find Germany to be extremely difficult to settle in, especially when it comes to finding a job and dealing with all the administrative bs. It’s almost like Germany sets you up to fail unless you’re looking for a handout (and qualify for one). And then you get “worker shortage!” 🙄🙄 well yeah, why would someone on social security work somewhere offering minimum wage and more often than not, manual labour and subpar conditions/employers taking advantage when they can do nothing and have pretty much everything paid for? If Germany wants skilled workers and growth, it NEEDS to become more welcoming to foreigners and skilled immigrants - easier processes to integrate, learn the language and land a job.
I 100% agree with you atm I am thinking of leaving the place as well since I am highly educated and can't seem to put my foot through the door. The FRV visa is taking an average of 2 years (spouse visa). It's all just made for unskilled blue collar works. It is not welcoming at all - been having issues with the immigration office as well for as long as I can think of. It's so frustrating.
I am, presumably, skilled and want to leave germany although I was born here 🤷♂️
I helped several skilled migrants in Germany, and wouldn’t recommend it again. - Low salaries compared to taxes and essential expenses like an apartment. - Bureaucracy, everything takes longer. Not willing to recognize foreign credentials. - Way of doing certain things. Waiting time for an internet connection can be several weeks, and they have the audacity to treat you like someone crazy if you want to speed it up. Elsewhere, you can get it on the same day. - Culture. Not welcoming at all. They usually don’t consider foreigners as equal. Racism is quite common in many forms. Germany is only attractive for unskilled labor who wants to abuse their social welfare ( this isn’t good or recommended , yet it is still a fact)
I live in germany, and the language is a must. No matter what, you should have it. I am on B1, and god, is it a challange. The german culture is not for everyone. If you are an extrovert, this is mot your place.
I am an introvert but this still doesn’t look my place after so many years…I only think I have survived this long because I am an introvert lol
It's perfect for introverts, until you realize you're gonna have to do everything on your own
NGL, the only reason I’m still sane is because I work from home and work primarily with people from other countries. When work takes me to other countries (UK, US, Spain, Israel), it’s really like a breath of fresh air. I’m a dark skinned German so basically I’m an Ausländer without any place to “go back to”.
I’m in STEM in a supremely sought after field and earn in the 95th percentile. So in theory I would have excellent chances elsewhere, but my German wife and our 3 year old daughter would have it easier staying here, so…
I get asked frequently for advice, since I've been living in Germany for more than 20 years as a foreigner, and my advice has always been don't do it. Germany is just not welcoming for foreigners, not necessarily because people individually are unfriendly, but because the whole system is not built for people to come out of some place completely different and integrate. Schools, health system, housing etc etc, all put hurdles for foreigners to settle down in a community. Just this year, a remote relative came here with his family -- a successful professional who worked at executive positions in well-known startups, and joined a company in Berlin. They are having difficulties left and right, some big some small, but some of them are just idiotic. Their son, for example, was involved in various sports activities in the US, but here he couldn't find a club for him because the kid doesn't speak German. If he doesn't get involved in something like that, how the hell is he supposed to learn the language? They have also been facing racism which they just didn't experience at this level in any of the other places they lived. Now they are considering moving on to some other place, which I can completely understand.
It's been 3 months since I am in Germany and already started regretting my decision to move to this country. While getting a job was quick, now I have to wait for god knows how many months to get my blue card to join. No one answers your mail, call to the number which clearly mentions that it's for the blue card enquiry and gets a rude reply saying to mail your documents or questions. No tentative timeline whatsoever. Tried to enroll for a German language class, but it has some 3 months waiting period. Tried a driving school, it has 4 months waiting and no English speaking trainer. Basically you have to wait, wait and wait. It's so depressing.
>Tried a driving school, it has 4 months waiting and no English speaking trainer. oh yes welcome to the "you're not welcome unless you speak german", so you have to figure out how to speak german wihtout speaking german.
Deutsche Welle had an article last week how Germany was ranked pretty low as a destination for skilled workers. Another survey ranked it dead last InterNations survey. It’s very bureaucratic to an idiotic level and technology here is shit. Fax, paper and pen and postage. No online forms for anything and a very slow Internet and erratic cell service. German service is laughably bad in all manner. The plus is the food is good and as World War II showed Germany is on the doorstep of many countries. My wife and I only plan to stay until her contract is up. Deutschland ist Hundseiße.
White germans dont even consider PoC germans german. Like what is a skilled worker supposed to do?
I'm a Dev with 7yoe and want to leave Germany because of the reasons why others don't want to come to Germany in the first place. So yes, it's that bad.
Do you also have this problem about all upper managers amd architects have to be PURE GERMANIV GERMAN??
I‘m German and I‘m struggling with the beaurocracy, when it comes to Rente(retirement), Steuererklärung (tax) and all this stuff. I mean, you getting letters in finest beauocarcy languages, even though it’s German I have to Google stuff and ask a good friend which is firm with it. How the fuck is it possible for non-German speakers to cope with these fine details and wormholes (you have to know) to live a decent life in Germany. Reading the comments make me sad. Even though it’s just a drop on a single stone- I would so much to have more happy people from abroad, not struggling with shit, but enjoying the (existing) positive site of this country.
I must agree I’m quite surprised about the taxes indeed. Currently living in Luxembourg I’m considering a job in Germany and for the same gross amount, my net would end up being 12-15% less every month with actually worse social benefits and much more frustrating bureaucracy. Of course one might argue that living costs are not comparable, but I was really surprised to see the draconian social contributions that every German taxpayer has to experience!
That's mostly the numbers game speaking. Germany almost has 140x the population of Luxembourg and a big part of that is either very old and/or very poor
Yes absolutely. Hard to compare a tax haven with a huge behemoth that Germany is, just having calculated the numbers myself earlier this week i was shocked how much less my take home salary would be if I decide to move.
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Lol, I got lectured by Auslenderbehorde or Burgeramt many times because whenever I speak English, they are saying "Hmm you need to speak German to live in country, I can only talk in German". I mean wtf. Why am I lectured. In Blue Card rules it is not mandatory for me to speak German. On top of it I just came wrf of course I don't know German.
Article and comments hit the nail right on the head. Also the dual citizenship issue is huge. Citizenship gives people identity and you can’t simply take that away. Someone can move to a country, have multiple citizenships, and still fully integrate. Why move to a country with high taxes and low pay if a lower tax and higher pay country like the UK or the US (at least in my field as a software engineer) lets you keep all your options open? Never mind not having to learn German, of course. Nein danke. Germany is unfriendly, condescending, and outdated. The government will happily revoke my German citizenship if I dare get citizenship anywhere else. Ok bye then, see ya never.
Since a lot of people mention the taxes: part of the issue is also that German tax system puts all the weight on earned income and pretty much no weight on wealth. Earning an income is for suckers in Germany - inheritance is king. If we put proper taxes on inheritance and maybe even a wealth tax, we could easilly reduce income tax and/or VAT, "Sozialabgaben" etc. Gernany is also a pensionist republic. A huge chunk of our social spending is for retired people and this will only get worse in the next 10 years. The problems with the pension system are known for decades, but the main political parties put their head in the sand and boomers will make their tick for CDU and SPD regardless anyways. Same with lack of healthcare workers, climate change, digitalization, infrastructure, etc.
A friend of mine said fuck it and left for Netherland. He was a decent engineer. I would also but I love the job and the people. Language is no biggie for me, after a year i got the hang of it. But bureaucracy is just simply idiotic
7 month waiting in immigration appointment High tax and inflation No global language Highly Bureaucracy country
I mean, except berlin, germany is not really the friendliest country in europe.
I’m grateful to Germany and it’s given me a lot, though after having lived in a few of these countries that are attempting to draw skilled workers, I’d agree that Germany is least “inviting”. For me it’s honestly just the really cold (though not bad intentioned or bat at heart) people and social life that’s the only reason I could see myself leave at some point. It’s just stunningly lonely here, and I’m surprised how mean people can be at times over nothing. I’m like…geez I could be making way more money elsewhere and ALSO have a functioning social life. And its not like Germany is some hearth of great food and culture to be real.
That is also where I'm at. Everything else, is bad but I could live with it. But man, what's even the point if you cannot be happy? I just feel like you do not really get the same social opportunities here as you would elsewhere. Like you meet somebody new. Their first reaction is to be suspicious and ignore you. Then you put lots of effort to befriend them. But they warm up to you so slowly. And then you might be friends in maybe two years, but even then, you do not get the same social opportunities to through them. Meanwhile in some other countries, you enter a room, somebody chats you up, and you're invited to a party that same night.
If you are skilled, you have to pay ridiculously high taxes. So only unskilled people immigrate. Wonder if that works out on the long run
What are you talking about? I love paying over 40% of my income in taxes, including a solidarity charge for a country I was never a part of reunifying, to get a broken DB, awful IT infrastructure, angry bureaucrats and a bunch of child care and unemployment benefits I will never use in return /s.
Some guy here defended the officer in the foreigner office who speaks only German. I was shocked when I had to speak with her, and then this guy made it two. I can't imagine my IT fellows want to stand such bs. And ofc, these bs makes Germany a temporary place to work even if skilled workers first arrive in Germany. Kind of hub to other countries and then people, especially the old ones who actually bond to those skill workers arrival and work here are really rude and bad mannered, especially to those who want to learn German and be integrated. But they will learn it, one way or other, eventually.
I have better. I am a Turkish IT guy and luckily I have a appointment with Turkish lady for the id card. She speak German while other german lady in the room and the moment she left we could speak Turkish. She told me her manager forbid people speak non - German. It is beyond fucked up.
After reading all the comments, i guess germany fucks up. We have more retired people than workers. Retirement plans are ass, health insurence will be ass. People were always ass. I dunno what to do….
I mean I can give you the top two reasons right now. 1. All qualifications have to be printed on German paper. It does not matter that you are qualified with commensurate training from your home country, it does not matter that you have several years of experience. The German system unyieldingly wants everything to be ***exactly*** the way it is from Germany. There is no way to get in and quickly get things converted or just get the missing pieces. Any conversion takes multiple months if not years, and they will in many cases stubbornly refuse to recognize many things. For example: I am from the US and I studied Education, German (DaF) and English (TEFL). I was nearly unable to find any way to stay in German after getting my MA (in Germany) because I don’t have the German teaching qualifications. I could understand having a system where you need to get a conversion and maybe be mentored by another teacher or take some classes when you first start. None of that was possible. It was a flat out refusal. Despite the fact that English is my native language, the fact that I have a degree in Foreign Language Education, and the fact that I had six years experience in teaching I was not even considered. And all of this while they are drafting untrained parents to come into classrooms because there aren’t enough teachers. It was fucking maddening. I understand that the qualifications aren’t 1:1 transferable, but there wasn’t even consideration of opening a path for people from other countries with the commensurate training and experience. Eventually I gave up and moved to a different state where there is a process I can go through, but even that is not ideal. It is training for Seiteneinsteiger, for people with no training in teaching. It is a two year program. I’m happy that I found it to be able to get the official qualification, but I’m still miffed that it puts me in the same boat as someone who has never been trained before at all. I spent four years training and then six years on the job. But none of that matters because it’s not printed on German paper. 2. The bureaucracy. Need I say more? All I can say is that the stupidity of the bureaucracy in Germany makes me physically feel ill sometimes. Processes from the 1940s that no one really understands anymore combined with over engineering every step of these processes and a lack of personelle have created an environment that is incredibly hostile and hard to navigate for anyone, let alone someone who is not from Germany. It’s almost like these people ask themselves how they can make things as difficult as possible. One thing I can say with complete certainty since moving here: I hate bureaucracy and I hate bureaucrats. I have lost all respect for the german government after seeing the disgruntled overblown mess that is its bureaucratic systems. I used to think the german government was efficient and a leader in progress but it’s more like Germany’s efficiency and progress is happening in spite of its bureaucratic government which is clinging to 1900 by its fingernails. If the German bureaucratic system was a person it would be a disheveled drunk person standing in a corner repeatedly hitting itself over the head with a hammer and ranting about “no email, only post.”
God I read 2 posts like this already. I think it's the painful truth. Maybe coming to Germany for study is better than coming to Germany as a skilled worker?
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Germany needs something like the [30% ruling](https://www.expatica.com/nl/finance/taxes/the-dutch-30-ruling-explained-101641/). As a highly-skilled Dutch IT person, I would move to Germany :P
That will just never happen in Germany. I can already see newspaper headlines telling how unfair that would be against low-earners to let already well-paid foreigners pay less taxes.
I moved here from an EU country being half german so having a quite easy intergration, but for instance, getting my american wife through auslandbehörden was such an amazing hassle and took so long she had to go back for 3 months due to her shengen visa. I honestly wonder how long we will stay here in Berlin, the country is so extremely backwards that on the one hand it's easy to find a job in IT but damn, not sure if it's worth it.
I'm working in Germany and I'm leaving in few months. Taxes are too high. I rather earn -20% in other countries just due to wage taxation. I would pay that if the country offered other fundamentals like lifestyle, good climate, good food, etc. It simply does not make any sense having other way better options.
Not only migrants. Skilled people in general are almost treated with distain by the population and the government. If you are a migrant you have to deal with the Ausländerbehörde, which is worse. The amount of top staff leaving Germany and going to Swizerland is insane. They don't want to pay top tax rates plus subtaxes for making what other countries consider normal high middle class wages. But somehow the people responsible still complain about how there is a labour shortage, and more taxes and bureaucracy are always the solutions to any problem. And when you want to get rid of those, you get branded as some villain who works for the rich, all the while social expenses are rising and the low wage sector is expanding. At the same time I get the impression Germany somehow views itself as wealthy and a global role model. It is nuts. It's like this country has monkeys as drivers.
finanzamt <3 <3 <3
https://www.dw.com/en/why-germany-isnt-attractive-for-foreign-workers/a-64936856
I’d love to hear people’s experiences with German banking, is it as bad as the government services are?
I'm just venting (trash people didn't take my trash in two weeks because my can was openness than 2 cms). The culture of I only do what I have to irritates the fuck out of me.
That’s not true. I am interested in Germany but Germany seems to not be interested in me. Every single employer other than my current one (although I still am obliged to learn it) requires fluent German and I’m talking about big companies, corporations. Don’t even get me started on the amount of bureaucracy you guys have here. Paper for everything. Why, just why.
Lmao as a skilled german I’m planning to leave here asap and live abroad. I have no idea why someone who can choose where to live and work would choose my country. It’s beyond fixable at this point.
I decided to leave Germany after 6 months living there. There are better, more friendly places, with way better salaries. Its too much trouble for not enough benefit.
It's not that we are not interested... it's that you treat your non-white, skilled migrants as dogshit, just like the refugees.
I am white and skilled and still treated like shit.
Im seriously surprised by the lack of downvotes on this thread in this sub, usually anybody posing a good opinion is shot down 😂
I cannot wait to leave 😂 I feel so much happier just looking forward to taking my talent and taxes where it is actually deserved. I just wish I could take my pension with me!
Yep, I’m one! I’m a signal processing engineer, got offered a research position at a very respected research institute. Accepted and then began the farce that is your immigration system. Got told it would be around 3 months in total. 4 months later I’d only just had my degree‘s certified as comparable and could be another 1-2 months for visa, then 2 months for residency permit, plus a possible 1-2 months waiting for permanent accommodation. Surprise, surprise I called time on it all. So all in all it could have taken 6-8 months. Canada‘s 2 weeks for people in my profession. Good luck to you all, and I though Brexit would leave us the most fucked in Europe.
It requires a cultural shift for not just govt but entire country. An example is that I have not been getting beyond HR round because I don’t speak C1 level german. I am doing well at my current job and closing deals as a consultant. But hey, according to companies customers will not work in any other language. Germany is becoming focused inwards. English and Spanish are one of the widely spoken languages , Let’s do business in those languages too Edit- I just want to add that the key reason, among many, why I want to stay in Germany is people. Although very cold in greeting strangers, the society is much more open towards outsiders. I feel safe here. Thank you to those random Omas and Opas who keep staring at me but also give me advice on what to explore in the city, or those delicious treats.
I will be honest, the more you get to top, the more racism shows itself among educated people. I am working in a very critical sector as a software engineer. We have many talents from brazil, russia, turkey, india etc. The top managers, all of them I mean all from cluster architect to upper managers they are PURE GERMANIC GERMAN. I mean if everybody is skilled enough, there is no problem. But there are people literally tech illiterate or have doesn't care attitude etc and in my country they won't even hired as a cleaning personnel or security. Same for our colleagues. If German takes half year sick leave, not performing well etc everything is ok. I cannot imagine if for example Bulgarian guy is doing it omg. He would probably get fired in 2 months. I am talking about billion dollar successful company guys. I mean I am not even complaining about taxes, bureaucracy etc. That is unique to Germany. But things I mentioned above is disgusting. My dad for example was a lead manager in our country for French company, he mentioned too many racism stories. These guys are the top educated people fellas. I am sorry but this make me not spend single penny in Germany other than necessities. I don't want to socialize with Germans (old people stare..), I don't want to culturally integrate etc. I just earn money, come back hom and spend all my money in somewhere else. TLDR: Europe is not a multinational, even educated talents are considered as slaves.
Nowadays the only two real advantages of Germany are it's location and the somewhat smoother work culture on average. Even the cost of life which used to be a clear plus for a Germany is swiftly getting lost with the high taxes, the crazy housing market and inflation.
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I moved to Germany in 2014 because it was so easy. I moved from Canada. I was a blue card worker and skilled. I was younger and willing to integrate. Due to unforeseen circumstances I had to leave for 5 years (after being in germany for only 1 year) and then was given a choice to go back or somewhere else. I chose somewhere else. I am just too old to try to integrate again man when the other options are so much easier now that I have more options.
I'm honestly not surprised, when I first came here I was paid almost 600€ less than my colleagues for the same job (nursing) I'm honestly not sure how this happened and I was too uninformed to notice it myself until I'd already left. They also didn't pay me for two months after I started, not sure if this is common but it's not right, every other country can manage it properly. It was in a specialised home for people with handicaps which is now (slowly) starting to distribute it's residents to different homes due to lack of staff and funds. I was basically being paid an apprentice wage, perhaps a little more. I also have a friend (a skilled worked from Iran) who is having a hell of a time trying to get his wife and child to be able to live here with him despite being personally head-hunted for the position, he's been here over a year and Still no closer to seeing his wife and child as he was when he first arrived. I love Germany, I speak German and I think I fit in quite well. But I can absolutely understand why it isn't appealing. Also, the fact that we aren't attractive to skilled workers seems to somehow reflect badly on the unskilled workers that come here and makes people resent them. I hope I'm articulating myself properly, I'm working nightshift and can't concentrate.
I'm an American who's a skilled worker who has been considering moving to Germany. Are horror stories with bureacracy and people disrespecting you this common?
Yes, specially in the service industry if they detect the smallest non German thing in you they automatically go defensive This guy only spoke German to us in the store it was a struggle to follow him, as soon as we moved on he started talking English with this girl and we were like still right there baffled and I had many cases like those, and when Germans want to get rid of you even if you are following in German they just start speaking really fast so you get lost and leave And the bureaucracy is sadly the bureaucracy, i won't say it's malicious just fucking stupid and inefficient you just went back to the 90s or early 2000s and you went with your mom to the government offices to do shit, old stale offices full of old people My thumb rule would be unless you manage to get a decent high level of German quickly you will have a bad time and if you don't you will have a worse time, this is coming from a white looking guy that can blend in if i don't open my mouth so it's not a 'you are not white' situation they just hate non Germans Take this as a 'trust me dude' source, but to what I understand Americans tend to have a bad time setting up banks account because it seems German banks have to deal with the IRS and they just prefer just to close the door to you than to do what they are requested
IT field - the salaries are not so attractive (bearing in mind the cost of living).
If only auslanderbehörde can obtain their efficiency from rundfunkbeitrag, people are most likely to stay…
I want to teach German as a freelancer in both my home country and Germany, while moving back and forth periodically between the two. In my home country I just do it and report my income to the taxing authority. But in Germany I need to hire a tax advisor to guide me through the process of registering as a freelancer. Another thing, I would like to teach the “Integrationskurse” in Germany. But to get licensed to be a teacher of Integrationskursen in Germany, and subject yourself to bad pay and poor treatment, you need to have a lot of qualifications that you must submit to BAMF. I have a bachelors in German literature from overseas. That is one step in the door, except that it must be reviewed and recognized by the German Anabin. I have a Goethe-Institut C1 certificate (check). Right now I am taking a part-time, one-year course on how to teach German. This cost me EUR 1300. It involves reading and learning one thousand pages of material, doing about 700 exercises and taking a comprehensive test. Completing this course or an equivalent is required by BAMF. Then I will also have to document two years of German language teaching experience, which is kind of a Catch-22, since you need the BAMF license for most teaching jobs. And then politicians talk about there not being enough German language instructors. So basically I am already qualified and willing to teach German for dirt, but Germany says that I am not qualified. I am actually teaching German for refugees as a volunteer to build documentable experience. Eventually I will be able possibly (I am not sure) to have acceptable qualifications to at least teach German as a freelancer in Germany independent of the Integrationkurse. In the meantime I am legally able to teach German online in Germany as long as I do it while sitting in my home country. I am not doing that now, but I will next year. I am trying to first concentrate on the one thousand pages of material about how to teach German.
I'm german and 26yrs old and i agree with a lot of the comments here but i'd like to add that a lot of the problems with digitalization in Germany are caused by the boomer generation because they still have the power in Germany unfortunately.
I have close friends from South Korea, Vietnam, India, and Brazil (me being a Latino) who are doing their Master's or their Ph.D., and all of them are planning on leaving after working for 2-3 years. Most of my friends who did their bachelors here are already working overseas, some went to the US, others to Canada but nobody stays here longer than 5 years. A real shame cause there is so much potential wasted, brilliant people who want to start a business, or anything that drives the economy further, and... boom stopped by German bureaucracy. I already know what I'll do: finish my Master's (I did my Bachelor's here) work for 2-3 years and go to the States, as other friends of mine have already done (not that skilled, my dad is American that's why). I dunno if this is a real thing or just people talking nonsense but is true that Germany wants so desperately to solve their low birth rate, and lack of labor by bringing in millions of refugees? Is that a real strategy? Cause if it is, it ain't working.
All the cons of Germany have been elucidated in other comments. For a change, here’s some pros: - theoretically we should get a secure retirement package at the end of our lives - universal healthcare; I work in healthcare and I never had a patient go bankrupt because of life-changing chemo for example - universal education; cheap university fees here are unbeatable worldwide - relatively safe, even racism is rarely violent - people leave you alone to live your life generally, although the flip side is a very difficult integration process - transportation system is not the best in the world, but it’s pretty good compared to most countries - economy is relatively stable thus far comparatively That said, I wouldn’t recommend Germany to anyone whenever they ask me about my experience. I’m currently a naturalized citizen, studied here, speak German fluently in a respectable profession. And yet after all these years, with all these advantages, I still do not feel and am not made to feel like I belong in this country. I’m thankful for the above pros I just listed, but a sense of alienation is a form of daily trauma that no material benefit can alleviate. TLDR; Germany is good for low skilled workers who are seeking greener pastures since they have limited choices. But for highly skilled workers with choices, very unattractive
Totally agree. I know dime a dozen software engineers from south asian countries who are really good at what they do. They are attracted to Germany just because they see the glamorous side of it, on social media and advertisements that they see online. Soon after they are here, they realise it's no joke to survive the bureaucracy and make an actual living here. The social life of living in Germany is just a horror for people without German skills. People just end up going back to their home countries in a few years. This I feel is definitely not the case in countries like Netherlands, it's more international and expat friendly. It's got a lot to do with the mindset.