I’m an industrial engineer and while Mein deutsch ist scheiß, I’m still learning in the hopes that if I get to go to Europe as a brain drain or as a refugee (listen, if shit gets bad enough it’ll still be shocking if we’re let in) that I won’t just be some dumb monolingual American.
I’m a senior software engineer! Brain drain me!
My employer offers visa sponsorship to employees wanting to migrate to the Netherlands. Once I meet the tenure requirements (a little over a month left), I intend to start the process. My spouse and kid are onboard. We’ve already started learning Dutch and made a week-long trip there a couple weeks ago to make sure we would like it.
I’m a senior software engineer interested in moving to the Netherlands. Can you tell me more?
Immigrating to Europe isn’t the easy process a lot of people think it is. At least for the countries I tried (Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands)…but I do know some things have changed recently, at least for Germany.
My efforts were about ten years ago thought. Despite having a graduate degree from a European institution I still found it impossible.
For Germany, though I had spent the previous 10 years as a software developer (which is classified as an Engpassberuf), I was told that the regulations would only allow me to seek work based on the skills from that degree (Berufsqualifikation). My Master’s degree was in a different technical field (European development planning), and my BAs were in European Studies and German Language and Literature. I also studied at the Goethe Institute and completed the Oberstufe C2 exam. But none of that was sufficient.
Now I am middle aged, have a wife and kids, chronic health issues…and though I would love to emigrate, I can’t imagine uprooting them all, even if I could find a European country willing to take us.
Ah yes, let the filthy and bad migrants on one side of Europe literally drown in the ocean (maybe help a bit, if their skiffs seem too robust) and open the doors for the good and awesome ExPaTs on the other side.
I wish I had a brain to drain. I don’t have any valuable skills, nor a lot of money. Nobody wants to take me. I’m going to be at the mercy of the Nazis.
There’s already a brain drain going in the US Government, as they replace experienced leaders and workers with blind loyalists.
The silver lining is that they have given their opposition the gift of competence. By firing all their competent, knowledgable people, they have driven them straight into the enemy camp.
Why would they prefer Europe to Canada?
Europe is further from the US.
Exactly. Canada is also facing a decent chance at an invasion
Public transport
Gotcha.
Not as cold.
I don’t think that’s a good idea, you really don’t want Americans in your backyard.
I bring a certain militant veganism that makes some NIMBYs uncomfortable
What’s a NIMBY ?
People who say “Not In My BackYard”, figuratively, people who block local development for spurious personal reasons. E.g., people who sue against building a new school near their home, because the kids might be loud.
Oh ok, but if it’s vegans, then the Europeans won’t have none of that crap.
A big problem with many people moving out is that they will be missing as opposition and reason. To a degree, it reduces the chances of the US to reform itself.
You don’t give up your right to vote by moving abroad. Your vote in state and local politics is lost. How much of a real impact that has depends on where you live.
This assumes voting continues to function more or less as it has in the past.
I would not see it so strictly.
Academics for the most part contribute “thought”. They are much better at doing so living in freedom outside the US than rotting in a prison cell inside the US, or in one of the crowny countries doing the dirty work for the US.
They are missing in doing the ground work of course. On the other hand they stop contributing to the system with their work, their taxes, their presence giving legitimacy… So it makes the system unstable faster and result in it falling apart, leaving space for something new, faster.
In authoritarian regimes it is very rare that they reform themselves. Usually they collapse, mostly in an ugly way. In the case of the US i don’t think that there is currently any hope to be set into reform from inside the system. For every crazed Republican in power we see a Democrat in power who wants to maintain the system, maintain the systemic issues that lead to Trump not once but twice and last but not least is enjoying many of the oppressive and racist policies that were implemented by Trump during his first term. Looking at mass deportations, “the wall”, violent crackdowns on peaceful protestors, or looking a bit longer running the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay, continuing the illegal occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq…
So in the case of the US there isn’t just the extreme-right, there is also the complicit “center” that opposes changing the system and is in part happy with the further pushes to the extreme-right. This complicit block won’t change their attitude and they wont stop keeping progressives in check for the regime until they are personally suffering. It is the Bidens and Harrises the Schumers and Fettermans that prevented a proper response and structural change after Trumps first term and now embrace cooperation with Trump and enjoying that he does some dirty work for them, like continuing the genocide in Palestine.
By staying in the US academics, some of whom have been beaten up by Cops during peaceful protests under the Democrats administration, the academics would give the very same people legitimacy as an “opposition” to the Republican administration that were complicit in bringing this administration into power and are complicit in keeping it in power.
Fair point but if the US insists on being run like a business, then I’m going to treat it like one.
If I go to a restaurant with shitty food and shitty service, I’m paying my tab, leaving, and never coming back.
I’m not going to waste my time going home and writing yelp reviews so that the manager can offer me a free appetizer the next time I come in.
Place sucks.
The Immigration dilemma. When a country starts going wrong the people most fit to fix the country are usually the ones who left and go to another country, precipitating the downfall of the country of origin. Making more and more people want to emigrate and leaving the country in worse and worse shape to fix itself.
I don’t really feel any attachment to a geographical position.
I read the entire article trying to find out what the author meant with the title, still don’t know who’s brain is implied to be drained in the scenario.
The term brain drain refers to losing educated people to another country so there is not a brain being drained from an individual but rather a bunch of brains being drained from a population. Here’s a wikipedia page for the curious minds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight
The way it’s written almost could be interpreted that Britain will be drained of intellect by the increased number of Americans. I’m familiar with the term, but the way this headline is written makes it weird.
Britain wouldn’t be drained, but their intellectual demographic will be diluted, creating more competition for high level research, tech, teaching, etc. positions.
Europe hates migrants. Get real.
No, no, these are expats
What’s the basis of that assertion?
The color of the skin.
Frontex
The fact that the EU manages its borders just like every other country/union in the world is proof that Europe hates migrants?
The fact that the EU manages its borders just like every other country/union in the world is proof that Europe hates migrants?
Yes, actually.
Frontex literally sends them back to get raped & tortured and literally is the reason thousands per year drown in the Mediterranean Sea. We hate migrants, that is a European core value.
Not convinced? After 2nd world war, Germans even hated German refugees. Since then, migrants in Western/Northern Europe have been 2nd class citizens. Brexit went through partly as a campaign against migrants from Poland & Romania.
Still not convinced? It’s not about cultural compatibility or religion or skin color or anything. Ukrainian refugees have been met with empathy because of their skin color and religion at first (but we‘re _ definitely_ not racist and sorry for saying the quiet part out loud). However, in countries like Poland, Hungary and Germany who took on most of the refugees politicians already started using Ukrainians as scapegoats and the hate mongering hit them too.
Think it will be different with Americans? They’re gonna be the ones who took our jobs, always act entitled, destroy our work culture by always being available and ruining the housing market (as if that weren’t already fucked up). To an extent, this is how we see Americans already.
We are a racist, backwards continent. I wish it were different, but this is who we are.
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Other places bad isn’t really an excuse for us to suck as well
Not bad. Infinitely worse.
And truly. Having frontier control and regulations is not even bad.
Also, most Europeans are not racist. Your analysis on why Ukrainian refugees are treated differently than syrian refugees (for instance) is incredibly shallow. As people take in consideration a lot more things when judging a person, and attributing it to skin color is just to make yourself a nice strawman to attack.
It’s perfectly valid to be able to have control on who you want to share your life with, as it will wildly influence your own life and well being.
politicians already started using Ukrainians as scapegoats and the hate mongering hit them too.
Those are right wingers and other people on russian payroll, in whose main interest it is to make people hate Ukkranians.
Yeah totally agree. The problem is there was no more outrage because we normalized hating refugees and migrants so much that there wasn’t even a debate or anything anymore, everyone was just rolling with it.
all of recorded history
I’ll be in a German Consulate soon to submit the last paperwork for my immigration paperwork. Our family is taking 2x STEM Phds, and kids going into engineering, computer science, healthcare, and education with us. This is a generational loss, but I’m doing it to protect my children, as well as myself.
I’m performing a short fuse wedding next weekend for a prior student so they can seek asylum in Canada as a couple soon. The number of students/prior students who have been reaching out about how to emigrate to anywhere else is very high.
Wow that’s interesting. Why did you choose Germany? Was it difficult to find a position?
There’s plenty of story behind it. The key parts are that I’ve been visiting Germany off and on for 30 years now, ever since high school. I like the feel of the cities and the culture. Their engineering schools have room for people with my skills and interests (I’m more engineer than academic).
I didn’t limit myself to Germany. I’ve applied and interviewed across Europe, though it mostly centered around Germany. I had a good offer in Finland last year that I couldn’t get the ex wife to let me take the kids to.
Was it difficult? Plenty of work to keep applying, but there’s work to be had.
Germany may have real concerns about immigration, but the country needs skilled people, and just plain and hard workers, to fill roles. The alternative is to have major economic collapse, so the government is opening doors even if the populace isn’t always totally on board.
Wish you all the best! You can get citizenship very quickly and my advice to you would be to get that asap and then think about what you wanna do with your life. My friends in Germany all work on their exit plan. They’re all skilled immigrants but find the situation there very scary right now. The fascists are back.
If you want to do stem in another country there are only two choices that make sense: Britain and Germany. Everywhere else is either difficult to immigrate to in terms of culture, language, policy, or just doesn’t have a critical mass of scientists and engineers. Some of the other western European countries are pretty good too, but they aren’t as good as the two I mentioned.
I’m from the netherlands and educated foreigners always mention how easy it is to migrate here because so many of us speak English. I’ve heard the same of scandinavian countries. Would you say they are a worse choice if you want to do stem? Just curious.
My friend moved there with her husband after grad school. They had two STEM PhDs.
They couldn’t hack the whole ‘isn’t being normal weird enough’ conformity thing.
I was searching online to check if ‘sticking your head above the cornfield’ is an english saying, this page was one of the results: https://dutchreview.com/culture/doe-normaal-a-dutch-concept-and-term/
This is more a thing out of the big cities, I presume there is many countries where the rural areas are more conservative.
Did they move back to the states or ended up somewhere else?
People tend to underestimate the need for speaking German in Germany though. Depending on your location and social circle, you might not need much of it day to day. But certain administrative stuff definitely requires a decent understanding (and you really don’t want to misunderstand letters from the government).
Genau! Having had to very slowly translate documents from the government, consulates, and Deutsche Bahn, I am acutely aware of how much not knowing the language is a hurdle.
We’re working on learning German fast. While I’ll be in the Berlin area, so daily life can be mostly in English for a while, we need to integrate and the language is a huge part of that.
Wonder if they have use for Ms and bS majors in stem, like biotech or cmb
BioNTech, the German company that actually developed the Pfizer Covid vaccine, has a bunch of open job listings. So yes, they have a need for people with that skill set. Most of the jobs seem to require German language skills, but not all of them.
And if the most famous German biotech startup is looking for people, then there are bound to be even more lesser known companies also searching.
Yes. It all boils down to getting a job offer, but those are fields and qualifications with possibilities.
Good luck in Germany. There is a lot to dislike, but so much more to enjoy.
Thank you!
Every field has some green grass and some brown grass. No place is perfect.
Our plan is to move and never come back, but who knows what the future holds?
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I fear that Europe, as is tradition, will fail to capitalise on this moment due to internal division, with China reaping most of the benefits as a result.
I would love to be wrong. I hope I am. I feel like an EU at the centre of global trade and geopolitics is the least awful option at this point in history. Although with the continued rise of the far right in France and Germany that may not be the case for much longer.
Taking advantage of situations like these seems to be an American thing.
I fear that Europe, as is tradition, will fail to capitalise on this moment due to internal division, with China reaping most of the benefits as a result.
I doubt that people who dislike US authoritarianism are gonna move to China, a literal dictatorship straight out of 1984.
It’s also basically impossible to learn Mandarin for the average European or North American. Especially if they’re already in their 30s or 40s.
In this case the division means there are more then one ways to get to Europe. It also offers multiple different countries as options. The UK being Enlgish speaking and is culturally way closer to the US. Spain has the massive advantage of being Spanish speaking, which many Americans also speak at home. Many European countries like Germany and Italy offer citizenship by decent, which many Americans are eligable for. So in this case an advantage.
Also Europe is a much better place to live. A lot of people keep forgetting, but China is still a developing country. GDP per capita of China is about as high as that of Mexico. Another part less known is citizenship. The only way to get Chinese citizenship is by having Chinese family. Obviously that is not an option for most Americans.
China has their Problems too. they aren’t as immigration friendly as you think, they require you to give up your other citizenship to become a Chinese one, and they really only do limited immigration like less than 20k/year
China has a huge language barrier. Few Chinese know English well, and most non-Chinese don’t know Chinese well. It’s not going to be easy for China to capitalize on this opportunity, although it’s likely they will manage to get a piece of the cake.
European countries has less of this language barrier.
For real. To me it seems everyone is sleeping on that, but some deep EU reform seems one of the most important things to me (maybe even the most important thing?). We will never be able to get stuff done if hungary can just block everything even remotely good
I feel like we have absolutely zero vision for the future. Like, there’s trade wars, actual wars going on. Russia and Israel are committing genocide and are ignoring the ICC. Most of the EU is cool with that, either because they support Israel or worse they support Israel & Russia both. So we basically abandoned international law and with that humanity itself, and for what? Short term political gains.
Instead of capitalizing on the influx of skilled & motivated people from all over the world we chose to give in to hate and violence a long time ago. With the help of frontex we let the most miserable drown in the Mediterranean Sea, die somewhere in the Sahara or get raped and enslaved somewhere in a Tunisian prison, an Italian farm, or the Belarus border just to mention a few examples. We abandoned humanity there as well and again for what?
On top of that, my country‘s infrastructure is falling apart, people can’t afford housing anymore, healthcare gets more expensive and worse at the same time, and we’re basically a tech colony with all the American and Chinese tech dominating our lives. These countries also don’t give a fuck about humanity, but they produce innovation. What kind of innovation are we producing? We have Spotify, great.
I see no vision either about what our values are (there are no credible ones), nor about what our business model during this new industrial revolution should be and how people should be able to make a living in the future. It’s so fucking frustrating to watch.
Having humanity and good living conditions could have been a vision in this cruel world, but we aren’t good enough to live it. We failed.
That would require to create a lot of new jobs for scientists coming from there. Otherwise it would just increase competition for unattractive jobs and lead more people to quit science (which I did).
And speaking of MINT professionals, we have a lot of stupid processes and bad working conditions here. Yes, for example in German industrial engineering, a lot of experienced software developers are sought for - but honestly, most managers do not have an idea what a requirement specification or an API really is. If you don’t believe me, ask for the API docs of the thing you should work on in their interview.
A lot of these jobless scientists used to do work that benefited the rest of the world. Maybe we can give them a job continuing the work they did in the states.
It’s hard enough to get a permanent job in the states for some scientist, the anti-sciene and anti intellectualism is making things worse. Many phds believe a faculty is their only secure job, but it’s extremely competitive and pretty hard to get one, if at all. Tenures aren’t going to leave and unis take advantage of temporary instructors anyways
