Europe has a 'real opportunity' to take in Americans fleeing Trump. Is it ready for a 'brain drain'?
Europe has a 'real opportunity' to take in Americans fleeing Trump. Is it ready for a 'brain drain'?
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101 comments
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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.
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Wow that's interesting. Why did you choose Germany? Was it difficult to find a position?
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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.
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Good luck in Germany. There is a lot to dislike, but so much more to enjoy.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Wonder if they have use for Ms and bS majors in stem, like biotech or cmb
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Yes. It all boils down to getting a job offer, but those are fields and qualifications with possibilities.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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101 comments