• azimir@lemmy.ml
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    15 days ago

    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.

    • saimen@feddit.org
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      14 days ago

      Wow that’s interesting. Why did you choose Germany? Was it difficult to find a position?

      • azimir@lemmy.ml
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        14 days ago

        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.

        • shaserlark@sh.itjust.works
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          14 days ago

          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.

        • cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works
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          14 days ago

          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.

          • bob_lemon@feddit.org
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            14 days ago

            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).

            • azimir@lemmy.ml
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              14 days ago

              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.