Europe has a 'real opportunity' to take in Americans fleeing Trump. Is it ready for a 'brain drain'?
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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.
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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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.
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.
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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 they support Israel & Russia. 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. We abandoned humanity there as well and again for what?
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.
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 now 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. It’s so fucking frustrating to watch.
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If they're straight white men and their family nobody will care.
Look at what happened to Ukrainians, I think our capacity to hate other human beings is endless unfortunately.
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Ok but will they take useless dumbasses like me who hate trump?
If I learned anything playing 4X games then it is that more pops equals more good
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What's the basis of that assertion?
The color of the skin.
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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.
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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.
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
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Trump is trying to turn the US into the 80s China. Repression included. China has come a long way since then.
USA is basically China with a Gucci belt.
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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.
Wonder if they have use for Ms and bS majors in stem, like biotech or cmb
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Look at what happened to Ukrainians, I think our capacity to hate other human beings is endless unfortunately.
But 'we' also have an endless capacity of trying to help others and especially the Ukrainians who now have a job are being very appreciated as well. Not saying there is no hate, but the Americans who'd cross the pond are most likely the more wealthy and better educated than average. They might get some hate but they will probably be much more easily accepted as islamic and African immigrants.
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Look at what happened to Ukrainians, I think our capacity to hate other human beings is endless unfortunately.
This is about Germany, though. I don't agree with the other person's point, but at least in Germany, Ukrainian refugees are well-liked - I pretty never hear anything bad about them even from the far right. Probably helps a lot that most of them are 1. white and 2. women and children.
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If they're straight white men and their family nobody will care.
That's the thing though, many american scientists who want to flee are 'brown' (hispanic, black, indian etc.) and/or queer, because that's exactly the type of people who will suffer the most in the US.
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But 'we' also have an endless capacity of trying to help others and especially the Ukrainians who now have a job are being very appreciated as well. Not saying there is no hate, but the Americans who'd cross the pond are most likely the more wealthy and better educated than average. They might get some hate but they will probably be much more easily accepted as islamic and African immigrants.
Scientists who are black, hispanic etc. are "more wealthy and better educated than average", though.
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USA is basically China with a Gucci belt.
A gucci belt, made in China
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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.
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.
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This is about Germany, though. I don't agree with the other person's point, but at least in Germany, Ukrainian refugees are well-liked - I pretty never hear anything bad about them even from the far right. Probably helps a lot that most of them are 1. white and 2. women and children.
With Ukrainians, we initially saw a wave of genuine support that I was happy about. But within months, politicians started using them as scapegoats. Friedrich Merz, likely the next German Chancellor, accused Ukrainians of "social welfare tourism" - as if they were fleeing bombs for German benefits. Similar rhetoric emerged in Poland and Hungary, where the initial "these are Europeans like us" sentiment gave way to the same xenophobic patterns.
The point is - even that initial acceptance runs out eventually. No matter who you are, we will eventually turn against you given enough time. Americans coming now might be welcomed as "expats" with valuable skills, but as soon as there's another economic downturn or political shift, they'll be "immigrants taking our jobs" or "ruining our housing market."
I completely agree there are many Europeans who genuinely want to help others. I am one of them! But our systems and policies don't reflect those values - they reflect fear and nationalism that eventually targets everyone seen as "other."
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Ok but will they take useless dumbasses like me who hate trump?
If you enlist instead of us, why not?
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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.
I don't really feel any attachment to a geographical position.
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Why would they prefer Europe to Canada?
