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.
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 to robust) and open the doors for the good and awesome ExPaTs on the other side.
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
Why would they prefer Europe to Canada?
Europe is further from the US.
Public transport
Gotcha.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t really feel any attachment to a geographical position.
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.
Europe hates migrants. Get real.
No, no, these are expats
What’s the basis of that assertion?
The color of the skin.
all of recorded history
Frontex
The fact that the EU manages its borders just like every other country/union in the world is proof that Europe hates migrants?
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.
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.
If that’s your definition or Europe I’m amazed to find out what’s your opinion of any other place on earth.
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.
Just that we don’t want more of them here. The housing crisis doesn’t allow to integrate them and they are not the first group of people being refugees trying to escape to europe, we can’t absorb all of you wanting to escape.
Speak for yourself, I welcome everyone with open arms who doesn’t want to live in a right wing shithole. Although people talking shit like you do are turning the EU into a right wing shithole as well unfortunately.
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 if 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
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.
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 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.
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
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.
I’m sure trying to take in americans (many of whom will not look like northern europeans) while having an extreme anti-immigration policy (e.g. in Germany) will go over well with no friction.
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.
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 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.”
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.
Our “capacity to help” is inconsistent and conditional. Yes, there was initial support for Ukrainian refugees, but as I mentioned in another post politicians like Friedrich Merz (likely next German Chancellor) soon accused them of “social welfare tourism.” Same happened e.g. in Poland. The welcome narrative quickly gave way to scapegoating.
This pattern happens repeatedly. We initially welcome groups based on perceived usefulness or cultural similarity, then turn on them when convenient. Polish workers in the UK went from being praised as hardworking to being blamed for “stealing jobs” and straining services.
You’re assuming Americans would be “more easily accepted” because they’re “wealthy and educated,” but this ignores how xenophobia operates. Brexit campaigners didn’t distinguish between Polish doctors and laborers - they lumped all migrants together.
Even well-off migrants become targets during economic downturns. Look at how Romanian doctors and nurses in the UK were treated during Brexit despite filling critical NHS shortages. Or how German refugees after WWII faced hostility from other Germans.
Our immigration policies aren’t based on humanitarian concerns but on economic utility and cultural anxieties. When politicians need scapegoats, they’ll target any migrant group regardless of their contributions.
The Americans who’d face the most persecution under Trump are often the same ones who’d face discrimination here - LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities, and people of color. The idea that we’d somehow treat them better than other migrants ignores Europe’s deep-seated xenophobia.
The Americans who’d face the most persecution under Trump are often the same ones who’d face discrimination here - LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities, and people of color. The idea that we’d somehow treat them better than other migrants ignores Europe’s deep-seated xenophobia.
I don’t disagree, but I do believe there (unfortunately) is a scale of how well migrants are generally treated that is based on their culture. education and economic status.
I also don’t disagree with you saying there is a deep-seated xenophobia, but I do believe if you choose to migrate from where ever to where ever you’ll come across people who act xenophobic and racist. Humans tend to like the familiar better than the unfamiliar. Also, wherever you go you will have people (though politicians more than any) using this basic fear to further their agenda. ‘We’ humans are good and bad, often a curious mix of both and most of us have deep-seated fears and most of us are vulnerable to being influenced by others with a good story. Despite this, I still think immigration in general is a good thing. Not always, not every form; but people deciding to move from a bad place to a good place is a good thing.
No argument here, I think humans are being racist/xenophobic in general. The best example imo is the hatred against Syrian refugees in Libanon and Jordan, where people even speak the same language, have the same food and culture, and mostly have the same religion.
I guess I would just wish that we would actually live those “Western values” we keep talking about. And I definitely wish the best for all those wanting to flee from Trump, I would consider that too if I’d be in the US.
Yea I agree. I try to live my values, feel like that hard enough.
Scientists who are black, hispanic etc. are “more wealthy and better educated than average”, though.
I’m sure they’ll be welcomed with open arms. Just don’t got to Germany or the French countryside and you’ll be fine 👌
