alt Hacker NewsI migrated to Germany 10+ years ago and I'm still here. Based on my limited experience, there are two big issues.
First, things are bad: trains are getting worse every year, the highways are in disrepair (ask me about Bonn!), overloaded doctors, impossibly slow bureaucracy, economic crisis, growing inequality, housing crisis, and so on. If you're a fresh immigrant who cannot find a job in an economic crisis (aka "most of them") you may very well wonder why staying here alone when you could be just as unemployed near your family.
Second: I won't say that Germany is xenophobic (not even all AfD voters) but I will say it's unfriendly. Work example: I've worked in multiple places in German without language issues, and yet many jobs automatically disqualify me because they ask for "minimum C2", a rank I don't have and one that many native Germans wouldn't achieve either. Add less chances to make a social circle, inflexibility, not great weather, and a government that's constantly calling you lazy and entitled, and that's how you get depressed.
The sad part is, Germany has all the pieces to be a great place to live that, for some reason, has decided to dismantle them all one by one.
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there is no certificate higher than C2, so "minimum" C2 is ridicerlus, ackchyually...
I assume.thats your point here, but to bystanders: C2 is nearly native speaker language proficiency, nuanced, precise, eloquent.
if language production is the job, or impeccable understanding is a must have, like as a psychotherapist, then C2 is a reasonable requirement.
in contrast you can study in german language at a German university with C1 proficiency already.
What has kept you from achieving C2, you’ve been there for 10y+
There are sclerotic forces at work in Germany.
I sometimes wonder if the digestion of East-Germany hasn't somehow hurt a post-war rejuvenated Western&Southern German spirit.
Maybe it's just post-traumatic-stress from the Russian occupation still lingering: 1989 is not that far, generations-wise.
There is hope still... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT7MCko43YqeZ1x55O1DRtw
>First, things are bad: trains are getting worse every year, the highways are in disrepair (ask me about Bonn!), overloaded doctors, impossibly slow bureaucracy, economic crisis, growing inequality, housing crisis, and so on.
Any minute now those millions of doctors, lawyers, and engineers from the MENA countries that flooded Germany the past decade will fix all that! Any minute!
The issues you see now in Germany are the direct consequence of the Merkel era conservative government and its austerity policy. They really wanted to get the deficit down at all cost. And all cost included any sort of needed maintenance on public infrastructure.
> First, things are bad
As a German, it sounds like you integrated well.