One thing that is specific to Berlin is that increasingly bars and cafes are staffed by foreigners. This is a quirk of the German employment system, a scarcity of staff, and the wide availability of expats in need of gigs. Instead of hiring permanent staff and paying them a salary, it's less risky to have temporary workers. However, you can't do that endlessly with the same people in the German system. You would have to employ them after a while. However, there's a never ending stream of students and other expats flowing through Berlin willing to do that kind of job. So, lots of bars and cafes employ those instead. Also, there are a fair amount of expats that stay in Berlin that open their own businesses.

That is only correct for a very small number of hip cafes and restaurants in certain districts tbh.

You can employ germans indefinitely without "proper" contract as well through something called "Minijob" and the majority of cafes and restaurant skirt the law and let you work without paying taxes "illegally". Most of the ppl working there are students or in between careers. Only a fraction of the staff will be employed permanently with "real" contracts.

source: worked in the industry there for 6+ years

My wife tried to check into a fancy hotel (nothing hip) in Berlin and the receptionist only spoke English (and presumably some other language). It's not just hipster restaurants.

Even when the person does speak German, they're often not a native speaker and speak better English.

correct, hotels/accommodations are another sector that is run mostly through students and minijobbers.

Yes, I was shocked the first time in Oslo when I went to a cafe and understood that the staff didn't understand a word of Norwegian. This is probably a capital thing. There's an expat-run café near where I live (not in Oslo) that employs a lot of US and Australian young people for shorter periods, and if they don't understand Norwegian, they surely do a lot better job of hiding it and guessing what you're asking for.

As a social experiment, tell them you don't speak English. Only Norwegian. See if they manage a few words from their language course. They might actually appreciate being forced to take the leap.

When I moved to Berlin 15 years ago, this was not the case. Many bars and cafes were staffed by German-speaking people in their 30s - underpaid artistic or intellectual types or professional partiers making an extra buck. This had a particular charm - they were often cranky and unconcerned, but they kept the same job for a long time and you could get to know them and feel like a "regular." This kept me returning to the same places time and again.

These days, and especially post-covid, the faces are shockingly young, obviously inexperienced with the skilled or social sides of their job, and seem to never last more than a month or two. The charm is completely gone.

I don't think it's much different anywhere else; certainly not in the UK or Ireland at least. My father works in the pub trade. Hospitality work used to just about be well paid enough that one could make good money out of it in while also having the flexibility to pursue other careers - hence why it attracted so many struggling musicians/actors/artist types. In the last decade, because the wages have dropped so low compared to living expenses, we've moved to a model where hospitality work is often done by people in their late teens to mid-twenties, who are living with their parents or in university digs so don't "need" the money to the same degree, just the flexibility. They're doing it for pocket money.

People later on on life with kids or other responsibilities simply can't make ends meet and independent cafe/bar/pub owners can't raise wages without going bust, as the running costs have sky-rocketed at a much higher rate than they can acceptably increases prices. People complain about the cost of a pint going up £1, but really the cost per keg is such that it should be £2 more; however, if they charged that price then customers go elsewhere to places they can afford. Wetherspoons or Greene King come to mind. These sort of commercial enterprises can afford to buy a pub outright - so no lease fees - and can reduce their bottom line through economies of scale to a point where independents can't compete. Of course, these corporations don't increase wages because God forbid their billionaire owners and shareholders don't get their cut of the pie.

My theory is that this is completely due to the raising cost of housing - it's no longer easy (possible?) do make due in Berlin on that kind of job long-term.

*to make *do.

I've been in Berlin for 17 years, and in my early days in Berlin, a room in a shared apartment could be found for as little as €75/month (e.g. 6 bedroom apartment), and studio apartments could be found for €250/month. Hell, I paid €450/month for my 2 bedroom (3. Zimmer in German parlance) in Alt-Treptow (800 meters from Schlesicher Str., where I worked).

That opened up a lot of quirky social possibilities because the floor for survival was so low in Berlin. If an artist could throw together €400/month, they could survive on that. Now that's what a room in a shared apartment costs.

Even when I started a tech company, I got my cost of living down to €800/month, in the above apartment, which I shared with my co-founder.

> That opened up a lot of quirky social possibilities because the floor for survival was so low in Berlin.

All those quirky possibilities are a tragically underappreciated consequence of having a low cost of living in a place where you'd actually want to live.

I'm agnostic as to whether we try to achieve that through some sort of basic income or by other means - I just really hope that we try, both to alleviate poverty and to see the explosion of cultural and technological innovation that will surely follow.

Same for Amsterdam and other expat-heavy places.

If you stay and open a restaurant in Berlin, presumably for the long term, wouldn't that make you an immigrant? There is a Syrian bakery in my street and people don't call him an expat.

It probably depends on the specifics. In Asia, I've known a fair number of Europeans who have lived there for a significant period of time and I would still think of them as expats.

I thought the "joke" was that expats are white, immigrants are not?

Definitely true on the whole, but perhaps identity is not the most productive lens to look through.

As a white expat/immigrant to the UK, I think it's more about whether you've committed to never returning. It's a very different mindset I find, between those who've moved and are staying put, vs those with the idea of leaving in the back of their minds. The privilege of the expat is being able to hedge for a very long time.

Still "immigrants" get accused of hedging their bets while still not afforded the "expat" moniker.

"Immigrants won't commit to their new country"

"They move their wealth abroad" etc.

I think that's fair. With respect to Westerners living in Asia there is also definitely a language/culture thing with stereotypical expats mostly hanging out with other expats and going to expat bars, restaurants, etc.

I make a distinction between a highly educated Japanese person working at a university and a boat refugee from Sudan.

Got nothing to do with race. We are a civilised people we judge on economics.

And you never let race be a shorthand for economics either.

Naah, they use method of conveyance for that.

Expats are yacht refugees, not boat.

Expats are rich, immigrants are poor.

Its both:

Leave Country A for Country B = expat

Move to Country B from Country A = immigrant

The words mean exactly the same. It's just which perspective you want to highlight. Whether you left a place or moved to a place.

If you have brown skin, you're an economic migrant.

If you have pink skin, you're an ex-pat.

I have a parent from each of those categories and can confirm from this natural A/B test that that’s how they are treated.

I might have been traumatized by US visa process, but in my mind "immigrant" has a very specific meaning: moving to a country with the intent of settling there permanently. And the US is very strict on that meaning: when I went to the US my work visa was explicitly non-immigrant, and calling myself an immigrant at the US embassy when applying for the visa, or while crossing the US border would have resulted in the denial of my visa, or the denial of my entry in the US. At least that's what the attorney drilled into my head...

Expat literally means "living outside of your homeland". So by definition an immigrant is an expat, but an expat is not necessarily an immigrant. Sometimes expat is used in a stricter sense (also called "true expat") to refer to people sent abroad by their employer on usually very very favorable packages (the "expat packages"): everything paid (rent in prime neighborhoods, private schools for kids, plane tickets to visit home, etc.), on top of an indemnity for living abroad, on top of the regular salary paid home.

In my case I was an expat in the United States (only went there to work, no intention to stay), but then I immigrated to Japan (now a permanent resident, no intention to leave). It would have been wrong to call me an immigrant in the US, but I am both an expat and an immigrant in Japan.

> when I went to the US my work visa was explicitly non-immigrant, and calling myself an immigrant at the US embassy when applying for the visa, or while crossing the US border would have resulted in the denial of my visa, or the denial of my entry in the US. At least that's what the attorney drilled into my head...

H1B is dual-intent. You are allowed to have an immigrant intent when applying for H1B, so no, nobody would refuse it on that ground.

They never specified H1B.

They were probably on a treaty visa, Like E2 (which i have, it's not just for business owners/investors, employees can get this too) or T2 (The NAFTA equivalent). These visas allow you to live and work in the US for a very long time (extendable indefinitely for 2 years a pop in my case), but they have no dual-intent attached to them. They are a dead-end and if you want to stay in the US you need to start from square one with an H1B/Marriage or convince your employer to start a standalone green card sponsorship, which costs like $50k and 2+ years of processing, where the only benefit to the employer is that you can now get a different job.

It's actually kind of a problem, there's a lot of people on these visas who've lived and worked here for 20+ years with no viable route to permanent residency.

H1B is as much of a dead-end as E2/T2 is. There is no way to convert them to a green card. You can do an AOS from any visa.

This is the reason why I would not even consider moving to the US on a non-immigrant visa. It's either green card or I'm happy in the EU.

> It's actually kind of a problem, there's a lot of people on these visas who've lived and worked here for 20+ years with no viable route to permanent residency.

That's because the INA was written in the 50s and has barely changed since, and is unlikely to change because that would require bipartisanship.

It was an E-2 visa (as "essential manager", not investor...), so not H1B. But again, that's what the attorney told me, maybe he just wanted to be super extra careful. But notice the nonimmigrant wording on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website [1]: "The E-2 nonimmigrant classification allows a national of a treaty country...". My employer did propose to sponsor a green card application, so I had a path to permanent residency. I wasn't interested: I had the firm intention of going back to Japan.

Anyway: my point is that "immigrant" and "expat" are not synonyms: "immigrant" has a much narrower meaning, which has absolutely nothing to do with coming from a poor country or a rich country.

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

> Expat literally means "living outside of your homeland". So by definition an immigrant is an expat, but an expat is not necessarily an immigrant.

In practice, though, "expat" is used by people who want to define themselves in terms of where they're from, and not admit (to themselves any more than to anyone else) that they are where they are and are probably going to stay there for the foreseeable future: "I don't belong to the riffraff here in the country where I live, I'm an expat, which is something far fancier."

And possibly by a few naïve fuckers who don't actually mean it that way, and don't realise that that's how they're coming off because of all the stuck-up arseholes who do.

HTH!

IDK, I would use "immigrant" when someone moves to another country with the intent to stay there, and "expat" when someone moves to another country for work or study (so, longer than just tourism) but while they might choose to stay/immigrate, for now that's just temporary, say, for a year or two.

My wife and I were ex-pats when we lived and worked in Belgium for almost eight years. Her employer was originally a subsidiary of JP Morgan, and she was paid as an American living in Brussels. I was brought along as her spouse (although we were actually only engaged at that point), and I was able to find work locally (at Belgacom Skynet, the ISP arm of the former PTT for the country). My wife got a very rare "unlimited stay" work permit.

Come almost eight years later and we were eligible to apply for Belgian citizenship. Her employer had been spun off into a Belgian company, and they were not willing to continue to pay her as an ex-pat. So, it didn't make financial sense for us to remain in the country. So, we moved back to the US.

We never had any plans to permanently move to Belgium, so we weren't immigrants.

But it was fun being ex-pats for a while.

To me it's more or less: if you move countries with an intent to stay, then you're an immigrant. Otherwise, you're an expat. Of course an expat my become an immigrant if they decide to take roots in a place.

I’ve seen retired Brits live in southern Spain and Portugal for 20+ years calling themselves expats and not making any effort to integrate, even though they have all the intent of staying there and not returning to England.

So expat/immigrant seems like a very social/economic background distinction.

In any case, if you're a EUian, you can live and work in Germany (or any other EU country) just like a native of the country (some restrictions may apply/may have applied, e.g. with the UK (when it was part of the EU) restricting the number of Romanians and other "freshly joined the EU" citizens who could live there). There's even no need to have a high-paying contract like software dev or brain surgeon, you can be a dishwasher.

Maybe it's not just EU, but EFTA as well, I was in Iceland and there were a lot of Eastern Europeans working in the retail stores.

There are a number of overlapping things.

Within the EU, the "four freedoms" apply, of which on "freedom of movement" is the thing mainly at play.

The EFTA states have a similar distinct thing between them.

How all EFTA states (bar Switzerland - i.e. Iceland, Norway, Lichtenstein) are also in the EEA Agreement, and the EU "four freedoms" also apply there.

Switzerland has a raft of linked treaties with the EU, which sort of replicate the EEA agreement, and includes the "four freedoms".

It depends on where you are and what you're doing in the city. After a long enough time here, that lack of German starts to stunt or limit you to a degree. You'll end up in the same types of places with the same groups of people. Getting colleagues and friends to call places or answer letters or emails for you, or just stumbling along in broken German.

I don't think anybody 'wants' to not know German in Berlin - it's just that they've decided it's not worth the effort at all or they are ok with their A2 level even though it's obviously not ideal. I know trilingual people in Berlin who just aren't going to learn German, a fourth language, beyond A2.

I (native English speaker) personally aspire to getting to B2 from my current A2 though.

Be stubborn and stick to your German even if it is bad, a bilingual conversation is just as fun. It took me as a German a long time to not automatically switch to English when I talk with someone who has little German knowledge.

As someone who still can't speak "good enough" after 6 years in Germany, thank you! Everyone switches to English all the time :)

Gern geschehen!

This gets harder when you struggle to meet other people who actually speak German.

A permanent residency (PR) in Berlin does not require German language skills anymore. Maybe this is official or just established practice but regardless, there’a no reason not to have your PR if you qualify otherwise.

Where do you have this information from? The State of Berlin says otherwise https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/121864/en/ :

------ Sufficient knowledge of German You must have an adequate command of the German language (level B 1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages).

If you were in possession of either a residence permit or a residence authorisation on 31/12/2004, you only have to demonstrate basic knowledge of the German language (level A 1) to be granted a permanent settlement permit. ------

In practice the staff giving interviewing you have leeway to assess your German level on the spot, but applying without demonstrated adequate German levels could lead to wasting ones time.

That's for non-EU citizens. There are 360MM non-German EU citizens - some of which are living in Berlin visa-free.

There has never been any language requirement for EU citizens to live in Germany or anywhere else, ever since freedom of movement was established.

Some? Wouldn't they all be visa free?

Yeah, that page is for non-EU-ians, because if you're from the EU, due to freedom of movement, you can live and work in any other EU country, and you don't even need to apply for a "permanent resident permit".

Well, most of these 360MM non-German EU citizens don't live in Berlin or Germany at all, only some of them do.

Immigration is even more of a local matter than I thought it was! I was used to each town having its own immigration office, and the slightly different levels of service and organization, but thought that the B1 exam or degree from a German-speaking university was a national requirement for a Niederlassungserlaubnis.

I was at the local immigration office only a few weeks ago and German language skills are still very much required for PR. One doesn't need it for the family reunion visa and work permit, but does for PR.

There is talk of dropping this requirement, but I'll believe it when I see it.

> There is talk of dropping this requirement, but I'll believe it when I see it.

I really hope it doesn't get dropped; it is unreasonable to live permanently in a country without speaking the local language

There are other types of residencies available if someone is an expat and doesn't plan on staying permanently

And it's not like they're asking for a high fluency; with B1, you can barely hold a simple coherent conversation

> it is unreasonable to live permanently in a country without speaking the local language

But what if there are countries where the 'local language' eventually becomes like Irish in Ireland?

Everyone who goes to school in the Republic of Ireland will learn some Irish at school. Almost every Irish person will know some Irish expressions, Irish songs, and be aware of Irish-language culture and literature as well as English-language Irish culture. If two native Irish people were in a hostage situation, held by English speakers who didn't know any Irish, and had to communicate without being understood, most would probably manage to do so.

And yet, you could live anywhere in Ireland your whole life and never be in a situation where you needed anything other than English to make yourself understood. No official purpose, and no business interaction would ever require Irish, even in the most rural and remote areas.

If you cared deeply about the Irish language, wouldn't it make more sense to support and honor Irish poetry, song, literature and theatre, rather than trying to coerce or force immigrants into learning a language with around 1 million speakers, and less than 100,000 daily active users?

Some (not historically Anglophone) countries are getting close to being like this, in particular the Netherlands and Sweden. The metropolitan areas of those countries are much further down that path. If local culture is still preserved, taught and celebrated, is a really a problem?

Will English supplant Dutch and German in a few generations?

In a way they are related, is it why people from those countries pick it up so easily?

Like kids growing up in metropolitan areas immersed in English only environments

I think that the links between these languages do make it easy for people from the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia to learn English. These countries, to give them credit, have also seen the importance of good language education, in particular English learning, for a long time.

There is also an effect which people from other countries have described which makes it harder for foreigners to learn the local language. If you approach almost anyone in the Netherlands and speak to them in semi-competent Dutch, they will often respond in fluent and nearly accentless English. This includes older people, people with only high-school education, people in official positions. So not only do you not need to learn, you are discouraged from practicing by the local population's competence and hospitality.

It might feel that way if your main experience of Germany is Berlin, but is not a risk for any of the rest of the country, including Munich with its fairly strong English-speaking expat community - Germans speak German to each other, and will politely ask you, the non-German, if it's ok to continue the meeting in German, but expect you to at least attempt to learn it.

I've not spent enough time in the Netherlands to speak to Dutch's future, but a big difference I can see is television and movies, even on streaming services: popular US shows are dubbed into German and it takes a bit of doing to get some of them with the original English soundtracks; Dutch has long been a target for subbing.

Wish Spain adopted that view a bit more. Let alone English, some of local officials just refuse to speak Castellano and tell you to come back when you have learned the local dialect/language (lol). Most official forms are primarily in the local language - sometimes official websites too without option to translate to the official language of the country. Most kids in local schools learn Castellano Spanish as a foreign language - imagine the disadvantage it brings. Local universities require a local dialect language exam as part of their entrance, even to foreigners. Most classes are held in the local language. I get and support regional pride but it should be done with a common sense approach.

>If local culture is still preserved, taught and celebrated, is a really a problem?

Yes because it won't be really preserved if you don't have speakers who use it as their main language since nothing new will be created, just relics of the past that will slowly be lost.

Most people other than highly-cosmopolitan minorities don't think they should lose their language, which is so deeply tied with how we even process our understanding of the world, by mapping concepts to words, with their culture and identity, just to make it easier for foreigners who can't be bothered to learn the local language.

The problem is that the minority is way more vocal and has more influencing power.

> If two native Irish people were in a hostage situation, held by English speakers who didn't know any Irish, and had to communicate without being understood, most would probably manage to do so.

Perhaps, so long as what they needed to communicate was that either they wanted permission to go to the bathroom, or that they liked something in the room (most likely a girl, cake, or window).

mar ná beidh ár leithéidí arís ann

Ah yes, the only Irish sentence you can guarantee everyone in the country knows.

An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas?

Germany doesn't really have permanent residency - it's more like 'indefinite' residency that is revoked when you leave the country for too long.

So basically what you're saying is that after a few years you need B1 to stay. It's not unreasonable but of course will have an impact on the economy and society just like any other large decision.

I live in Berlin and am A2, with my North Star being B2 German and am a US Citizen with no intention to switch to German citizenship. I'd like to not get kicked out though.

The real caveat though is that many of the people in Berlin who don't speak B1+ German are EU citizens and do not need a visa to live here.

> Germany doesn't really have permanent residency - it's more like 'indefinite' residency that is revoked when you leave the country for too long.

That's the same as the US green card, and Australian permanent residency, and I assume most others.

I'm starting to call all of those 'indefinite residency' as well. I'd be interested to know of visas that do offer stronger residency that is more permanent than these but not quite citizenship.

Well, that is how it is in the whole of the EU: you can go and live anywhere you like without speaking the local language.

Sorry!

Where are you from? Post brexit I was just handed perm residence with no language test and one short form…

I do speak German, and have a German native child though.

London. It depends when one applied. If you were already there and it was by 30/6/21 then you would have been handled normally under the Withdrawal Agreement, if after, you are able to rejoin on a family reunion visa by dint of having a German child - with no language requirement - but that still isn't permanent residency. All that said, there appears to - still - be some lack of clarify between various government departments on this front. Not sure why, because the UK is now a third-country and that should be the end of that.

> A permanent residency (PR) in Berlin does not require German language skills anymore.

Of course it does

The problem is that in most places people want to display their ability to speak English to show their sophistication. Let’s hope that some day speaking another language besides English is a sign of status.

The language requirements for a PR are lower if you have a blue card

B1 is actually pretty strict, Spain only requires an A2 even for citizenship (after ten years of being a resident). In a parallel universe, imagine needing to learn B1 Turkish as a German to become a turkish resident. Pretty daunting.

The funny thing about that is most people who never did a real language test have no idea what these categories even mean. I only learned languages in high school and I never moved to another country. A coworker of mine once tried to explain it to me, but his German and English was pretty much flawless so that didn't help telling me where he (may have) struggled in the past.

For anyone else curious:

B1

Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc.

Can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken.

Can produce simple connected text on topics which are familiar or of personal interest.

Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

A2:

Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).

Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters.

Can describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need.

I wish I could admit to being able to tell a significant difference between those two lists.

From what I gather C2 - Borderline Native

B2 - A fluent, but not overly practiced level, An example that comes to mind, First Generation migrant that is usually surrounded by people that speak it's native language, they can clearly communicate, but might slip on word order or particularly complex information

A2 - Think about the level of someone that paid attention in 2nd language classes, simple sentences, describing yourself and your immediate enviroment

A little bit late to the conversation, but my way of looking at the lists is:

A2 - Can survive in the country (get where you need to go, order food, etc.) but will have a lot of trouble in casual conversation.

B2 - Conversationally fluent. In addition to the requirements of A2, can have talk with strangers about daily life as long as they want to chat. Will still be completely lost in technical conversations.

C1 - In addition to B2, can take university classes in the language.

Some of the definitions of C2 I've seen are positively absurd. Someone at C2 level is supposed to be able to talk in technical detail about any topic. I've seen standards so high that I don't even think I would qualify as C2 level in my native language in my lifetime.