Indians. Well educated, hard working, and willing to put in 20 years of serfdom to get that green card. Even a 30% discount on wages is still a better quality of life than their alternatives.
If they were granted proper work visas with portability then wages would go up. That's why Elon and co love H1Bs.
India recently reached below-replacement fertility rate - if examples from other countries are anything to go by, sooner or later the Indian government will implement aggressive anti-brain-drain policies.
Germany has relied on immigration since the 1960s at least. The immigrants won't save them now, as there are too many factors working against that.
-USA can offer higher wages.
-EU members to the east can offer significantly lower taxes for specialists and lower costs of living in some respects.
-As mentioned before, India itself might be facing shortages soon enough.
Perhaps we have different definitions of "aggressive".
In my country software engineers can enjoy a tax wedge of 15%, or even 8% if they're lucky enough to have formalities go through.
The tradeoff is virtually no state pension, but nobody believes that it's going to be substantial anyway.
This was enough to keep a huge number of people from emigrating, as western Europe outside of the UK doesn't provide such incentives (quite the opposite, actually).
>In my country software engineers can enjoy a tax wedge of 15%, or even 8% if they're lucky enough to have formalities go through.
Poland/Bulgaria?
That's a rare privilege in the EU. Most western EU nations don't allow such legal tax avoidance loophole for workers. It's the exception rather than the rule.
Well, the thing is, in Europe you generally get something in return for your lower wages: mostly affordable housing, a decent social security system, good healthcare, public transportation, good education, retirement / pension schemes.
In the US, you have to go private for a lot of things: health insurance isn't enough on its own, you need to have a HYSA or otherwise save money for deductibles/out-of-pocket stuff. Good luck if you get unemployed. Public transportation doesn't exist out of a few selected areas, and most of the rest is unsafe to walk or drive with a bicycle, so you need to account for a car and its cost as well. You need to pay for your own education, which in practice means taking on a whole lot of debts. Housing costs are absurd even compared to the most absurdly expensive European cities (London, Frankfurt, Munich et al). And you need to take care of your retirement plans on your own and fund these.
In the end, after you deduct all the American private expenses, as long as you're not working in US tech with its absurdly inflated compensation you're left with the same disposable income but a much, much higher quality of life.
>Housing costs are absurd even compared to the most absurdly expensive European cities (London, Frankfurt, Munich et al)
You must be completely out of the current housing market loop, if you think housing in Europe is affordable right now. It's never been any less affordable.
>And you need to take care of your retirement plans on your own and fund these.
Same with Europeans. By the time millenials and younger will retire the public pension systems in Europe will be insolvent. Those without owned housing, assets or private investments are gonna be doomed to poverty and/or homelessness.
> You must be completely out of the current housing market loop, if you think housing in Europe is affordable right now. It's never been any less affordable.
I had to flee out of Munich as well, so yes I am fully aware.
But even at current market price: I'm looking for a 2 br apartment in SF. Average for that seems to be 5k a month [1]. In Munich, even in the center that's 2k tops.
> Same with Europeans. By the time millenials and younger will retire the public pension systems in Europe will be insolvent. Those without owned housing, assets or private investments are gonna be doomed to poverty and/or homelessness.
That's the beautiful thing about our pension schemes: they mostly are built without the capital markets! All we need is workers, as long as there are workers and jobs, there will be pensions. And unlike the US, even if it's hardcore cynical, we can always just accept people fleeing from the poverty and wars we and the US have created. We won't run out of people.
There are practically no Indians in Germany, and that is a German choice. But there is definitely an appetite in India to come. Indians are not afraid of learning German.