hi please consider boosting this <3
i'm making plans to get out of the US due to the impending political disaster for trans people here. currently, i'm looking at moving to germany, though i'm still unsettled on where to go.
if you have any advice you could offer, or even a friend to have as a connection on the other side, i would really appreciate it.
kinds of advice/input that would help the most right now:
thank you so much :blobcatheart:
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@jadespace @Pixi @AgathaSorceress maybe you can speak from experience here?
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@alina @jadespace @Pixi so far my experience/advice is: learn German as soon as possible. you might get lucky and find a job without German knowledge or a degree, as I did 2 years ago, but it's very difficult. afaik you can also get some kind of residence permit for language learning purposes, but I'm not confident. It's relatively easy to find an apprenticeship without a degree or German knowledge, but they don't pay much
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@jadespace for migration you can refer to the German Ministry for Migration affairs:
https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/MigrationAufenthalt/ZuwandererDrittstaaten/zuwandererdrittstaaten-node.html
For work:
https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/MigrationAufenthalt/ZuwandererDrittstaaten/Arbeit/arbeit-node.html
Hope this helps
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@jadespace @Pixi note that Germany is not very good for trans people too (better than some US states, worse than some others).
For example, informed consent is just not a thing for HRT, you'll need to get a referral from a therapist (who all have year-long queues) and you'll need to find a trans friendly endocrinologist (who are few and rare and have year long queues for new patients too, with many just straight out not accepting new patients because of overload).
Surgeries require 12-18 months of therapist sessions and fighting the health insurance company.
Changing documents was only made on a basis of self-id a few months ago (with first self-id gender recognition certificates only issued a week ago); before that it involved long complex process where you had to go to court and bring letters from two different therapists and pay thousands of euros in fees. It is very likely that on elections next year conservative and alt-right parties will win and form the government. It is very likely that they will roll back this change.
Immigration is quite difficult too (as it is everywhere).
Immigration not from a first-world country while not having a high-paid profession and not finding a work in a few months time, especially while disabled? Impossible, unless you have some other legal route to immigrate.
Since you're USA citizens you don't need a job seeker visa to enter Germany afaik, but you'll still need to find a job in a reasonably short time (six months for a job-seeker visa, not sure what is the limit for USA citizens without a job-seeker visa), and a high paying job at that (with salary ~twice the national average), and the employer must be willing to sponsor your visa. And if you're not in registered partnership, then each of you will have to find a job separately. Losing a job before you become permanent residents or citizens means losing the residence right unless you find a new job satisfying visa requirements (and willing to sponsor a visa), which means having to return back to USA. On the bright side, permanent residence is only 60 months of tax-paying work and one language exam away, and you can apply for citizenship immediately after that (unless the recent citizenship law is overturned by then).
(Exception: universities are free, and you can get a visa for studies. You'd need to have some significant savings for that though, and you'd both need to get to enroll into universities (which might already require the knowledge of German, depending on a program), and you won't be allowed to work full-time while on that study visa (you are only allowed to work for 120 full days or 240 half-days per year). Admission letters from university and proof of paid health insurance for the entire study period and transferring 12k€ (per person) to a special account in Germany from which only 1k€ can be withdrawn per month are just some of the prerequisites for applying to visa.)
(Another exception: asylum seeking. It's an inhumane very long procedure, and also one where you probably don't stand a chance of proving that you were in danger in US. So you'll spend some months/years in refugee camps/dorms, and then get sent back to USA when your asylum application is rejected.)
There seems to be a popular notion in US that things are much better in Europe; they aren't. From what I have heard, in some of the blue states things are incomparably better now than they are in Germany (and are at much lower risk of becoming worse because these states are safely blue); I don't know if "impeding political disaster" is going to affect how things are in blue states, with all that federalism and states rights. But it might be really useful to compare immigration to Germany with relocation to one of these good blue states; at least it won't require you to solve complex logistic problems and deal with all the legal restrictions on immigration and learn a new language.
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@IngaLovinde @jadespace @Pixi It mostly depends regarding trans stuff: If you just go to any arbitrary psychotherapist, you'd have long wait times etc. Similar for doctors who prescribe medication.
But with a good network/some advice you can get from nothing to indication+HRT access in ~month... .
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@ljrk @jadespace @Pixi good advice in Berlin used to be to go to viropraxis for HRT, and now they just don't accept new patients because they already have too many existing patients.
Then good advice used to be to go to medicover Berlin mitte e.g. to Dr. Christine Ruhl, and now she too has so many existing patients that she no longer accepts any new ones either (just like other doctors in this clinic too; I've just checked and there are just no available appointments at medicover Berlin mitte for first visit for trans healthcare, not even a year in the future, none at all). People also say that she specifically is nb-hostile.
Back in late 2021 they still used to take new patients in, with waiting periods under half a year at viropraxis (for those lucky people who checked when they had some free spots), and over half a year at medicover Berlin mitte.
Outside of major cities, I know someone who just very recently got a first HRT prescription. I remember that person trying to get HRT as early as four years ago (and probably before that too), they spent all these four years trying to get it. They do have good network and plenty of advice.
Speaking of therapists, advice in my network right now is to spam all trans-friendly private therapists within 100km of you with requests, hope that at least one of them will put you on a waiting list, and after that, hope that your health insurance will agree to cover the expenses (but it most likely won't, so you have to be ready to pay out of pocket, at ~150€ per visit).
AFAIK things used to be much better before the pandemic, but now they're just terrible.
It's really great if you got access to HRT so fast! But most people don't and cannot, and this is something one should probably at least account for when making a decision to immigrate.
The only people I know who we able to get access to HRT fast are Ukrainian refugees with indication and prescription from Ukraine, who could convert these into a German bridging prescription from general practitioner attending their refugee dorm, as an exception to the rule, for (Ukrainian?) refugees only.
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@IngaLovinde @jadespace @Pixi ViRo is still good advice: Got my appointment there this year within 3 weeks. You need to snipe appointments though.
Many trans friendly therapists are happy to sneak you in for "just an indication". It's much more difficult for continuous therapy for sure. I got an appointment within 1 week.
This is all post pandemic, as it was end of last year/beginning this year. I cannot say why other people took years but I know multiple people by now who've done this within a month in the current/last year.
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@jadespace
Hi there,
you could search for a (large) American company, that also is based in Germany, like e.g. Infineon, and apply to get to the country.
Regarding
"logistics advice, like how to not have to return to our home country over silly things like material possessions":
Of course, I don't know if that would be your cup of tea, but some weeks ago, I saw a video of a person, who moved from Canada to Australia with just two large bags.
Nothing else, especially no furniture.
They stated, it would be much cheaper to buy any furniture anew (e.g. Second Hand from people in the region you will settle).
A good place for you could be Hamburg or Cologne, eventually Bremen, as the people are quite open-minded and these cities have an international flair.
All the best :)
@Pixi
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@jadespace @Pixi These are two decently-reviewed options for shipping things abroad:
https://www.sendmybag.com/en-gb/
Focuses on sending individual suitcases, trunks or boxes. Email communication is quite prompt. Goes to most major countries.
https://upakweship.com
Focuses on pallet-held cardboard shipping boxes, so 4x4x4' or 4x4x8'. More expensive, but something you could save for. I think this mainly covers USA-UK-EU.
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@jadespace @Pixi But yeah, photograph and then let go of things that can be pretty easily replaced. Most furniture, except for antiques, could fall into this. So could a lot of clothes and modern books. I've gone from a 2-bedroom sized amount of stuff, to approximately 5 cubic feet of suitcases, keeping things like mementos and life-basics, and it would be a lot less still, without the notebooks, haha. It actually feels really liberating.
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@jadespace @Pixi I can also recommend donating things as opposed to trying to sell them, especially if they aren't super valuable monetarily. Obviously if you need the money that's valid. But it can be a whole layer of added distraction and effort.
A lot of the cool things that would have been a pain in the ass to sell, I just took to the neighborhood laundry room and laid them out on one of the counters. They were picked over fast.
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