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Well, being in a kind of leading position in a small German company (i.e. I'm a team leader and do the technical part in our job interviews) I can tell you that we do need competent technical people, especially programmers and IT managers.

More than half of the people in our company are foreigners mostly because we don't have enough competent programmers in Germany. So your chances of finding a job here are pretty good, I guess.

If you'd like to go to Germany you might want to have a look at Berlin or Munich (where I live). Munich may be a bit more expensive to live but it's a very nice place to live and you can go to France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Czech Republic by car or train in a matter of a few hours. Munich is also a technology center, a lot of high tech companies (not only IT but also biotech) are located here.

At least at work the language barrier shouldn't be a big issue, most Germans understand english and some can even speak it ;-) Seriously, in our company we now have two people who can't speak german at all or very badly so we speak english with them. And our company is just about 16 people or so. I've also been in another company where we had someone who didn't speak english, it wasn't a problem there either.

There are a lot of language schools that will help you learn German if you're interested, of course. Sometimes the company you work at even pays the course or at least part of it, just ask your potential employer.

As some other poster already wrote, a good entry would be joining a US based company that has a branch in Germany or looking into job sites like Monster or StepStone (just replace the ".com" with ".de" for their german sites). Some companies even post job offers on these sites in english language. Even if the offer is in german a lot of technical terms will be english and Babelfish might help you as well.

Since virtually all companies now allow (or even demand) online job applications the distance is no problem here. And if you're interesting for the company it will do a first interview by phone with you before both sides agree on whether to fly over for a face-to-face interview.

For legal informations I recommend you have a look at the German Embassy in the US website.

No matter where you go, I hope you have fun ! Working in another country with another language (no matter which) will be something that will make you a different person :-)

As of January 1, 2000, children born in Germany to foreign parents acquire German citizenship at birth if at least one parent has lived legally in Germany for a minimum of eight years. Children who acquire German citizenship under this provision will be allowed to hold dual citizenship until they reach adulthood; they will be required to choose between their German and foreign citizenship by the age of 23 at the latest. Children born to foreign parents before the enactment of the new law who are under the age of ten will also be able to claim German citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany, if the above named conditions (time of legal residence) apply.

> Germany and Austria not exactly inviting them back, either.

http://www.germany.info/relaunch/politics/domestic/Immigration/Immigration.html

> Jewish immigration to Germany

> As an expression of taking responsibility for its past, Germany enacted
> specific legislation in 1991 to facilitate the immigration of Jews from the
> former Soviet Union. As of January 2005 it is governed by the new Immigration
> Act.
>
> Over the past decade more than 190,000 people from the former Soviet Union
> immigrated to Germany. Today, with more than 100,000 Jews, Germany is home to
> the third largest number of Jews and has the fastest growing Jewish
> population in Europe.

Actually this became quite an issue when immigration of jews to germany became larger than immigration to Israel, which bothered Israel and there was some diplomatic negotiations on it.

Google is your friend: http://www.germany.info/relaunch/info/archives/bac kground/speech.html

the money quote: "The Criminal Code, in its Sections 185, 189 and 194, prohibits the defamation and denigration of the character of deceased persons and make such denigration punishable by law. The statement that Jews were not persecuted during National Socialism is clearly false. The mass murder of Jews in the gas chambers of the Third Reich is a historical fact that has been proven by countless witness statements and documents, numerous court rulings and extensive historical research."

And: "The "Auschwitz-Lge" (Holocaust Denial) may also be prosecuted under Section 130 of the Criminal Code, which makes incitement (Volksverhetzung) a punishable offense. The current German legal interpretation of incitement protects public peace and human dignity. The constitutional foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany recognizes no interest that could justify injuring the personal honor and dignity of some of its citizens and promoting enmity and hatred toward them."

So yes, Denying the Holocaust is ILLEGAL in Germany, and you CAN get thrown in jail.

The german authorities count the "Church of Scientology, as a commercial organisation

Here, that might be an interesting read for you.

Also, a list about German Katrina help (pdf from mid-September 2005) by the German embassy in the US.

Go to German Consulate Info website and look around there for some info on how to get a 5 year work visa for IT and highly technical jobs paying 50K euros a year. They recently opened it up for all non-Germans in an effort to re-tool their IT industry.