5 ms·

It's not that Pakistanis, Albanians, Somalians, Iraqis and so on are more inclined to crime, but that many of those who chose to immigrate to the UK are from pa

by Veen 4y ago

It's not that Pakistanis, Albanians, Somalians, Iraqis and so on are more inclined to crime, but that many of those who chose to immigrate to the UK are from parts of those societies who are inclined to crime. No one is worried about educated professionals from those cultures coming here; but many are worried about uneducated young men in particular and the types of people who tend to be settled in working class communities. I know many Nigerian and Indian immigrants who work hard, pay their taxes, and don't make a problem. I also experience what it's like when a small town has a large number of uneducated, criminally-inclined Albanians settled in their midst—it's not pretty.

paganel 4y ago
> but that many of those who chose to immigrate to the UK are from parts of those societies who are inclined to crime This doesn't get acknowledged in the West too much, that is that we (meaning countries that used to be East of the Wall) have outsourced many of our social problems to the West (which had created many of them in the first place in the '90s by ideologically imposing the Shock Doctrine therapies on us, but that's another discussion). The thing is that this situation also affects people from those countries/societies who are not inclined to crime, such as a close friend of mine who's now having to go through lots of procedures and loops before being allowed to sign for a rental contract (she's Romanian, her SO is Polish, they've just moved from London to Manchester). All those procedures and loops are applied by the real estate agency, so not by the British State itself, I presume because the people from agency have to financially secure their back based on previous negative (from a financial pov) interactions with people from Romania and Poland (I'm also from Romania, if it matters). Not sure what the best route going forward might be, because when you try to put yourself in each person's shoes you can understand why and how things are done in a certain way, no need to resort to "he/she is doing that because of racism/xenophobia".
- noobermin 4y ago
  Again, this is because your definition of racism is "personal bigotry." What you are experiencing though is discrimination, whether justified or not, it is discrimination.
  - paganel 4y ago
    I didn't base my definition of racism/xenophobia on the personal bigotry of those involved, to the contrary, I explicitly mentioned that most probably some of the measures now in place that look like bigotry from the outside have been probably put in place for material (i.e. money/financial) reasons. In the case I mentioned, most probably that real estate agency lost money by dealing with Romanians and Poles in the past in a different way than it's used to lose money by dealing with local British people, that's why it put in place more complicated procedures for Romanians/Poles than it has for the locals. Yes, it is discrimination, but, again, in many cases it is based on pure material reasons, i.e. people not wanting to lose more money than they have to.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Is there a distinct form, application, and process for Romanians/Poles? Or is it just "a lot of tenants have caused issues in the past, so we have a bunch of checks we perform before we hand over the keys to a £250K piece of property? I feel like that's an open-and-shut case if "Oh, you need application form A1234-v-Romanian/Polish" is the case.
      - paganel 4y ago
        As far as I could understand from my friend, as a non-British resident she has to be present in person at the agency for a specific step of the rental process, and as far as I understood from her that “being there in person on a set day” step isn’t applied to British citizens. If true (it is possible that she might have gone things wrong, who knows) that could be seen as a “visual vetting for non-citizens” process. Again, that seems to be specific to that big agency, she also told me that in the past when she and her SO had found rental arrangements through smaller agencies things were a lot more straight-forward.

by Veen 4y ago

paganel 4y ago

> but that many of those who chose to immigrate to the UK are from parts of those societies who are inclined to crime This doesn't get acknowledged in the West too much, that is that we (meaning countries that used to be East of the Wall) have outsourced many of our social problems to the West (which had created many of them in the first place in the '90s by ideologically imposing the Shock Doctrine therapies on us, but that's another discussion). The thing is that this situation also affects people from those countries/societies who are not inclined to crime, such as a close friend of mine who's now having to go through lots of procedures and loops before being allowed to sign for a rental contract (she's Romanian, her SO is Polish, they've just moved from London to Manchester). All those procedures and loops are applied by the real estate agency, so not by the British State itself, I presume because the people from agency have to financially secure their back based on previous negative (from a financial pov) interactions with people from Romania and Poland (I'm also from Romania, if it matters). Not sure what the best route going forward might be, because when you try to put yourself in each person's shoes you can understand why and how things are done in a certain way, no need to resort to "he/she is doing that because of racism/xenophobia".

noobermin 4y ago
Again, this is because your definition of racism is "personal bigotry." What you are experiencing though is discrimination, whether justified or not, it is discrimination.
- paganel 4y ago
  I didn't base my definition of racism/xenophobia on the personal bigotry of those involved, to the contrary, I explicitly mentioned that most probably some of the measures now in place that look like bigotry from the outside have been probably put in place for material (i.e. money/financial) reasons. In the case I mentioned, most probably that real estate agency lost money by dealing with Romanians and Poles in the past in a different way than it's used to lose money by dealing with local British people, that's why it put in place more complicated procedures for Romanians/Poles than it has for the locals. Yes, it is discrimination, but, again, in many cases it is based on pure material reasons, i.e. people not wanting to lose more money than they have to.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    Is there a distinct form, application, and process for Romanians/Poles? Or is it just "a lot of tenants have caused issues in the past, so we have a bunch of checks we perform before we hand over the keys to a £250K piece of property? I feel like that's an open-and-shut case if "Oh, you need application form A1234-v-Romanian/Polish" is the case.
    - paganel 4y ago
      As far as I could understand from my friend, as a non-British resident she has to be present in person at the agency for a specific step of the rental process, and as far as I understood from her that “being there in person on a set day” step isn’t applied to British citizens. If true (it is possible that she might have gone things wrong, who knows) that could be seen as a “visual vetting for non-citizens” process. Again, that seems to be specific to that big agency, she also told me that in the past when she and her SO had found rental arrangements through smaller agencies things were a lot more straight-forward.