Hacker News Reader

Comment by robk | Hacker News Reader

It makes me sad to see pockets of immigrants here who so brazenly abuse the system to take advantage of their fellow countrymen and bring their backwards culture here. I'm glad he was jailed.

View on HN

I think you're out of order - I don't know if it was the underhanded snipe at immigrants or the "backwards culture" remark that rankled me more, but there's no place for that sort of thinking in Modern Scotland. There are nasty people in all walks of life and in all cultures in our nation, this particular crime was committed by an immigrant. Focussing on that aspect does three things:

1. takes focus away from the suffering of the people who were preyed upon in this case

2. attempts to paint "immigrants" with a single brush

3. diminishes the role white Scots play in the relatively high level of violent (often alcohol or sectarian driven) or other crimes we have

The "bring immigrants in and make them slaves in my business" thing pretty much requires that the slave-owner be from a culture which tolerates taking abusive advantage of workers. In the US, those stories have usually been about rich Saudis bringing in housekeepers, and very rarely have been about people from the subcontinent bringing in workers to their business.

200 years ago the US had a backwards culture which considered slavery reasonable. There were many parts of US culture at the time which were admirable, but nevertheless it was backwards. Backwards cultures can be fixed by changing a very small number of critical items.

It's not about Scotland, it's not about hating other cultures, it's about pockets of residual culture in the world that need fixing.

>200 years ago the US had a backwards culture which considered slavery reasonable.

It really isn't 200 years ago that the US considered treating "others" so badly -- and by your own criteria, there are still many pockets of such backwardness present in the US today. For example, a vast proportion of California's agriculture is dependent on undocumented farm labor with no legal rights.

As a US citizen I would not be offended by calling any of that stuff backward. Because it is backward. There are a lot of people in my country who I don't know how they sleep at night.

> The "bring immigrants in and make them slaves in my business" thing pretty much requires that the slave-owner be from a culture which tolerates taking abusive advantage of workers.

A culture that "tolerates taking abusive advantage of workers"?

You mean, er, any country under capitalism?

That would be the glib response I was afraid that line would provoke, but then I thought no one would go there. Slavery as told in the linked story is very different from the more limited abuses of capitalism in a modern country. Be better than that.

What, so you think that slavery is only possible from non-white people, or something?

Are you unaware of the history of the West, and of Western slavery in more recent times?

No, it is perfectly within anyone's right to question or be sceptical of immigrants who enter. If they are to be allowed into the democracy, they absolutely should be questioned, it is naive otherwise, that is how agreements work and with immigrants we are agreeing to let them in. If there is a difference in cultures, it should be looked at, not ignored. We can't set two standards of cultures, there should be one standard we use and all should be asked to adhere to whether immigrant or not. That some Scots fail at it does not mean there should be no standard. If it turns out that immigrants are doing anything disagreeable or hostile, why isn't that an issue that should be raised? This is wholly apart from having any compassion for suffering.

backward culture?

> When she realised what was going on, Smith tried to contact the police, local media, politicians and the procurator fiscal. She says nobody did anything to help.... It wasn’t the first time Arefin had been linked to immigration abuses. In 2007 he was fined £2,000 by Croydon crown court for illegally obtaining work permits for Indian and Bangladeshi restaurant employees. Even so, in 2009, he and his wife were granted a licence to run the Stewart hotel – against objections from the chief inspector of local police.

yeah that's pretty backward from UK authorities!

Failing to fully investigate allegations of human slavery while part of a large and underfunded bureaucracy !== being a human slaver, in terms of "level of fundamentally problematic cultural values."

We're the victims also bringing their backwards culture here?

Is slavery somehiw limited to backwards culture? No. Slavery thrives in the legal gray areas and absent culture , when people leave their home country and community.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com