Comment by fredley
10 years ago
I'm not justifying what goes on there, but I happen to know someone who works in the immigration detention centre at one of the major UK airports. This article is right: you do not want to end up there. He is a guard at the centre, and must deal with the business of (sometimes forcefully) removing people from the UK who have been denied entry. He has dealt with people from almost every country in the world in this regard. Listening to his stories, there are huge differences, in general, between the people of different countries. Dealing with Russian people is different from dealing with Nepali people, or Japanese people. He thinks about how to approach people based on their nationality, because that's the patterns he deals with. You cannot expect people to maintain racial or cultural blindness in such a situation.
This is of course exacerbated by circumstance. In that harsh situation, like in any prison (effectively what it is), people mob together into their tribes, and in this particular situation, those tribes are based on nationality.
"You cannot expect people to maintain racial or cultural blindness in such a situation."
If not in this situation then when? We must place expectations on people in positions of power over others to treat all people fairly regardless of race. People should be judged by their actions. Those in positions of power who violate the trust we put in them should be punished.
I'm not trying to justify it, just explaining the reality. Human nature is a powerful thing, and there's only so much anyone can bend it to their will, especially when they're on a relatively low wage in a highly stressful job. I don't know what the solution is. Of course I agree that in an ideal world everyone is treated fairly, but if we want to make that a reality I think we'd need to radically review how these systems and processes work. These biases are universal, it's not just the UK, nobody has come up with a viable solution yet.
exactly. If you're representing law enforcement treating everybody the same and fairly is like 80% of what your job ought to be about.
To argue like the police or guards are somehow allowed to throw a tantrum is just incredible. If they can't do their job in stressful situations they're not qualified, period.