"The migrants did not come to suck us dry and murder us. On the contrary, the Czechs threatened us with rape and death," says a worker in the field of integration
Blanka, you first worked on the integration of foreigners within the state administration, directly at the Ministry of the Interior, but then you "defected" to the non-profit sector, why?
The area of migration in the Czech Republic is also very bureaucratic, with lots of paperwork and rules. Unfortunately, it often comes down to those papers. The conditions at the ministry were simply not ideal for me, and in fact neither was the mood that prevailed there towards the foreigners coming in. Although of course I can't say that there weren't honest people among my colleagues at the time who were interested in the work, the overall atmosphere didn't suit me. On a practical level, I was handed residency applications from people I had never seen before in my life, and based on a few papers I had to decide whether they were entitled to be here or not. This was not entirely "kosher" from my point of view. I have also not infrequently encountered the attitude that foreigners actually come here because they want to do something unfair and directly "eat the system"...
This is perhaps the general idea that prevailshere towards foreigners, the much talked about "migrants"in the media...
In this case, first of all, it is necessary not to confuse the two basic groups of foreigners - migrants. The first are the "economic" migrants who are in our country under the Aliens Residence Act. These people come to the Czech Republic, for example, to study, to work, but some also settle here, find partners and start a family. It is precisely these foreigners who are most numerous in the Czech Republic, and I would also like to emphasise that economic migrants are not legally entitled to any benefits. They can only draw them after they have obtained permanent residence, but even then it is a problem, because the Ministry makes sure that they are not a 'burden'. Asylum seekers are a completely different group. They do indeed have various advantages from the outset, including financial ones, they are entitled to certain financial allowances, etc. However, these are people who have fled their homeland because they are threatened with death at home. But look at how many of these people we allow in every year - the numbers are in the tens! The Czech Republic is not really a destination where asylum seekers go en masse; once they get here, they want to go elsewhere, we are a kind of transfer station for them. We are not known to be a welcoming country towards migrants...
It is a common practice in our country to create panic about migrants from Muslim countries. Even though the Czech Republic is not a popular migration destination, from which countries do most foreigners come to us with the intention of settling here?
There are relatively few Muslims here, the migration waves have been practically the same for many years. Most people come to the Czech Republic from Ukraine, Russia and Vietnam. The number from Syria and the like is a bare minimum. Moreover, this is not secret information, everyone can find it on the website of the Ministry of the Interior, where there are accurate statistics, the system is very transparent in this respect. And Czech laws - both the residence law for foreigners and the one for asylum seekers - are also quite strict, according to experts our legislation is actually one of the strictest in this respect, so not everyone can actually stay here.
But Russians and Ukrainians are not exactly "popular" in the Czech Republic either, or am I wrong? And Vietnamese don't often get the warmest treatment either...
Personally, I think these groups of foreigners are in a bit of a grey area. However, what I do feel is a certain "resentment" towards the Russian community - foreigners can buy property here without restrictions. And that raises resentment towards Russians who buy property here. But we don't mind Ukrainians and Vietnamese anymore, that has changed a lot in recent years. The Czech citizen has begun to realise that he has a 24-hour curfew, for example, and that he would not want to work for the money for which Ukrainian workers work.
The Vietnamese community also attracted attention during the coronavirus crisis - at that time, Vietnamese men and women were sewing and handing out veils and showing that they were simply part of Czech society. And so one wonders - why is nothing similar happening to the Roma?
The Vietnamese have been working on their media image for a very long time. Young Vietnamese are very active on social networks, they seek out Czech language courses and various other activities, they try to do their best in all directions. Vietnamese pupils are generally very diligent and very well prepared for their studies, which is a big plus. I would say that Czechs appreciate it very much if someone is hardworking and focused. That's also why the Vietnamese have stopped bothering us. Even though many people still treat them rudely, call them names in shops and so on, the generally negative discourse has disappeared. On the contrary, it persists in relation to the Roma and, in fact, it could be justified by the fact that they simply do not fulfill any of the things that the Vietnamese do. Although I am not skilled in Roma issues, many Czechs classically accuse them of "not wanting to work, drawing benefits and simply not being able to integrate".
At the moment you work for Slovo 21, an organization that organizes adaptation and integration courses for foreigners. In addition, according to Czech legislation, these should be compulsory from 1 January 2021 for certain groups of foreigners who want to stay in the Czech Republic. Do you prepare the participants for the fact that some Czechs do not exactly welcome foreigners with "open arms"?
The primary content of the courses is information on various residence rules, etc., but we also touch on the mood that prevails in our country. And foreigners really feel them. Although the general wave of xenophobia is directed primarily against Muslims and people from Africa, all of whom are "dangerous terrorists" within the thesis, it is not necessarily just skin colour that is the problem. Xenophobia is also quite a common problem when foreigners are looking for accommodation, trying to open a bank account or going to the office to take care of something. Unfortunately, the course itself, which is only four hours long, does not help these people significantly in this regard, but we do direct them to non-profits where it is possible to ask to be accompanied by a specialised worker. And then you can see how much things change - for example, officials often start to behave completely differently.
How do foreigners in general deal with specific cultural clashes?
Sometimes it's very difficult on both sides, I mean the culture clash. Some peoples, for example, don't understand time at all. Even if for us it's just ten o'clock on Monday, for some it can be twelve o'clock on Monday or eleven o'clock in a week (laughs). But you also come across a completely different system - I had a group from Belarus on a course and I was explaining the emergency services system and they were all very frustrated so I asked what was going on. And it turned out that in Belarus, if someone wakes up with the flu, they call an ambulance, it comes, the doctors do the treatment, they write a sick note. And so the Belarusians didn't understand that in our country we call an ambulance only when our life is in danger. In the group from Mongolia, everybody was in an incredible panic about ticks. I don't know if someone scared them that badly, but they all asked me how to defend against ticks and if they would die if they caught one...
In general, helping foreigners is not infrequently referred to as "victimhood" - which is also why there has been a groundswell of opposition to non-profit organizations that are active in the field. Have you personally encountered anyproblemswith your work?
I would say the peak of the hate was in 2015-2016. I was just going on maternity leave at that time and I thought I was actually glad because the situation was very heated. I was the head of the Integration Centre in Prague 12 and at that time, for example, a person came right there to scold us, shout at us, be arrogant. Threats of death or rape were also common. Colleagues in another organisation reportedly dealt with a dead cat nailed to the door of an office. There were also lists of people on the controversial White media website (now defunct, ed.). There was also a category of 'welcomers', which included names, professions and photos of people who had been involved in migration. The hackers managed to download some of their phone numbers and addresses, and there were calls for violence. A lot of my colleagues appeared there, and I kept checking and worrying when I would find myself there too. And then it gradually stopped. Today, I wonder if the whole thing corresponded with the elections, some parties made migration a big election issue, even though foreigners didn't come here in droves even then.
So while migration was - and still is for many - a big issue here, in the US it is currently racism. But the activism associated with the Black Lives Matter movement has made its way over here. Do you think it is a relevanttopicin the Czech Republic?
I don't think it affects us here at all, there are very few people of black skin colour, apart from Prague, a number of Czechs have never seen a "black person" in their lives. So I would say that it's just the Czech nationality to constantly deal with something we don't understand. We don't have the specific experiences that exist in America, so we just don't have much to draw from in terms of interesting opinions either. We should rather focus on our own problems.
What are they?
If I look at it from a purely professional perspective, in the area of migration policy, it should be dealing with the bureaucracy. The law on the residence of foreigners is extremely complex and is constantly being updated. Even Czech lawyers have difficulty getting to grips with it - let alone the foreigners who are supposed to be governed by it. We should also be aware of the concrete impact that official decisions have on people and their destinies. Those residency applications, it's not just a paper and a photo, it's a specific person. Of course, it is impossible to say that we should be programmatically and universally sunny. Yes, there are foreigners who come to us who, for example, in my previous job, I also felt that it was "just too much" and that they were really abusing our system. I remember, for example, a family with children from an African country where they completely lacked any ability to take care of themselves. But that was one extreme case, of which there are a minimum. Simply put - economic migrants, but also asylum seekers are just people like us. They may be from a different culture, but that doesn't mean they came here to "suck us dry and murder us"... So we should work on that mindset too...
