Menntun / Education

(ÍS) Ég fór á athyglisverðan fundi hjá Heimdalli síðasta fimmtudag til að ræða um innflytjendamál. Ásamt mér voru Gissur Pétursson, forstjóri Vinnumálastofnunar, Helga Arnardóttir, stjórnmálafræðingur og blaðamaður hjá RÚV, og Toshiki Toma, prestur innflytjenda. Það var fyrsta opinbera umræðan mín á íslensku, þannig að ég var örlítið kvíðinn, en það fór ansi vel.

Eitt sem kom upp, var sú “staðreynd” að flestir innflytjendur hafa litla eða enga menntun. Þetta var sagt eins og það væri augljóst. Ég skil hvernig sumir komast að svona niðurstöðu: þau sjá okkar að þrífa skrifstofur, vinna á hjúkrunaheimilum eða í frystihúsum, og þau hugsa, “Skítavinna þýðir skítamenntun.” Því miður er sannleikurinn verri.

Flestir innflytjendur hafa háskólamenntun erlendis frá. Það er staðreyndin. Sumir þeirra komu hingað sem læknar, lögmenn eða kennarar. En menntun þeirra er ekki talin fullnægjandi – þeim er sagt til að fara í Háskóla Íslands, á eigin kostnað, í nokkra ár, til að læra það sem þeir eru nú þegar búnir að læra. Það er einfaldleg móðgandi. Og ef maður þarf að borga leigu, ala upp börnin sín, og svo framvegis, þá er það að fara aftur í háskólann – og að borga fyrir allt sjálfur - næstum því ómögulegt. Það er líka staðreynd að flestir innflytjendur mega aðeins fara í starf sem enginn Íslendingur vill eða hefur kunnátu til að gera.

Þess vegna eru margir innflytjendur, þrátt fyrir góða menntun, í starfi sem krefst ekki mikillar menntunar. Vonandi er hægt að breyta þessu – ég talaði á fimmtudaginn um “jafngildispróf”, sem er ein hugmynd sem ég er ennþá að vinna í. Menntamál eru ein af mörgum málum sem ég ætla að leggja mikla áherslu á.

(EN) I went to an interesting meeting last Thursday with Heimdalur, the Young Independence Party, where I had been invited to talk about immigration issues. Also on the panel were Gissur Pétursson, the directorate of labour, Helga Arnardóttir, political scientist and journalist at RÚV, and Toshiki Toma, the Church of Iceland´s priest for the immigrant community. It was my first public speech in Icelandic, so I was a little nervous, but I think it went pretty well.

One thing that came up, though, was this “fact” that most immigrants have little or no education. This was said as if it were a given. I can understand how some people arrive at this conclusion – they see us cleaning offices, working in nursing homes and fish factories and they think, “Low-level jobs mean low-level educations.” Unfortunately, the truth is worse.

Most immigrants in Iceland have a university education that they obtained while still abroad. That is the fact. Some of them came here as doctors, lawyers, or teachers. But their education is regarded as not enough – they are told to go to the University of Iceland, at their cost, for a few years, to learn what they´ve already learned. That´s just insulting. And if one has to pay rent, raise their children, and so on, attending university and paying out of pocket for all expenses becomes more or less impossible. It´s also a fact that most immigrants are only allowed to work at jobs that no Icelander wants to do or is qualified to do.

This is why many immigrants, despite having a good education, work at jobs that don´t demand much education. Hopefully that can be changed – I spoke on Thursday about the idea of "equivalency tests", which is one idea that I´m still working on. Education is one of many things towards which I intend to direct my energies.

On Whaling

Minister of Fisheries Einar K. Guðfinnson's announcement earlier this week that Iceland would again begin commercial whaling didn't really surprise any of us completely. Iceland has been whaling for scientific purposes for a number of years now, and most of us knew that it was only a matter of time before the research pretense would be dropped. What did surprise me, however, was how unprepared the ministry seems to have been for making this announcement, and how little economic sense starting such a project makes.

As a journalist for Agence France-Presse, I was assigned to speak with Ásta Einarsdóttir, lawyer for the Ministry of Fisheries. She was very eloquent in her defense of the minister's decision, and made some fair points. Among them, that due to an intense marketing campaign over the past two years, the number of Icelanders who said they would eat whale meat has risen. Also, of the 25,800 fin whales and 43,600 minke whales in Icelandic waters (according to International Whaling Commission [IWC] figures), Iceland only plans on a cull of 9 fin whales and 30 minke whales between now and 1 September 2007 - a very small percentage indeed.

However, even if you put aside the animal cruelty aspect of whaling (it can take an hour or longer for a whale to die once harpooned - at the same time, we have animal cruelty standards when it comes to our domestic livestock, our pets, and animals we hunt), commercial whaling is still folly, from an economic point of view.

Start with the market for whale meat within Iceland. While the number of people who said they would eat whale has risen, this still doesn't account for more than a very small percentage of the country. Naturally, we would need to export the meat. But even Einarsdóttir wasn't able to give me a clear answer on what countries they would export this meat to, apart from the Faeroe Islands (where the market for whale might very well be smaller than it is in Iceland!). 

Given the global perception of whaling as a practice, it's doubtful we'll be able to find any new markets. If there were any, we would have found them already. This is because according to IWC regulations, all the whale meat culled from scientific whaling must be sold. Iceland has been free to sell this meat within its own country, or to export it to others, for years now. The result so far? Whale meat from as far back as 2003 is still sitting in freezers. Again, the domestic market is small, and the export market is virtually non-existent. (UPDATE: Japan, our largest potential market base for our whale meat, has already told us they have more than enough of their own and won't be buying any of ours.)

When I asked Einarsdóttir if the ministry had any opinion polls conducted as to whether or not people would be less likely to come to Iceland if we started commercial whaling again, she told me they had not. However, she countered, tourism has continued to increase over the years despite scientific whaling, and “we have no reason to believe that would be any different for commercial whaling."

Big mistake. Take it from someone who grew up outside of Iceland – to us, there is a world of difference between “scientific whaling” and “commercial whaling”. We hear the words “scientific whaling” and think of controlled, careful, purposeful and environmentally beneficial studies being conducted on a few animals. On the other hand, when we hear the words “commercial whaling”, this conjures images of Moby Dick, creatures getting harpooned and butchered, and blood in the ocean. Yes, the number of whales Iceland plans on hunting over the next year is a very tiny percentage of the total whale stocks, but that doesn’t matter – perception does.

If the Ministry of Fisheries had conducted some preparatory PR campaign, wherein they treated global environmentalist groups as equals instead of the enemy, and had tried to sell the idea of Iceland’s very limited whale hunting, things might’ve been a lot different. Perhaps knowing that commercial whaling is an unacceptable idea to the vast majority of the world, the ministry never bothered. Instead, whale watching groups are complaining about mass cancellations, government offices are being flooded with angry e-mails, and of the hundreds of news articles from around the world covering Iceland’s commercial whaling, not a single one is positive. Commercial whaling is already hurting Iceland’s image.

The bottom line is, will the benefits of commercial whaling outweigh the damages? It’s not likely. When you combine the extremely limited market for whale meat with growing global outrage, you end up with more and more meat piling up in freezers. Worst of all, whaling is a subsidized industry. Scientific whaling has cost taxpayers over 200 million ISK in the past six years – despite the intense marketing campaigns and the export of meat to the Faeroe Islands. This is not likely to change.

Why on earth would we create an industry that demands millions of krónur from our taxes every year - an industry that’s already starting to hurt sustainable industries like tourism? Why would we choose to steam ahead with such an industry without seriously gauging what global perception would be? Why would we try to sell products to a market that doesn’t yet exist and shows no signs of ever existing? And why try to wedge an unprofitable industry that relies on tax subsidies to stay afloat – one that harms other industries and has no real market for its products – into a country that has a labour shortage?

Commercial whaling makes no sense for Iceland. What this prideful defiance will end up costing the country as a whole remains to be seen. Without even the most vague idea of what and how we will benefit from it - but some very clear and already present effects of how it harms us - commercial whaling shouldn’t have been started in the first place. 

Immigrant's Radio

I've had the honour of being involved in a very special project these past two weeks now - I'm one of the contenders for a new radio show, to be conducted by foreigners in Iceland, broadcast in their own languages. If I am accepted to take part in this radio show, I plan to give weekly summaries of Icelandic news, in English, play music from around the world, and hold a phone-in talk show on immigrant issues such as language classes, religious freedom, integration, and more.

The project, which is the brainchild of Amal Tamimi, is a cultural experiment being supported by the Intercultural Centre, Radio Hafnarfjörður 96.2 FM and Flensborg menntaskólan, and is slated to go on the air in the beginning of November. I can't tell you how much it pleased me to see so many of Iceland's different ethnic groups show up to take part in this - people from Poland, Lithuania, Thailand, the Phillipines, Jordan, Iran, Slovenia, and Spain were among the nationalities represented. There are a lot of very talented and enthusiastic people taking part in this effort, and I look forward to seeing what they can produce.

Tamimi told me that she began working on this idea in 2003, and to me, this is an idea that's a long time coming. For Iceland's different nationalities to be able to broadcast their own material in their own language - whether that material be news, music, or chat - is more than just something Iceland's immigrant community is doing for itself. This medium will also help open dialogue further between Icelanders and immigrants. Even if those listening don't understand Thai or Polish, our presence on the airwaves alongside Icelanders increases our integration into Icelandic society - perhaps one day, a radio station for immigrants won't even be a novelty anymore!

One Step Closer

When I started the New Icelanders' Party last July, it was to provide representation for the immigrant community where there was little or none before. My hope was not just to gather support for my own party, which has happened, but also to encourage the other five parties to take immigration issues more seriously. This has finally happened as well.

Not too long ago, I was approached by members of the Leftist-Green Party. They wanted to know about the concerns of the immigrant community, and I told them everything that's been conveyed to me by immigrants living in Iceland. The Leftist-Green Party has been very receptive in their desire to help provide what is needed by the immigrant community, and I've been impressed with their sincerity.

Last week, I was asked by members of the party to run for seats 1 to 3 for Reykjavík North, Reykjavík South and the Greater Reykjavík Area for the Leftist-Green Party in the parliamentary elections. It is my honour to announce that I have accepted the offer.

With the merging of the New Icelanders' Party with the Leftist-Greens, we take yet another big step towards reformation of Icelandic immigration law. With your vote and your support, I will bring your concerns directly into the halls of parliament. This has been our goal all along. By joining the Leftist-Green Party and casting your vote for me, this goal will become a reality.