Bulgaria WTF

Starting confusingly with a sidenote. I wonder if Finland is by average more racist than other countries?. I mean yeah, we have our old people ("Ryssä on ryssä vaikka voissa paistais", as my otherwise genuinely sweet grandma would put it) and our uneducated lower classes who are projecting their failures in life onto anyone who is vying the same opportunities they themselves have squandered.

It's more of a general consensus thing, it's weird how prevalent anti-immigrant sentiment is in our mainstream culture. But that's not really what I want to talk about, because blogging about racism in its dictionary definition is about as useful trying to argue  against the digitalization of movies to an inhabitant of Plato's cave. The jist of this painfully awkward metaphor is that no victories in the battle against xenophobia are won by pretentious columnists, narrow-minded journalists or know-it-all bloggers sitting on a pedestal as tall as the Dubai tower claiming moral superiority over "lesser beings".
 
Racism is conquered gradually and over time. Those of us smart enough not to cling onto our biological instincts of fearing that what is different are also burdened with the responsibility of showing others the way. Not by hostility , snubbiness and holier-than-thou attitudes, but by empathy and understanding towards the roots of where this ignorance comes from.


Anyway, to my real point of order. All of you have surely heard about the exodus of bulgarians recently flocking over our borders and requesting asylum. This particularly useful legal status entitles them to a roof over their heads, food and a small government handout to cover their basic needs. The bureaucratic idiocy of all this comes from the fact that they are allowed to seek asylum and entitled to all the benefits, but being E.U citizens are automatically denied permanent residence until their paperwork clears (approx. 2 months). They all know this of course, and are here pretty much exclusively for the benefits, this even being the second or third trip for some. Naturally, newspaper message boards are filled with angry, upright citizens voicing their disgust over these leeches, thieves and social bums coming to exploit the welfare state for which they fought tooth and nail for. Because I am trying to subscribe to the mentality put forward in the previous paragraph, I shall refrain from referring to these message board cretins as unevolved darwinian nightmares.
 
Let me put forward a hypothesis. Let's say you lived in a really shitty country where for one reason or another, you were pretty much hated by everyone around you except your own people. Now imagine someone coming up to you and going "Hey, hows this for an idea. You get a one way plane ticket to this great holiday spot. Its not very luxurious and the food is so-so but the great thing is, IT'S TOTALLY FREE! And thats not all! They also give you spending money on top of it, which you can save and bring back with you. Did I mention that after a couple of months these people also pay for you to get back to Bulgaria, rich and well-fed?".
I don't know about you, but the first thought that would cross my mind would not be the ethical dilemma of where this money is coming from. And even if it would, there is one facet of Bulgarian gypsy culture which collides quite sharply with the moral upbring you and I have received, and that is the concept of property. Their view is that if someone is stupid enough to let something be taken away from them, they can only blame themselves for it. As the adage goes, a fool and his money are soon to part ways.
So don't blame them. Theyre merely exploiting a loophole which a lot f us would be doing as well if our lives weren't so fucking cushy and free of toil. Blame the inefficient bureaucracy (one mans deportation papers took a good 2 weeks to get from the immigration bureau to our center) and our incompetent lawmakers who are basically saying "You can't stay here permanently, but let our government spend loads of money on you while we take a couple of months to fill out some forms".