Raoul's China Saloon (V5.0) Beta
The Bar Room => The Bar (ON-TOPIC) => Topic started by: A-Train on June 30, 2013, 06:50:41 AM
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I have a friend from Nigeria whom I was recommending for a Finance Lecturer position for my uni. Great experience and excellent education credentials. We went through the whole process of Skype interviewing him etc. and the uni pretty much told him they were going to hire him. Then the great wall of silence came down and nothing happened.
Tried again this semester because I know the uni needs someone like him and received a curious reply from my former boss, (a Taiwanese woman with a Ph.D. from an English university), stating that "No Nigerians will be hired". She wouldn't set that policy and would not refuse to hire black people so I assumed it was from higher up.
When I asked her about it, she said that the HR Department informed her that the Chinese Government has Nigeria on a blacklist and they will not get work visas.
Does this sound credible? I searched on the net for any articles about this; thinking that something official like this might be mentioned somewhere, and found nothing. Has anyone heard anything of this?
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Nigeria does have a bad reputation (from Africans as well as Chinese as far as I can tell) but anything official smells of lies to me. If there was a government policy against Nigerians then Nigerians surely wouldn't be hearing about it from a job they applied for
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It sounds credible, not very nice but credible, as for mentioned somewhere, I think there are millions of rules and guidelines in China which are not mentioned anywhere. However, this is not the first time I have heard of a school turning down a person from Africa, but never due to an outright official law. Albeit it sounds credible, I think the person is fibbing. I don't think there are any official rules about not giving Nigerians a visa, I think she is simply saying this because it will sound impressive and scary and she won't lose face.
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@ETR; That makes sense for China in general, but this manager is in desperate need of Finance teachers and we already have lecturers from India, Pakistan, Turkey, The Cameroon and many other "scary" places, so I'm not so sure.
She's certainly prone to telling a lie or two, but has told me that she would have hired the Nigerian in a heartbeat if not for these restrictions. And she didn't have to tell me anything. I really don't know what to make of it.
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Well, I do not want to cast aspersion on any country, but is it possible that the actions of a few Nigerians are at work here? We have all heard of the "Nigerian Businessman E-mails scam" so maybe that is influencing her decision, if it is even her decision. If I was to conjecture, I would argue that this "No Nigerians rule" nonsense is coming from somewhere higher up the food chain and she has no choice but to obey. Perhaps her boss has issues with Nigeria for some reason.
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There are half a dozen people above her who could object to this candidate for no reason other than his race. New Principal? Maybe one of the classes has complained about not having enough white teachers. Maybe the Finance Director decided he didn't like the idea of a black guy getting paid more than Chinese staff with higher qualifications. Could be any one of these.
It could also be a temporary ban because of a recent spike in the number of problematic applications, "dissappeared" individuals who have been on student visas or possibly a couple of people who have a communicable disease coming into the country and failing the medical once they were here.
You can find out for certain by contacting the Chinese consulate in Lagos (no you can't, but this is what I would write if China had a functoning administrative system). Nothing on their website suggests any temporary restrictions though.
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It's true that some countries simply can not get work visas in China, such as Kazakhstan according to a colleague whose girlfriend was told this by multiple sources: travel agency, her embassy, etc.
I think that if there were such an official blacklist against a particular country getting a certain kind of visa, it would be very well known to that country's embassy and travel agencies who process visas, unless it just happened in the past 72 hours or less.
IOW no, there is no black list against Nigerians getting work visas. This is just an example of Chinese racism against black people coming from someone inside the school, which was the obvious answer all along.
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How do you explain the black teacher from The Cameroon and the one from The Netherlands? Both teaching Chinese students subject courses.
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I don't know enough to make a very good guess, but let's use the situation that Escaped Lunatic was in that led to his having to get that ridiculous security system.
He was living quite happily with his wife in his dream house in an integrated part his village somewhere in the vast expanse of Dongguan for what, I can't recall, months? years? One evening he went to some social gathering and was seated at a table with the local bigwigs who had assumed that Sir Laowai was segregated with all the other evil foreigners, but were wrong. Upon discovering their error, they immediately began enforcement protocols.
One could say that in EL's case there was a profit motive, I'm not suggesting racism, but merely saying it's an example of people who should have known not knowing.
Maybe one of the decision makers in your uni was vaguely aware of the Africans teaching, then he saw an important CCTV news story about evil, drug-trafficking Africans in Beijing, and he suddenly decided, "No more! They will dilute the purity of my university!"
Anyway, I don't know enough to guess at specific patterns within your university.
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Is this in Guangzhou?
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@GZ; she said it was a government inspired edict (yes, this could be bullshit, but she and I have a decent relationship and she did't have to explain anything.
@Stil: This is in Liaoning.
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I think it's far more likely a polite excuse for someone deciding that they don't want any more black teachers. She isn't lying, she just isn't calling the Principal's office racist.
Pretty much the only only organ within China in which it is not okay to be racist is the E/E PSB. So unless this policy is originating from SAFEA then I wold bet that this is just a bigot somewhere who is throwing his weight around. Seriously, have you had any new senior staff in the HR/Finance/Principal's Office recently?
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At the risk of generalizing, I find that the Chinese are very good at generalizing. If one Chinese guy had a small issue with the country of whatever and even if it it was not personal, i.e, an incidental ocurrance, the papers are littered with "such and such country is dangerous and an alert is warrented!"
My guess, 1 Nigerian may have caused a problem, or one Chinese believes that they are a problem, so therefore, ALL Nigerians are evil
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Nigeria is famous for their mafia. It isn't just Chinese or someone's personal prejudice, I used to be mates with some Africans and they were racist against Nigerians and Rwandans (Nigerians are criminals and Rwandans are filthy apparently)
Europeans associate Nigerians with email scams
They are an oil country and they have a big mafia so they are discriminated against.
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There have been quite a few news reports in the English language Chinese media featuring Nigerians in particular being involved in drug trafficking and even the trafficking of people (mainly for prostitution) in China over the past few years. Some of them entering on student visas IIRC, and I remember one article in particular about the Nigerian mafia 'muscling in' in Shanghai, which of course I cannot track down anymore (and that's only from the English language media, I don't know how they are portrayed in Chinese mainstream).
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@ A-Train: There are times when believing lies and retelling them is the easiest way to get through the day. Maybe the woman had the same curiosity as you and she was told the lie, she sensed it was such, but she also knows there's no point in questioning further. Perhaps her explanation to you was part of her rationalization to herself so she could just put it out of her mind and move along with things in her control.
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I've heard a few Chinese people make specifically anti-Nigerian statements. I personally doubt that there could be an official "no visas for Nigerians" edict from the national or provincial level, but I could easily envision someone at a lower level claiming there was one to justify their own personal prejudiced decisions.
Oddly enough, all the Nigerians I've met in person have been great people (including my cardiologist in the USA). For some reason, most of the Nigerians I meet online want me to help them move millions of dollars out of the country. mmmmmmmmmm
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I dated an increadibly beautiful Nigerian woman from London. akakakakak akakakakak akakakakak
We never discussed banking
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The Africans I've met in Guangzhou are really cool and friendly. I like them (more than some other regionals I've encountered).
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offtopic Let's see if we can at least keep the Bar Room on topic, eh? The topic of this thread is employment policy of residents from Nigeria in China, not reminiscing about previous paramours.
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Dammit! Just when I was going to ask DD for all the details. asasasasas
In any event, I am curious if anyone has any more data of any other institution, at any level, doing any sort of blacklisting based solely on nationality.
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I heard that Jiangsu will only allow unis to hire their English teachers from a specific list (the 'big 7' plus a few other mainly Commonwealth countries), which effectively 'blacklists' all other countries not on the 'allowed' list.
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The last time I was in China (Nanjing) I was friendly with some black guys from Cameroon, they were PhD students at a local university, but they also needed an income and were looking for teaching work. They just couldn't find any teaching, where as for us 'Europeans' there was, as always, a glut of schools looking for teachers. It is basically in my view embedded institutional racism rather than any government blacklist. Even the schools that looked the other way for people with tourist visas and no work permits wouldn't take them.
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I heard that Jiangsu will only allow unis to hire their English teachers from a specific list (the 'big 7' plus a few other mainly Commonwealth countries), which effectively 'blacklists' all other countries not on the 'allowed' list.
I've heard this too, most likely from the same sources as you MK. What I've heard is basically that non-native speakers can't get visas as English teachers in Jiangsu. This is all that has stopped even more teachers in my place from jumping ship to yours, MK! (Highly qualified Bulgarians/Poles/Zimbabweans/Turks etc etc)
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Another point is that many of these guys are multilingual unlike me being a monolingual Brit. They might have their own language, other local dialects, maybe french due to past colonialism, good university standard english and so on.
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Another point is that many of these guys are multilingual unlike me being a monolingual Brit. They might have their own language, other local dialects, maybe french due to past colonialism, good university standard english and so on.
So on indeed - it's been a long time since I have sat in a language classroom and the experience of being a language learner is valuable in itself. The "native speaker" obsession in China is a big problem, compounded by a weak heritage of study in Linguistics (with a capital "L"). Hell, even popular foreign language study inside China is less than 150 years old - back in the Qing dynasty it was all "compadores".
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An update on this one... I learned today that there was a protest staged by a group of Nigerians in Guangzhou against the required police registration in China. After that incident, I'm told that universities were "asked" to NOT hire any Nigerians. I'm sure there's more to the story as all foreigners are required to register, but that's what I heard today from someone pretty high up and should know.
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...there was a protest staged by a group of Nigerians in Guangzhou against the required police registration in China
Are you or your source referring to this (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/16/china-african-protesters-immigration-raid) incident? Because if so it was a bit more complicated than complaining about 'police registration'.
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Is that current? I thought I read the article was dated July 2009
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Wow. How stupid would someone have to be to overstay a visa, get into an illegal business, and then leap out a window when the police show up, resulting in severe injuries (and maybe death, depending on who you believe)?
If he really died and didn't have any children, he'd make a good Darwin Award nominee. ahahahahah
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Wow. How stupid would someone have to be to overstay a visa, get into an illegal business, and then leap out a window when the police show up, resulting in severe injuries (and maybe death, depending on who you believe)?
If he really died and didn't have any children, he'd make a good Darwin Award nominee. ahahahahah
'Jumping out of a window when the police show up' always seems a bit like 'falling down the stairs in the police station' to me
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Wow. How stupid would someone have to be to overstay a visa, get into an illegal business, and then leap out a window when the police show up, resulting in severe injuries (and maybe death, depending on who you believe)?
If he really died and didn't have any children, he'd make a good Darwin Award nominee. ahahahahah
Not everyone is as affluent as you. Yes he choose the wrong path, but there are many who don't have it so easy nor capable of doing things legitimately. Having died for these sins seems a bit extreme.
Sorry EL but that comment comes across as pompous and ignorant. You may be trying to be funny, would it be so humourous had that been your brother
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Is that current? I thought I read the article was dated July 2009
Yeah that one was 2009, there were more protests in 2012 (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/19/foreigners-protest-china-death-expat) about a death in police custody.
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That must be the one, MK. Not surprised I heard the sanitized version.
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Wow. How stupid would someone have to be to overstay a visa, get into an illegal business, and then leap out a window when the police show up, resulting in severe injuries (and maybe death, depending on who you believe)?
If he really died and didn't have any children, he'd make a good Darwin Award nominee. ahahahahah
Not everyone is as affluent as you. Yes he choose the wrong path, but there are many who don't have it so easy nor capable of doing things legitimately. Having died for these sins seems a bit extreme.
Sorry EL but that comment comes across as pompous and ignorant. You may be trying to be funny, would it be so humourous had that been your brother
I'd find it just as funny no matter where the criminal was from, what nationality he was, or what country he was in. If you break the law and the police show up, running away could be considered to be a rational choice. Jumping out a window that's high enough to cause serious injury or death isn't. The article gave no hint of any police misconduct in that case, other than a disagreement over the result of the leap, so I strongly suspect this wasn't like someone "accidentally falling down the stairs" while in custody.
Doing yourself in a foolish way while fleeing and eluding a legitimate bust is only exceeded by doing yourself in while committing the crime itself.
I'd find it doubly funny if this happened to my own brother. He's the chief of police in his town.
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Is that current? I thought I read the article was dated July 2009
Yeah that one was 2009, there were more protests in 2012 (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/19/foreigners-protest-china-death-expat) about a death in police custody.
This one makes a lot more sense as a potential source of disharmony.
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Hmmm, doing something I probably shouldn't be doing and jumping out a window when the authorities show up.....
Yep, done that a few of times.
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I've jumped out a couple of windows myself - including the day I . . . lost my virtue. afafafafaf
If I ever get killed leaping out a window for anything less than escaping a raging fire or a crazed killer with a chainsaw, I expect to be properly mocked in public for the manner of my demise.