A home economics teacher at the high school Hagaskóli in Reykjavík has been criticized for her blog entries about Polish immigrants in Iceland, where she states that many of them commit crimes and abuse the welfare system.
A screenshot from the blog.
“The matter will be discussed within the school. There is a question of whether people who have such opinions are suited to work according to Reykjavík City’s policy on equality,” principal of Hagaskóli Ómar Örn Magnússon told Fréttabladid.
In her blog entry, the teacher, Gudrún Thóra Hjaltadóttir, asks whether these “criminals” cannot be shipped out of the country without having been convicted, stating that it is cheaper to deport them than have them flood Icelandic prisons.
“The least they can do is to try to learn Icelandic so that they can make themselves understood. There are people who have lived here for more than three years who don’t speak a word in Icelandic,” Hjaltadóttir wrote on her blog.
Magnússon emphasized that Hjaltadóttir is not speaking on behalf of Hagaskóli, where a few teenagers of Polish origin are studying. “But it is very unfortunate that employees of the educational sector have such views, and that they have the need to express them.”
Hjaltadóttir defended her blogging, saying that it has nothing to do with her teaching. “I don’t register as a teacher on my blog. Outside the school I’m just a person who is entitled to have an opinion of who lives in this country where I pay taxes.”
However, Hjaltadóttir deleted her blog entry last night.
