emsr2d2
I understand your point. But in my opinion, it is better to call someone a heavyset immigrant then a heavyset Arab or Somali. An Arab could be offended and tell me that they call Arabs lazy, so why have I used the word Arab when there are dozens of other nations? I can write for example, " A Roma woman was begging on the street. But if I write a Roma woman from Bulgaria was begging, someone could asked me why I used Bulgaria. The word immigrant in this text is used to delineate two groups of people who live beside each other, but they live in different words. I am talking about Sweden, which has only recently started to import immigrants on a large scale. The UK and some other countries had immigrants already in the 19th century, and immigrants were welcomed, and they relatively easily adapted to a new society, which is not the case with Sweden. Here I am trying to describe two societies who live parallel but do not meet in the ordinary way. It is more neutral to write "A group of immigrant cleaner went into the City Hall to get rid of rubbish," than to write,
"A group of Somalis, Ethiopians, Afghans, and Pakistanis..."
But if I wrote a short story or a novel about a specific individual, I would of course be specific about everything and I would write about his nationality and his other characteristics.