The approval on June 18 by the European Parliament (click on T6-0293) of a common EU policy on illegal immigration is going to fail for a very simple reason — there is a market for these types of immigrants and because they provide bad employers a chance to cheat the system and slash overheads. The…
Month: July 2008
Where will Finland get foreign workers?
I took part in a very interesting seminar in June on foreigners in Finland. Here are some conclusions from that seminar on what real challenges Finland faces with respect to its aging population and luring foreign workers to the country. 1) It will be VERY difficult for Finland to attract qualified labor from other countries….
Turning naivety on Finland into action
Like many second-generation Finns that lived abroad, I too hoped to move back to live in Finland one day. While the decision to move back was an easy one, I encountered my first setback when I applied for a residence permit. In the late-1970s, Finland had a pretty draconian view of who was and was…
Some reasons behind Finland’s strong anti-immigrant stance
Having lived in Finland on and off for 30 years, I have come to some explanations why some Finns feel so strongly about immigration. I could give you the usual explanations: Finland has had few immigrants, the climate, difficult language, the culture, lack of jobs etc… These are the most common explanations that make us…
When in Finland do as the Finns do…
I read an interesting post in Svenskfinland titled, “When in Rome, do as the Romans,” and it set me thinking. The post continues: “…in other words, that integration should mean that migrants to Finland so quickly as possibly forget their own background and take on entirely a Finnish lifestyle – essentially abandoning or replacing their…
Towards an effective immigration policy in Finland
It is very easy to complain about why Finland should be reticent or more open about foreigners moving to the country to plug the ever-growing labor shortage and arrest the aging process of the Finnish population. If I could lay the foundations of Finland’s new immigrant policy, I’d make the following recommendations: 1) Decide once…
Finnish immigration policy is lost in time
Every country has a sensitive nerve. Find and touch it and you will hear pain – or outrage. In the US it is Washington’s unilateral approach to foreign policy, accepting that it was a crime against humanity to drop two atom bombs on Japan, in Spain it is the pillaging of Latin America from the…