A group of anti-immigration True Finns members published over the weekend their recipe to correct Finland’s “wayward” immigration policy. As I wrote on June 20, their new immigration policy stance will not surprise anyone since their negative and hard-line stances are well known.
Some of the recommendations in the so-called Nuiva Manifesto are full of contradictions that reveal that the True Finns are very much in the dark about how a successful immigration policy should be managed.
Let’s look at some of the manifesto’s main points:
1. Finland should abandon its multicultural policy copied from Sweden.
I never knew that Sweden was officially a multicultural country. It is a country with many immigrants but it is not officially a multicultural nation. There are only three countries in the world that are officially multicultural: Canada, Australia and England. We do not know whether they refer to multiculturalism as the Canadian social policy or that it is a demographic phenomenon.
2. But they give a quasi-definition of multiculturalism. They state that abandoning multiculturalism means that the state should not finance immigrant groups’ culture, language, identity and religion.
What does this mean in practice? First-, second- and third-generation immigrants do not have any financial support and recognition by the state to maintain their cultural heritage. The manifest does not conveniently mention if the state should end all financial support to the Swedish-speaking minority, Sami and Roma.
This part of the True Finns’ manifest is an excellent example of the double-talk on how they plans to breach and/or water down the Constitution and Non-Discrimination Act by treating minorities unequally.
They naturally deny this and state, emphatically, that they favor a society based on equality for all.
The manifest is full of these types of contradictory political statements that make no sense and are meant to give you a generous snow job.
3. One of my favorites is the manifest’s prescription on how to keep neighborhoods from becoming ghettos. If the True Finns had their way, they would prohibit immigrants/refugees from moving to neighborhoods where the state or municipality finances their rent.
They don’t explain if these immigrants/refugees should live in tents or tepees instead.
4. One of the terms that the True Finns love to use is “uncontrolled” immigration and talk about the Winter War. All of these True Finns that signed the manifest haven’t seen a day of war and were brought up thanks to the social welfare state.
They recommend that social aid to new immigrants should last a year maximum on moving to the country.
They don’t mention if their should be social-welfare-benefit limits to Finns. This is another excellent example of the inequality that the True Finns want but do not state aloud.
5. Those immigrants/refuges that break the law constantly will be deported from Finland irrespective of the human rights situation of their country of origin. Immigrants who have been granted a residence permit on humanitarian grounds will have their permit revoked if they go on holiday or fight in their home country.
Don’t people have the human right of freedom of movement if they HAVE a residence permit?
6. The xenophobia of this group shines through when they propose that citizenship should be granted on a conditional basis for ten years. Conditional citizenship would grant all rights to the person but it could be revoked.
Again they do not mention which types of “crimes” a person would have to be sentenced for citizenship to be revoked.
7. The True Finns top it off by stating that Finland wants immigrants that will not be “negative” to society. It supports immigrants whose impact on society will be “neutral or positive.”
What does “negative” mean and which group/institution decides to give the thumbs up or down concerning the latter?