Enrique Tessieri Archives - Page 26 of 246

The Finnish government’s radical immigration policy is inhumane and ruthless

Posted on October 21, 2023October 21, 2023 by Migrant Tales

National Coalition Party (NCP) Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s coalition partner, the radical-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, is going all out to make life as miserable as possible for migrants, especially asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.

PS Interior Minister Mari Rantanen has threatened to take “a radical shift” in asylum policy and undocumented migrants. In her opinion, if an asylum seeker does not get a residence permit, that person must leave the country.

Their policies are based on racist hearsay and their policies are a direct stake to the heart of many migrants aiming to survive in an ever-difficult and hostile Finland.

The story of an Iraqi family who came in 2015 is a case in point.

After waiting for eight years for a residence permit, three of their children, who are now adults, appear to be “safe” since they have studied, graduated, speak Finnish and have employment.

The story is different for their teenage child, mother and father, who haven’t landed a job and speak a little Finnish. All three are in danger of being deported to Iraq.

Source: Google Slides

The EU’s immigration policy is based on denial, death, and wishful thinking. It is a recipe for disaster and remorse.

Posted on October 19, 2023October 19, 2023 by Migrant Tales

When it comes to migration policy and treating asylum seekers, the EU has three solutions:

Sticking one’s head in the sand.
Sticking one’s head up the arse.
Build high deadly walls with nails of denial.

It is clear that with global warming and democracy under attack, more people will have to abandon their homes and come to regions like Europe. If I were them, I’d do the same.

But the most distressing fact is that Europe is in denial and believes that populism and xenophobia will help keep the people who are knocking at our doors out. No, populism or Frontex will not secure our borders.

Finland’s answer, like that of Europe’s Frontex, to climate refugees is a fence, wishful thinking, and the populist rhetoric of politicians. Source: Kauppalehti.

Europe is walking into a disaster of its own making caused by its colonial legacy, contempt, and racism.

The tightening of Finland’s citizenship law is disenfranchisement and sheer hypocrisy by Interior Minister Mari Rantanen

Posted on October 17, 2023October 17, 2023 by Migrant Tales

Listening to the anti-immigration rhetoric of Petteri Orpo’s government and especially of its Perussuomalaiset (PS)* interior minister, Mari Rantanen, on tightening citizenship requirements, two matters come to light: racism and hypocrisy.

The planned changes in the citizenship law include:

Raising residence requirements from five to eight years.
A person must make a certain amount (sill unspecified) of money and without Kela (Social Insurance Institution of Finland) funds to be eligible for citizenship.
A new citizenship test and more rigorous language exams will be introduced.
Certain (still unspecified) crimes may make you lose your citizenship.

Rantanen is not only a multiculturally challenged politician but does not practice what she hatefully preaches.

“Finnish citizenship will be a reward for successful integration,” she claimed at a press conference, adding that the changes in the law will “not be unreasonable, though”.

Rantanen’s views and actions against migrants reveal how far out of touch she is with our values.

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

With politicians like Rantanen and the hard-right shift in immigration policy in Finland, it shows the real rot that our Nordic values have hidden and protected. Thus with racist rhetoric we can win elections, get a ministerial seat, and claim with a poker face that we are not racists.

If you believe what Rantanen is telling you about why citizenship laws ust be tightened, then, I suspect, you will fall for anything.

Some of Rantanen’s most infamous quotes include her statement about blue eyes and a clear alusion to the great replacement conspiracy theory. “We mustn’t be so naive [naive in Finnish means being ‘blue-eyed’] that soon we won’t be blue-eyed.”

Finland’s (and the EU’s) answer to the growing number of climate refugees, worsening global warming, and strife are denial and higher walls

Posted on October 14, 2023October 14, 2023 by Migrant Tales

If there is one matter that one can agree with doomsday far-right anti-immigration politicians, it is that Europe and the developed world will be swamped in this century by people fleeing ever-worsening climate disasters, and civil strife.

What is hypocritical, even criminal, about the latter is that Europe and the developed world are responsible for placing people in such peril.

The EU’s answer to such a situation is the usual recipe of denial, building higher walls, more-effective surveillance, and violent pushbacks.

Finland’s answer, like that of Europe’s Frontex, to climate refugees is a fence, wishful thinking, and the populist rhetoric of politicians. Source: Kauppalehti.

With the rise of the far right in Europe and growing suspicion of outsiders gaining strength, it proves that Europe is in a state of flux. It has no answer to the migration crisis except building higher walls and toxic anti-immigration rhetoric. Europe will blame everything on migrants and asylum seekers.

Even so, the disasters suffered by people outside our borders were created for centuries by our greed and short-term answers, starting from our colonial aspirations and destructive wars. We destroy countries in regions like the Middle East and complain why people are fleeing the very homes we helped to destroy.

For those who luckily make it to Europe, are faced with walls of exclusion.

Europe is in a state of denial and our unpreparedness will cost us dearly.

The biggest challenges that Nordic countries like Finland have to challenge their gang violence problem are exceptionalism and denial

Posted on October 7, 2023October 7, 2023 by Migrant Tales

As we mentioned in our report in March, Finland’s youth gang problem is a tool used by the Perussuomalaiset and National Coalition Party to tar-and feather migrants. It is an excellent topic to drive home Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s migration policy that will disenfranchise such people.

In an Ykkösaamu interview Saturday, apart from Interior Minister Mari Rantanen’s occasional awkward giggles, the interview left out one important question: the roots of Sweden’s gang violence problem.

If you ask Rantanen, she will blame the problem on immigration policy and the “wrong” type of migration. She will not mention a word about Sweden’s exclusive and class society and the lack of opportunities for racialized people.

Interior Minister Mari Rantanen. Source: Yle

Certainly government programs and making Finland a more inclusive society for everyone would be a difficult question for Rantanen to answer because the government is tightening immigration policy and slashing social welfare and services to migrants.

Her answer is a dog whistle: Blame it all on the wrong kind of migrants.

Some of the tightening of government migration policy include limited three-year use of paid interpreters, and linking your knowledge of Finnish language to getting social welfare, among others.

Rantanen called the latter “incentives” even if they are really ultimatums.

When xenophobia becomes an obsession and knows no end

Posted on October 3, 2023October 7, 2023 by Migrant Tales

Finland’s Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Interior Minister Mari Rantanen is one of the government’s xenophobic “hotheads.” She, like PS Finance Minister Riikka Purra, will exploit and spread xenophobic soundbites to suit her party’s political agenda, which is nothing more than bashing brown and black migrants and refugees.

Even if she is supposed to watch out for our safety in Finland, she is near-constantly commenting about the situation in Sweden. In the tweet below she quotes Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who, like the National Coalition Party of Finland, decided to go to bed with a far-right party.

If only immigration “problems” could be as easy to solve as Rantanen makes us believe in the tweet below:

“Political naivety and ignorance led us to this point as well as irresponsible immigration policies and failed integration,” Rantanen quotes Swedish PM Kristersson. “Finland will avoid the Swedish way by tightening immigration and integration and increasing integration.”

Add to the latter a racist opinion piece by a tabloid Ilta-Sanomat and you have a one-two knock-out punch that blames migrants for the violence and most Sweden’s problems.

Matters will get worse on the migration front.

Even so, we must do everything possible to push back against racism in Finland and Europe.

Fear of the Other and xenophobia speak volumes about Finnish racism

Posted on September 29, 2023October 7, 2023 by Migrant Tales

The recent case of a “youth gang” terrorizing a predominantly white neighborhood in western Helsinki exposes the knee-jerk reaction about how the media and public see suspected crime by brown and black Finns.

During the last week of August, a group of youths with covered faces at the Lauttasaari metro station allegedly attempted to rob a primary school child, who escaped home, according to Helsingin Sanomat.

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

“The police are aware that in [the neighborhood of] Lauttasaari there have been cases of threatening behavior, following young people, and other forms of harassment. According to the police, a group of young people aged between 15 and 17 have been causing concern in the area,” reported the daily.

The “Denmarkization” of Finland’s immigration and asylum policy

Posted on September 26, 2023September 26, 2023 by Migrant Tales

The Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party has had a long love affair with Denmark’s anti-Muslim immigration policy, one of the toughest in Europe. With loaded guns in government, the PS must be happy that they can adopt, with the blessings of National Coalition Party (NCP) Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and the two minor coalition partners, the Swedish People’s Party (SPP) and Christian Democrats (KD), that country’s harsh immigration policy.

The Danish People’s Party (DPP) used to call the anti-immigration shots in government but in recent years their support has declined abruptly. In the 2022 election, the DPP lost 11 seats to remain with five seats in parliament, which is a far cry from the 37 seats they won in 2015.

The fortunes of the DPP have been undermined by the Social Democrats who have adopted and succumbed to the same hardline immigration policy and rehotirc of the far-right party.

While some are debating if a radical right party becomes more moderate when in government, Denmark offers us an answer: it radicalizes other parties who must adopt more hostile stances in order to survive and not be devoured by a populist party.

Apart from the government’s immigration policy that disenfranchises migrants by weakening more their civil rights and making them vulnerable to exploitation by employers, one wonders how far the PS – with the blessing of the NCP, SPP and KD – will go in order to make life difficult for migrants.

in Denmark, the DPP went as far as to force migrants to speak only Danish at home and deport whole families if a member is convicted of a crime. When will we see the following aims below in Finland?

Source: Migrant Tales

Spearheading these radical changes in Finland’s immigration policy is PS Interior Minister Mari Rantanen. She recently announced plans to speed up the asylum process to four weeks. The asylum seeker will wait for the decision at the border.

Movies like Agnieszka Holland’s “Green Border” are needed more than ever today

Posted on September 25, 2023September 25, 2023 by Migrant Tales

Thanks to Agnieszka Holland’s “Green Border” we can now get a terrific glimpse of the suffering of asylum seekers who were used as political pawns by Belarus and Poland. Since it would have been impossible to film the movie in Belarus or Poland, Holland created a movie with actors to debict these people’s suffering.

Writes the Guardian: “Green Border, a feature film by the celebrated director Agnieszka Holland, won the special jury prize in Venice last month. It tells the story of a Syrian family trying to get to Europe via the Belarus-Poland border in 2021, and the brutal treatment they receive at the hands of Polish border guards.”

The movie also exposes the hypocrisy and racism of Europe towards such people.

“The end of the film makes the explicit comparison between the two refugee crises,” the daily continued, “and the different receptions granted to Ukrainians and to the much smaller number of darker-skinned refugees from Africa and the Middle East received at the border.”

In Finland, Perussuomalaiset* Interior Minister Mari Rantanen announced a tightening of asylum procedures in Finland by speeding up the process to four weeks. The asylum seeker will wait for the decision at the border.

“Mosque” scoop by a tabloid reveals the hostile face of Islamophobia in Finland

Posted on September 25, 2023September 25, 2023 by Migrant Tales

If there is a big divide and mistrust between the media and the Muslim community it was exposed by a scoop the tabloid ilta-Sanomat on a secret “mosque” in a Helsinki nursery. Throughout the years, some Muslim imams and other members of the community have expressed apprehension of the Finnish media.

For those who may not know, Finland has only one mosque built in the 1940s located in Järvenpää, a short drive north of Helsinki. All the rest of these mosques without a minaret are, in fact, prayer rooms.

Finland’s only mosque with a minaret is located in Järvenpää and was built in the 1940s. Source: Helsingin Sanomat.

True, some Muslims call prayer rooms mosques.

While many will disagree with Suomen Muslimifoorumi’s Aladin Maher about his views on gay marriage and the great replacement conspiracy theory, the underlying message of the stories written about the “mosque” reveals a deep-seated mistrust of Muslims that is amplified by politicians from parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*and National Coalition Party.

The story about the mosque awoke Finland’s Islamophobic hardliners like Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, Justice Minister Leena Meri, Minister Wille Rydman, MPs like Atte Kaleva, Joakim Vigelius, never mind the thousands of hostile comments on social media.

All of these politicians and ministers had something bad to say about the mosque and Maher and exposed their hypocrisy.

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

We shouldn’t be surprised the these hostile comments came mostly from the Islamophobic PS and National Coalition Party.

If the ongoing hostile comments are anything to go by, it shows that any meaningful dialogue between some sectors of Finnish society and the Muslim community is light years away.

Rejection by the media and certain politicians of Muslims ensures that nothing will change.