Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest daily, missed another opportunity to expose the elephant in the room about why so few Ukrainian nurses and medics are hired in the face of a chronic labor shortage in the health sector.
True, the daily does address issues like language as a factor. But isn’t this a common excuse in the labor market to not hire non-Finns? Another factor cited by the paper is the bureaucracy (Valvira, the national supervisory authority for welfare and health) and rules, which make hiring healthcare professionals challenging.
Numerous studies on Finland’s and EU’s labor markets conclude they are racialized and segregated. So many toxic matters that impact migrant employment spring from structural racism. Why are we treating such a social ill with kid gloves?
Olga Silfver of the Ukrainian association of Finland sheds light on the country’s racialized and segregated markets, which also apply to white and Christian Ukrainians.
Helsingin Sanomatraised an important question: There are a record amount of asylum seekers from Ukraine, but nobody is crying murder like when mostly Iraqis and Afghans came to Finland in large numbers in 2015.
In a statement Monday, the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) said that there are over 37,000 Ukrainians registered in the Finnish asylum reception system, more than the over 32,000 asylum seekers that arrived in the country in 2015.
Finland’s largest daily asks a good question that should expose our double standards: Why do Ukraininens get preferential treatment against the hostile reception asylum seekers from outside Europe received seven years ago?
Third culture children are those who grow up in a country other than their parents’.
I have traveled since I was a year and a half between continents and boarded airplanes throughout my life like buses and heard many times a given assumption that traveling is supposed to open your mind.
True or false?
FACT 1: While traveling may sometimes broaden your horizons about different countries, cultures, and peoples, it may have the opposite effect and reinforce your prejudices and racism toward others.
FACT 2: While traveling opens your mind to the world, your peers may not like your “open” views. It is a classic situation that may lead to bullying. Your difference becomes a source of scorn.
My eighth-grade classmates in 1968. While I hope some of these students had a pleasant journey through middle school, mine was marred by mistrust, ridicule, outsiderness, rejection, and ostracism. I survived Blessed Sacrament and became a stronger person from it. This picture has been posted on social media. I hope my former classmates don’t mind if they appear in this post.
I attended a conservative Catholic middle school in Hollywood, California. Since I had traveled so much and lived in many countries during those early teen years, my view of the world was very different from my classmates.
The situation led to bullying, even by the teachers.
One of these teachers was Vincent Orlando, who taught history. I must have been 13 or 14 years old at the time.
An interview by Uusi Suomi of National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) MP Atte Kaleva, who is part of Finland’s Islamophobic network, demonstrates a common flaw by the Finnish media that perpetuates urban tales and misconceptions spread by politicians about migrants.
Kaleva claims that implementing a quota system for “foreign” students at schools in Finland would help to tackle so-called urban segregation.
Some teachers have suggested earlier that classrooms should have quotas for the number of “foreign” pupils. It may sound like a simple solution to the problem, but it is legally impossible for several reasons:
Apart from tightening laws and plans to build a fence on parts of the Finnish-Russian border, politicians in Finland are debating shutting tourism from Russia to Finland. As I have mentioned previously, one of the biggest fears of the war in Ukraine is awakening Finland’s deep distrust and hatred of Russia.
The hatred will not only affect the Russians and our views of that country but spill over to other groups like Muslims and People of Color. If matters were shaky for these groups in Finland, they would worsen as the war drags on.
Despite all the bravado and defiance by politicians as the eye of April’s parliamentary election, some level-headed opinions are out there. One of these is Helsingin Sanomat, which wrote that the issue of visa restrictions was “not so clearcut. Restrictions must be in line with our values and goals. Sanctions should not be imposed on the basis of nationality, but according to a person’s actions or inaction.”
I mention only two infamous days on Migrant Tales annually: the coup in Argentina on March 24, 1976, and the man who went on a murderous rampage against 77 people on 22/7.
Let’s offer a moment of silence to the victims, killed, and those who survived this atrocity.
Xenophobia tends to pile up. Like blacks in the United States, Finland’s “black” problem is Russia, and from the 1990s, Muslims.
In the 1980s, when I lived permanently in Finland, and about 12,000 foreign nationals were living in the country, the racist undercurrent that flowed like a mighty river was ever-present. It reminded you whenever you talked about the Russians and later on, Muslims became a part of that shameful picture.
That undercurrent showed itself on several occasions. It did so in the early 1990s when Somalis started to arrive in Finland. That undercurrent, especially nurtured by tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat, acted like a thug’s warning.
You will pay a high price If you get too friendly with foreigners.
That toxic undercurrent has gotten stronger in recent years. Finland’s biggest opposition party is openly Islamophobic and racist. Politicians, even in the government like MP Eveliina Heinäluoma and a long list of National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) politicians in the opposition, have cuddled up to our hostile environment.
I always say that minority rights in Finland will not improve under their leadership. And even less so if the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, Kokoomus, Center Party, Liike nyt, Christian Democrats ever get power.
Finland’s deep mistrust of Russia and Russians stems from its difficult history with that country. The war in Ukraine has only revived even more such hatred. Matters will get worse for Finland’s minorities.
We saw that in Estonia when the new government of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas announced that it would phase out the Russian language at nursery homes and schools by 2030.
About a quarter of Estonia’s population speaks Russian as their mother tongue. The right to an education and recognition will spell trouble for white Estonians by denying rights to such a large group of people.
After an initial police investigation into alleged sexual harassment by National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) MP Wille Rydman, the National Bureau of Investigation (Keskusrikospoliisi) announced that it had opened a preliminary investigation into the MP’s activities. Rydman is a staunch anti-Muslim who is unofficially Kokoomus’ Jussi Halla-aho.
Halla-aho is the former chairperson of the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS), who built his political career in the 2000s by writing Islamophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and sexist blog entries.
The first story published by Helsingin Sanomat broke about the MP’s alleged inappropriate behavior towards women and minors was published in June 19.
Keskusrikospoliisi stated: “A preliminary investigation has been opened because the police received new information and the police have interviewed persons who were not heard from in the previous preliminary investigation carried out in 2020. Based on the new information, there are [now] grounds to suspect the person of a crime.”
With all the noise going on in the United States due to the Jan. 6 Committee hearings, which have shown how former President Donald Trump attempted to stay in power with the help of a coup, one wonders if all that is happening is bad karma.
No matter how much exceptionalism people in the United States attempt to show Trump as an aberration, he is USAmerica that came home to roost.
The US has bloodied its hands in so many coups around the world since the nineteenth century. It never apologized publicly for them never mind offering any compensation for the social damage and deep scars they caused to society.
On Tuesday, former national security adviser to Trump, John Bolton, surprised some by admitting that he had helped plan attempted coups in foreign countries.
Jake Tapper: "One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup."
John Bolton: "I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coup d’etat, not here, but other places, it takes a lot of work." pic.twitter.com/REyqh3KtHi
As a Latin American, Bolton’s admission that he helped plan coups in countries like Venezuela unmasks the hypocrisy of the United States. Even if some US politicians praise the importance of democracy, Washington’s track record shows how much disdain it has for promoting democracy outside of its borders.
Another matter that the US has condoned is the spread of torture. Such an outlandish method was used by military dictatorships thanks to the CIA and School of the Americas, blamed for teaching and equipping de facto dictatorships in repression techniques and human rights violations committed by former students of different Latin American armies.
Even if France offered the military regime in Argentina its know-how on torture gained from the Algerian War (1954-62), the US was responsible for training security personnel in torture.
One of many terrible military dictatorships supported by the US was Rafael Leonídas Trujillo y Molina of the Dominican Republic, who ruled the country for thirty-two years (1930-61), was also a torturer.
Writes John Gerassi in “The Great fear in Latin America:” “Trujillo’s SIM (Military Intelligence Service) used slow-shocking electric chairs, or an electrified rod known as “The Cane,” especially effective on genitals, or nail extractors, or whips, or the Pulpo (octopus), a many armed electrical device screwed into the skull. Kilometer Nine [the jail] also featured a water tank with bloodsucking leeches.”
Gerassi continues quoting a Look senior editor who visited the country: “I still shudder about Snowball, a dwarf – now jailed – whose specialty was biting off men’s genitals.”
Strange world we live in, no? The US destroys and impoverishes Latin America by not allowing it to realize its own social, political, and economic potential, and then complains about why so many Latin Americas are desperately attempting to enter the US by any means.
Europe has the same issue highlighted by the cartoon below.
