Enrique Archives - Page 30 of 152

Former undocumented immigrant Edgar Ortega: A true survivor

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Migrant Tales

I read a fascinating story on YLE in English about a former undocumented immigrant in Finland, Edgar Ortega of Mexico. He’s a true survivor. Ortega would clean construction sites, distribute pizza adverts and engage in other work before he got a residence permit.

Ortega made 4-5 euros an hour as an undocumented immigrant, according to him.

“Yes, it was difficult,” he was quoted as saying on YLE in English. “When I got married and went for interviews with the police, I was asked many, many questions over several days. It was a little bit like a psychological test.”

He works today for Veolia bus company in Espoo.

If many matters are distorted in the ongoing debate on immigration, immigrants and our ever-growing cultural diversity, there are some politicians and journalists who blame these newcomers for taking jobs and lowering salaries.

It should be remembered, however, that immigrants want to get paid the same wages and have the same rights as other workers. They may work for lower prices like Ortega, but this is due to the employer who is exploiting them.

Unions in this country should take steps to educate and protect immigrant workers in Finland so they won’t be exploited by greedy companies.

It’s a positive matter that YLE uses on the story the term undocumented as opposed to illegal immigrant.

There’s been a big debate in the United States about which term is correct.

On a New York Times article on the growing Hispanic population of California, Scott Baugh, Republican chairman of Orange County, doesn’t use the term illegal immigrant.

“To constantly refer to undocumented immigrants as illegals is very hostile and self-righteous,” he said. “Let’s point out that while crossing the border without documents is illegal, a federal misdemeanor, being in this country as an immigrant isn’t a criminal act.”

The Republican Party has paid a high price with voters in California because it has been identified with anti-immigration legislation. Orange County is the most conservative county in California.

The first undocumented immigrant I ever met in Finland was in the 1980s. He was working for one of Helsinki’s first Mexican restaurants, Mexicana. The cook from Mexico complained about the low pay, long hours and that he had to sleep in the kitchen.

According to the police, there are between 2,000 and 4,000 undocumented immigrants residing in Finland.

Creating political Frankensteins with the help of social media and prejudice

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Migrant Tales

In Saami mythology there’s a large-but-not-too-bright monster called Staalo, which was made from a log, lichen and a few incantations. If we look at the recent rise of intolerance in Finland and Europe, social media has breathed life back to many Staalo-like political Frankensteins.

Staalo is a monster found in Saami mythology. Source: Tajukangas.

In the case of Finland, you need a political party with some credibility among voters, like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), to ensure success that your Frankenstein will work.

One political Frankenstein creation of social media is PS MP James Hirvisaari, who is so hard up for publicity these days that he seeks publicity in the tabloids by raising issues like fecal skid marks found on the toilet bowls of parliament.

Another social media creation is PS MP Juho Eerola, who admits liking fascism and claimed the recent Jyväskylä attack by neo-Nazis as a publicity stunt by the Left Alliance.

Letting off the hook other parties in Finland by blaming only the PS would be too simple. You can find these types of political Frankensteins in all of the parties. None probably have so many as the PS.

Dutch football master Edgar Davids wrote about racism in a recent column. He compared such people to sheep without backbone.

Racism exists because still too many people don’t take it seriously. Such people rarely see matters from the victims’ point of view but from their white comfort zones.

Writes Davids: ”How can you know what racism is like if you have never experienced it? It’s very difficult to imagine.”

When more people start raising their voices by saying no to this social illness, matters will begin to change.

Dan Koivulaakso, one of the three authors Äärioikesto Suomessa’s (Far right in Finland), asks on a Kymen Sanomat column why Eerola reacted the way he did concerning Jyväskyä.

The answer is simple: Intolerance and society’s indifference to the far right and racism help keep alive these political Frankensteins.

FIS: Somali family reunifications plummeted to just over 500 in 2012

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The number of Somali family reunification applications in 2012 plummeted to just over 500 application compared with 1,900 in the previous year and 3,900 in 2010, reports Helsingin Sanomat, citing the Finnish Immigration Service (FIS).

There were a total of 8,600 applications in 2012. The highest number were from were from citizens of the Russian Federation, followed by Thai and Somalis, according to Helsingin Sanomat.

The sharp drop in applications by Somalis is due to tightened laws. Application fees have soared as well.

A Somali resident in Finland, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Migrant Tales that matters started to get especially difficult from 2012.

“In 2011 there were still some who could bring their families,” the Somali said, “but in 2012 almost every application was turned down by the authorities.”

FIS reported earlier that at the end of 2011 there were a total of 6,100 family reunification application by Somalis. According to the Refugee Advice Center, only 329 family reunifications took place on average annually between 1999 and 2010.

Apart from the suffering of living separated from your loved ones indefinitely, what’s supposed to happen if separation is the price you must pay if you want to stay in Finland?

It’s natural that immigrant and refugees want to bring their families to their new homeland.

Finns that moved to the United States in the nineteenth century did the same. First came the relatives and later on the neighbors and friends.

University of Eastern Finland concerned over threats to their racism researchers

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Unions representing racism and multiculturalism researchers at the University of Eastern Finland, expressed concern Wednesday over the threats they are receiving, reports YLE in English.

In a joint statement, the unions said that such threats to its researchers should be a cause for concern, especially in a region where intolerance is on the rise.

“Our researchers into racism and multiculturalism have been subjected to threats,” said Antero Puhakka of the Negotiation Organization for Public Sector Professionals (JUKO). “Anonymous threatening letters have been posted to their homes and researchers have faced abuse on Facebook. Complaints regarding the activities of researchers and teachers have been filed with the vice-chancellor or to a higher authority.”

The JUPO representatives added that their must be zero tolerance for such harassment and intimidation.

We should never give in to racists, who have no regard for our democratic way of life and who believe they can intimidate people they disagree with. If we permit intimidation and fear to overtake our good judgement, the threat to ourselves and our society will become much worse.

Migrant Tales has been a target of death threats in the past and of harassment.

How far has the PS beachhead spread in twenty-two months?

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales wrote the following day after the historic April 17, 2011 election had sent shock waves throughout Finland and Europe: “Far-right populism is an illness inflicting Europe at present and it now has a beachhead in Finland.”

Back then, our blog got got cited by Time Magazine. The above quote was a response to PS chairman Timo Soini’s statement: “We [the PS] are not extremists so you can sleep safely.”

The rise of a large right-wing populist party with Counterjihadists could not have been possible without the complacency and silence of other political parties. The PS in its present state and size is a knee-jerk reaction to Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity, the euro crisis and political establishment.

Even if the PS claims to be an option to the way politics have been traditionally practiced in Finland, it’s a mirror of the other parties in their crudest form. In those traditional parties, like the PS, you’ll find many who are just as conservative, intolerant, oppose cultural diversity and see the outside world with manifest unease.

How far has that beachhead spread in twenty-two months?

There’s bad and good news. The bad news is that the PS will remain, at least for the time being, a player in Finnish politics that other parties will eye with distrust and unease. The good news is that it’s doubtful that the party will ever match its 2011 election result. That became clear in the presidential and municipal elections, which were disappointments for Soini and the party.

Another important wild card to hit the PS was mass-killer Anders Breivik.

The Nordic region was never the same for anti-immigration populist parties like the PS after Breivik erupted with his Counterjihadist crusade and started murdering in cold blood innocent people.

These factors, together with many the many scandals that have rocked the party in recent months, have undermined the PS if not permanently from ever becoming a credible party.

Even if Soini claims that the municipal election was a clear victory for the PS, it was anything but that if we compare it with their parliamentary election victory. Half of those that voted for the PS in April 2011 had ditched the party by October 2012.

While the PS has been a great source of scoops for Finland’s yellow press, it must be a disappointment for some of its supporters. What has it accomplished in parliament except for poisoning the air with its Finnish teaparty populism?

Even if the PS appears to have suffered unconvincing election setbacks in the presidential and municipal elections, the party is on a collision course with itself as well.

Right after the municipal elections of October 28, Soini announced that the PS will become the biggest party in Finland in the EU parliamentary elections of 2014.

Making such promises and having to eat your words will not help the PS but deepen its problems.

A party that cannot root out its racists, fascists and political opportunists can never lead a good country like Finland, unless we wish to destroy what we’ve worked so hard to build.

See also Finland election: A perilous watershed.

Oulu city councillor and transsexual attacked

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Green Party Oulu city councillor, Janne Hakkarainen, was attacked and beaten over the weekend while accompanying a transexual, reports Oulu-based daily Kaleva. Hakkarainen said that three men attacked them in a park after he accompanied his friend home from a bar after 4:30am.

Fortunately a person spotted what was happening and forced the attackers to stop and flee the scene.

Hakkarainen and his friend suffered bruises and contusions to the head and arms. Police are investigating the incident.

About two weeks ago, a group of neo-Nazi thugs attacked a book presentation in Jyväskylä. The attack was seen as an infringement against freedom of speech and the right to assembly.

An attack on any minority should be seen as an attack against all minorities.

Helsinki’s and Greater Helsinki’s immigrant population to rise by over 131% in 20 years

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Migrant Tales

A forecast that will be published Monday by Statistics Finland sees the immigrant population of Helsinki and its surroundings rising by over 131% in two decades to around 300,000 from 130,000, reports YLE in English, citing Swedish-language daily Hufvustadsbladet.

Writes Yle in English: “Most non-Finnish speakers come to Finland and the Helsinki region from Africa and the Middle East. The forecast indicates most of them reside in Helsinki. Those arriving from Asia tend to move into Espoo while those from Russia prefer to live in Vantaa.”

If the population of Helsinki and surroundings will rise in the next twenty years, Finland’s total immigrant population will see strong growth as well from the present 257,248 persons (4.8% of the population). Helsinki has the highest share of immigrants today (11.8%), followed by Vantaa (11.2%) and Espoo (10.5%).

If these forecasts are reliable, Finland will be a very different country this century when compared with the last, when it was predominantly white.

As more immigrants move to Finland, it’ll be harder to deny these newcomers and their children their rights and their neighborhoods.

If we compare the over 1.2 million Finns that emigrated from this country between 1860 and 1999, some of them even founded ethnic colonies in countries like Argentina.

Finland’s past and even present attitude of cultural diversity isn’t anything to write home about. When Vietnamese boat people came as quota refugees to Finland in the 1980s, the official policy was to pepper them throughout Finland to make sure that they’d integrate and not form ethnic neighborhoods.

This was a dreadful mistake. Assimilation (one-way integration) doesn’t work unless it’s the aim of the majority culture to divide and conquer different ethnic groups.

A very worrying sign, however, is how some Finns want to deny cultural diversity its rightful place and recognition in society by placing caps on how man children with immigrant backgrounds can attend a schoolroom.

Finland is today an ever-growing culturally diverse society.

That’s a fact. No matter how much some wish to still cover their eyes and deny it.

City of Joensuu: Challenging and beating intolerance one step at a time

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Our reaction to intolerance in Finland has paid off. At least it did for me late-Friday night in downtown Joensuu when I was about to parallel park my car.

Thanks to associations like JoMoni working in close cooperation with local authorities like ELY-keskus, Joensuu have challenged intolerance. In many respects, it’s like the success of the North Karelian cardiovascular disease project of the 1960s and 1970s. Source: City of Joensuu.

A young man holding two beer cans, who was standing next to a parked car with his friends, wouldn’t move when I asked him to. He just stared back and started laughing.

He eventually moved to the side. That’s when he yelled: ”Damn n-word.”

I got out of my car and asked him what he called me.

”Nothing,” he responded.

While this situation may appear insignificant, it was an encouraging example of how hard work and countless anti-racism campaigns in Joensuu have changed matters.

The young man and his friends probably knew that they could get into hot water with the law if they continued to provoke me with their racist remarks. This was Joensuu 2013, not the 1990s.

The North Karelian city used to be a hotbed of skinhead activity and racism in the 1990s. Back then, a black basketball player of the local Kataja team was beaten up and moved back to the United States.

The message of those who play down racism, and thereby embolden this social ill, is clear: We’re too powerful, too strong for you to confront.

Wrong: You are being challenged. We will send you back to where you came from.

PS MP Hirvisaari goes off the wall as Finnish appeals court upholds Van Wonterghem’s hate speech sentence

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The Finnish appeals court announced Wednesday that it has upheld a district court decision to fine Perussuomalaiset (PS) Kotka city councillor Freddy van Wonterghem for inciting ethnic hatred.

While Van Wonterghem is a small fry in the anti-immigration party, far-right PS MP James Hirvisaari blew his stack by slamming the appeals court decision on his Facebook page as “sick, sick.”

“The Kouvola appeals court would end up under sea but it’s lucky that it will even be transferred to Kuopio,” Hirvisaari wrote. “So lawyers are in favor of whipping to death a raped girl. There’s no other way that [van Wonterghem’s] sentence can be understood.”

It is surprising that Hirvisaari and van Wonterghem, who have built their political careers on spreading hate speech, are now upset that it’s legal pay-back time. Without the PS party, social media and Hirvisaari’s hate speech, it’s doubtful that this railroad engineer would have ever been elected to parliament.

Van Wonterghem commented on a blog entry written by Migrant Tales that he had no regrets about what he wrote in the summer of 2011. He said that if a Muslim girl would die it was a good matter since it would be one less woman giving birth to a member of that religious group.

Hirvisaari, who belongs to the legal committee of parliament, said on Uusi Suomi that deputy state prosecutor Jorma Kalske and state prosecutor Mika Illman were “politically corrupt.”

Kalske laughed off Hirvisaari’s claim.

“I can’t remember during my 40-year career of ever hearing an MP that is a member of the legal committee using this type of langauge against the judicial authorities,” he said.

The chairman of the legal committee, Anne Holmlund of the National Coalition Party, doesn’t consider it appropriate for a member of the legal committee or MP to criticize Finland’s legal system in the way that Hirvisaari does.

PS MP James Hirvisaari and his Nazi-SS YouTube video

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari has been caught once again with his hand in the extremist cookie jar. Lahti-based Etelä-Suomen Sanomat reports that Hirvisaari had uploaded a Nazi video years ago that glorifies the SS.

Hirvisaari uploaded the video as ”allamarcia” but it was originally published by kingtiger88 in March 2007.

The video, which shows SS officers and tanks, plays Rammstein’s song, Sonne (Sun).

Etelä-Suomen Sanomat got in touch with Hirvisaari about the video clip. He sent the following SMS message:

”Many years ago through that Nazi video I got know this great band Rammstein. Thus there is no reason to draw any questionable conclusions since there are no war or Nazi sympathies on my part. It must, therefore, simply be seen just as a heavy metal music video.”

These are the words of an MP convicted for inciting ethnic hatred and who, with his far-right ideology, believes he can make up and rewrite history to fit his myopic worldview.

Taking into account the atrocities the SS committed in World War 2, it isn’t surprising that Hirvisaari could get a kick out of watching these types of videos.