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Turning naivety on Finland into action

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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 not a Finn.

Even though I had a Finnish mother and had spent most of my childhood and adolescent summers in the country with my grandparents, I was treated by the law like a foreigner with no rights. The first residence permit I got was for three months, then it was extended for six and later on for two years.

The treatment I got from the authorities, and those that were enforcing it at the Aliens’ Office, forced my naivety of Finland to vanish rapidly. A woman who worked at the Aliens’ Office once snapped at me, when I protested at the unfair treatment I was getting.

“You’re not a Finn!” she said, adding I had no bonds to the culture!

Certainly I wasn’t a Finn, officially, but that’s not how I felt.

Who is a Finn anyway? Who decides? Is it a passport? Language? What about if you’re deaf? Is it culture? Or does it boil down to a deep-rooted feeling of “where one feels he is from?”

Many challenges await Finland as we race deeper into the 21st century. One of the greatest of these is learning how to accept others from different backgrounds and use their synergies to strengthen and forge our sense of Finnish identity.

There is ample room for people from other national backgrounds to live in Finland and be accepted and encouraged to feel that they are a part of a noble project we call Finland. In this country of the future, Finland will prosper.

Some reasons behind Finland’s strong anti-immigrant stance

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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 go around in circles and stop those most critical Finns on immigration to see the other side of the issue.

One of the reasons, which is rarely looked at more deeply, is Finland’s suspicion of Russians. While there are a lot of reasons that justify such a stance, it keeps our view on things very limited. It confines us in a small town were some of us only have the ability to see 50km or 100km from where we live.

Some of us still do not believe the Continuation War (1941-44) ended close to 64 years ago and our “special relationship” with the former Soviet Union finished in the early 1990s.

Let me get to the point:

1) The reason why the number of foreigners dwindled after the Second World War was because of our relationship with the USSR. We did not have a refugee policy because asylum-seekers from the Soviet Union were supposed to be returned to Russian authorities with no respect for their human rights.

2) Finland was in constant threat, and extremely concerned, by the influence and threat the Soviet Union posed. Finland could not become a haven – like Germany – for anti-Soviet propaganda. Accepting refugees from the USSR would have put Finland’s independence in jeopardy.

3) If we look at our stance towards outsiders, I believe it stems a lot from our difficult relationship with the Soviet Union. Some despise Russians so much that we do not even want to buy ceded territories like Karelia because that would imply taking in a large Russian-speaking minority.

4) A good example of this fear and suspicion is that we have scores of contingency plans for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of Russians overrunning Finland. There are many examples of poorer countries living next to richer ones where such fears are not an issue.See Mexico versus the United States, Bolivia versus Argentina, Indonesia versus Australia…

5) Could it be that we are still building a national identity after 1917 that has as its mentors the threats of the last century? Are the police and civil servants responsible for handling immigrant affairs still living in the in the cold war era? Where they junior civil servants back then and now are in senior positions?

Conclusion: We need a totally new way of seeing Finnish culture, where one of its main pillars will be a more open society to outsiders. It will be a culture that does not see the world through myopic eyes but through very open ones. A society were racism has very little space to breed and grow. A country where everyone can grow and live in dignity.

When in Finland do as the Finns do…

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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 own cultural values and taking on ours completely. This argument comes up in comments to Migrant Tales and in many other online and offline debates on immigration and integration policy.”

While there are many Finns such as Svenskfinland who think differently, I would like to ask those who believe this form of “integration or bust” to tell me how it works. How do you integrate non-Finns to become 100% Finns and throw away their culture(s)?

I wonder what my late father would say about so-called 100% integration? He never learned to speak English well not because he did not want to, but because he did not agree with many US values. Not speaking flawless English was his way of protesting against other values. Have you ever wondered why Blacks, Mexicans, Finns, Italians speak a foreign language differently in a foreign country? Possibly it is a way to identify with a certain national group.

I’m also thinking of the hundreds of thousands of first-generation Finns that moved to the Americas. I remember in my own study on the Finns of Argentina, where there were first- and even second-generation Finns who had lived almost all their lives in Argentina but never learned to speak Spanish like the majority culture.

A question: Why do some think that it is OK for a foreigner to give up his culture but consider it “high treason” if that Finn living abroad threw away his culture? Why hasn’t Finland done away with the Saami, Swedish-speaking Finns and other groups?

The answer: My father grew up in the United States and educated himself by going to university WITHOUT giving up his culture and values. The United States gave him an opportunity and he made the best of it. Southern Californian society was also tolerant enough of people who came from different cultural and national backgrounds.

The argument that foreigners should give up their cultures to become Finns is preposterous. It would never worked and is doomed to failure. It is the answer to a segregated society full of complex rules of exclusion and inclusion.

What IS an effective way of integrating people? In my opinion, you cannot force integrating anyone. But one can inspire others to integrate, if they want.

If a society expresses outright suspicion, hostility and places a bunch of impossible so-called “integration” tests on its new inhabitants, it will have very few people wanting to become a part of it.  Immigrants are people and, like the inhabitants of the host country, work to help create economic growth.

Towards an effective immigration policy in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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 and for all that Finland needs foreigners.

2) Accept that foreigners are a POSITIVE matter for Finnish society. Finnish culture — like the cultures the foreigners represent as well — will benefit and grow by living in the same country in a society that has become a beacon of hope for many down-trodden countries. The success — not the marginalization — of a foreigner will benefit Finland.

3) Some Finns’ views that integration is a one-way street is the surest way to create a society of insiders and outsiders. This will undermine Finland. Finnish culture and society has the means to inspire other national groups to take part in it.

4) As a result of the foreigners and especially their children and grandchildren, Finnish culture will enrich itself as a result. It will become stronger.

5) Foreigners, like Finns, have to be given opportunities to grow and develop. Like Martin Luther King said: a person should be weighed by his character NOT by his skin color. Like Finns, foreigners have the ability to bring new ideas. New ideas work if they are effective and successful.

6) Since the above-mentioned factors are in short supply these days — albeit changing slowly — there has to be a totally different view and attitude to the mindset. Without them we will fail miserably.

Finnish immigration policy is lost in time

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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 16th century, in France it is accepting that French culture has been relegated to a second-class global status, in Argentina it is being an animal rights advocate and in Germany it is exposing in great detail the crimes committed against the Jews and other nationalities during the Nazi regime.

What is Finland’s vulnerable nerve? In my opinion it is having a totally new look at Russia and immigration in general. Specifically, seeing these two latter matters as an opportunity – not as a gas pump to feed one’s nationalism and an opportunity to exploit to the maximum.

Those who know little about Finland will usually claim that the country has been hardened by its uneasy relationship with its giant eastern neighbor Russia. Three terrible wars (Civil, Winter and Continuation) shaped how some Finns saw the outside world. Basically it was seen as a threat compared with being an opportunity.

If anything, Finnish immigration policy, especially after the Second World War, reflects this attitude. Imagine, if the “white” Russians have caused so much harm to Finland, what kind of a unknown threat would other cultures pose on the country? Finland’s attitude towards outsiders had also been expressed in its antiquated foreign investment laws that prohibited foreigners from owning stakes in key industries such a forestry, own land etc. The law, which came into force in 1939, was only thrown into the trashcan of history after Finland became a EU member in 1995.

Even though I have a lot of hope that matters will eventually change for the better in Finland, I’m not holding my breath. Many of the policy makers who are now drafting Finland’s immigration and multicultural policy grew up during the cold war era, when Finland walked a very thin geopolitical line. Another factor that has kept Finland’s immigration policy lost in time is that it is guided mostly by nationalist emotions. How many foreigners or sons of foreigners wield enough power in Finland to influence such decisions? Very few – if none. The situation is a bit like being a white racially ignorant social worker from Alabama offering advice to Blacks in Harlem. The best people to help such Blacks are the Blacks from Harlem.

To conclude, Finland’s stance and policy on immigration is like the internationalization that Finnish companies underwent in the 1980s. They became “international” companies but had few if any non-Finns working for them.

In memory of Eila Kännö

Posted on by Migrant Tales

For those of you who had the opportunity to move to Finland in the 1970s or early 1980s, will certainly remember Eila Kännö, the head of the then-Aliens’ Office. Has anyone counted how many times the name of the immigration office has changed since the 1970s? I have lost track.

She was the epitome of keeping Finland “clean” of foreigners.  Kari, the late Helsingin Sanomat cartoonist, who was well known for his stance against immigrants in Finland, did a cartoon of Kännö.  She was depicted as a doorwoman standing guard in front of hordes or inhuman-looking foreigners attempting to enter the country. Helsingin Sanomat compared her style of rule with Benito Mussolini’s.

But her hard-line stance was her downfall. Kännö had threatened in an evening paper to throw the foreigners, who had staged the biggest demonstration ever in the early 1980s demanding greater rights, into jail because it was illegal for a non-Finn to organize a demonstration. There was a loophole: The Helsinki University Union student body organized the demonstration.

That demonstration was what probably brought Kännö down. The more hostile and reticent the Aliens’ Office became the more of a liability she became.  It’s incredible that some Finns and well-known journalists like Pekka Karhuvaara approved of her tough autocratic style.

One of the favorite arguments used by police authorities back then why Finland had to keep outsiders from living in Finland was because they were “potential criminals.” Incredulous, no?

We should never forget this bleak period and more should be written about it. Not for revenge but that such policy mistakes never occur again.

The future human landscape of Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

While we can debate how many foreigners will come to live in Finland in the next decade and if they’ll come to live in the country, what will Finland’s human landscape look like in the next and following decades as the country become more multicultural?

By multicultural I am referring to Canada’s novel immigrant policy whereby everyone is equal – regardless of color, national and religious background – in the job market and has the right to maintain and practice their culture.

One interesting matter that worries me about the whole debate of foreigners in Finland is that it is very one-sided. We rarely pose the following question: How receptive of a society are we to outsiders? Does Finnish society have the ability to accept people from different backgrounds as full members of society?

Or does Finland want to follow the questionable path of some countries like France and the US, where unskilled labor is exploited to the maximum?

So what will the future human landscape of Finland look like? If we are able to attract enough foreigners to live and work in our country, it will mean a lot of changed to how we define and  perceive  Finnish culture. There  will be the majority culture and the so-called minority cultures which,  like subcultures, will have their own distinctive identity in Finnish culture. These new members of our society will speak differently the Finnish and/or Swedish language not because they do not know the language well enough, but because they want to develop their own Finnish identity through language and culture.

“It paid to be Alfredo Stroessner’s son”*

Posted on by Migrant Tales

María Eugenia Heikel, 57, the former wife of the late Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner’s son Gustavo, is just one victim of the ruthless regime that ruled one of Latin America’s poorest countries for 35 years. (Click to see Spanish version of the article in El País of Madrid).

Even though the Stroessners fled the country 19 years ago in 1989, neither Alfredo nor Gustavo Stroessner have been brought before a Paraguayan court for human rights violations and amassing huge fortune estimated at somewhere between two and three billion dollars through a well-organized network of coercion and corruption.

But all this may change after April’s presidential elections, when 56-year-old cleric Fernando Lugo caused a political earthquake by ending Colorado Party rule after 61 years. Edgar Ruiz Diaz, a journalist who works at ABC Color, Paraguay’s leading daily, has been investigating the Stroessners for a long time. “Even though the Stroessners fled the country in 1989, the system [of cronyism and corruption] they left behind is still intact,” he said, adding that the main reason why Paraguay’s former rulers have not been brought to justice is because the judges are Stroessneristas.

Heikel, who is the daughter of Finnish immigrants that settled the country in the 1920s, told this journalist 10 years ago that her former husband had amassed a fortune between “$300 and $500 million” that was deposited in US and Swiss banks. Today, she’s not that certain any longer. “The investigation into his finances was halted,” she says. “I cannot confirm how much money he has abroad.”

How is it possible that a Paraguayan air force colonel can amass such a fortune? Heikel said that apart from the insurance and construction companies that her husband ran, he received a percentage of the profits that casinos and bingo establishments made. “It paid to be the president’s son,” she said a decade ago.

Heikel’s problems with her former husband started when the family fled to Brasilia after a 1989 coup. “Gustavo was the most affected by living in exile,” she says. “He changed and started to pray all day and would not even give me money to buy a Coke. He was not well. People who know him tell me that he has not changed.”

Heikel explains that in 1993, when she left for Rio de Janeiro to take part in an equestrian competition,
she made the decision never to return to her husband’s side. “It was a very difficult moment in my life because I had lost everything,” she said. Heikel said that her ex-husband’s reaction to abandon and leave her penniless was “cowardly.”

While in Rio de Janeiro, Gustavo Stroessner spread false accusations about Heikel. She states that her former husband had channeled these lies through his sister-in-law Marta Rodríguez, who was married to “Alfredito” Stroessner before Gustavo’s brother died of a drug overdose at the age of 50. “Nothing was ever proven [when I returned to Paraguay in 1998] and neither did I steal anything from anyone,” Heikel says.

“When I lived in Rio, I feared for my life and was always very careful about my movements [in public].” In Paraguay, Heikel waged a tireless legal and media battle against her husband. She even exposed sensitive information about her husband in the Paraguayan media. She said, however, that an agreement was reached in 2002 with Gustavo Stroessner over compensation. Heikel did not reveal the sum but denied she was a millionaire. “I can now live without worries,” she said. Even if Gustavo Stroessner was seen as the heir -apparent to succeed his father, Heikel stated that Alfred Stroessner was against him becoming president. “He never wanted to be president,” she says. “I told him not to get involved in politics.”

Heikel claims that Stroessner’s harsh rule in Paraguay was due to communism. “We were fighting against communism,” she concludes. “We did not have the same problems as Uruguay and Chile [in the 1970s].”

*The article appeared in the June 4th issue of IHT’s El País edition.

How immigrant-friendly is Finland?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

If we look at the unemployment figures (20% jobless among foreigners) and the motives of non-Finns that moved to this country according to their residence permit applications, we are still faraway from being an immigrant-friendly country.

According to the Finnish Immigration Service, last year 6,196 (32%) residence permit applications were for employment followed for studies 3,980 (20%) and other reasons such as specialists, researchers, athletes (16%). Most of the residence applications were for studying and family ties based on marriage and children (5,464/23%).

Add both of the latter groups and it reaches 43%!

The total number of foreigners that applied for residence permits in 2007 stood at 19,216, up 33.3% compared with 14,420 in the previous year. Of the above-mentioned amount, the Finnish Immigration Service rejected 2,015 applications versus 1,633, respectively.

Even though the Finnish foreign population has been growing since the mid-1990s, when it became a EU member, Finland is not a paradise for foreigners who are seeking employment. Even so, matters can change. At the present rate, however, things are changing very slowly.

My controversial documentary on Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

If I had access to a generous amount of financing and got the chance to do a documentary film on Finland, what would be the first images I would show you?

I would not start with a long and slow scene of dragonflies and insects dancing in the summer air above a pristine lake hugged by towering spruces, birches, firs and a few mountain ashes peppered here and there.

Wrong again. It wouldn’t be a full-bloom sunset radiating warmth in early spring, even if it is freezing outside. Nope, I wouldn’t attempt to picture how the full moon emits soft light as a soft pillow to lay your deepest thoughts inside a near-still autumn forest.

No, the documentary wouldn’t kick off with a scene showing modern architecture and of quiet and obedient buildings lined up in cities like Helsinki, Turku or Oulu. I wouldn’t even consider picturing a famous landmark like Finlandia Hall, or the paper mills of Tampere, which must have inspired the late Väinö Linna, the author of the Unknown Soldier.

The documentary would definitely not start with the rude rumbles of war and of scenes showing Karelian refugees abandoning their homes behind them – but not their dreams.

Definitely not: I wouldn’t start by asking an obvious question to President Tarja Halonen such as, “what would you like to tell the viewers,” never mind get into a heated debate with Finland’s last cold war President Mauno Koivisto. Forget Carl Mannerheim, Risto Ryti and Juho Paasikivi as well.

Possibly the documentary could kick off sportsmen like Paavo Nurmi, Lasse Viren, Mikko Ala-Leppilampi or maybe it is not such a good idea after all. What about Jean Sibelius? Mika Kaurismäki? Eeva Kilpi? Mika Waltari? Aino Kallas? Minna Canth? Lordi? What about a group of Finnish folk dancers entertaining a large crowd of Canadian Finns in Thunder Bay? No, no – and NO!

First scene

After the opening credits, the first image you would see is a truck transporting cut logs to a paper mill. As the forest industry got more efficient and produced more money for their owners such as the state, Finland didn’t become richer – but poorer.

Those old-growth forests that were once so abundant 50 years ago, are today like rare tropical islands in the Pacific untouched by mankind and womankind. Forests that are in their natural state, or close to it, cover 1.1 million hectares, or only 5.5% of forestland in Finland. Only 0.4 million hectares (2% of the land) have been protected.

Forest companies have devised new catchwords to justify the devastation they reap: metsätalous, which means in general terms felling your forest so it will generate the greatest economic wealth at the cost of biodiversity.

What about if you don’t want the woods to look like enormous planted fields, where trees grow like wheat or other cash crops? What about if you long to walk in forests that has free will and can decide for itself how it will grow, and die?

In the future, I fear our grandchildren and great grandchildren will have to visit “nature zoos” in order to see how natural forests once looked like.

The next scene would depict how global warming is challenging our country and way of life. It’s December 23 and the camera is focused on a thermometer outdoors: At 10am it’s 2C, but at 2pm the temperature soars to 17C, and finally rests at 35C at 4pm!

OK, so I’m exaggerating a bit, but temperatures have been steadily rising in Finland, increasing by 0.7°C (33.26F) since the previous century. By 2025, they are expected to rise by 2°C (35.6F), and during 2030-80 by as much as 4-6°C (39.2F-42.8F), according to a study by Finland’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

Of course these are very tentative predictions. By the time we get to 2025 or even sooner, we may notice that matters are in much worse shape than we expected.

Even though Finland will be hard-pressed by such challenges, our traditional way of life is being undermined by “global warming,” which is forcing us to change our lifestyles.

One of the greatest threats to the soul of this nation – and that of many others as well – are the negative matters that globalization such as excessive greed. Thirty years ago, Finland was another country with different values that didn’t always revolve around the size of your wallet.

So add to this the lethal variable of global warming and our destruction of our forests coupled with our insatiable desire to accumulate more wealth and comfort, and it is pretty clear to understand what is wrong with us.

Hopefully, when it is still not too late, we can look deep behind into time and rescue bits and pieces of where our ancestors and culture came from to rebuild a more lasting society – and world.

Dear reader, as you can see, I would have totally misled you about what Finland is if I’d only talk about the things I omitted at the beginning of the column.

In my opinion, the greatest challenge to our country is the destruction to our environment and biodiversity as well as our way of life.

So help us save Finland – and let’s not forget our planet as well.

Note: This column was published in Suomen Silta magazine.