The scandal facing elderly care homes under the management of stock-listed companies such as Attendo, Esperi Care and Mehiläinen points to one issue: lack of effective regulation. Why are Filipino employees at these establishments exploited? The answer: lack of effective regulation.
Even if you file charges to the police about exploitation at work, hate crime, or racist harassment, such cases may take months before they ever see a courtroom. Add to the latter the lack of effective regulation, and gravity of the problem becomes clear.
While this is sadly the case, the question we should ask is why we allow this to go on? Why is there so little political will and interest as well as lack of resources to correct the situation? The answer: These types of attitudes serve to reinforce and maintain the pillars of institutional racism.
Instead of protecting migrant workers’ rights in Finland, we divert our attention from such abuses by another racist debate about how migrants are criminals and abuse social welfare. A good example of the latter was an empty interview on TV with Perussuomalaiset Chairperson Jussi Halla-aho.
Halla-aho spewed his usual racist comments while the reporter, Kirsi Heikel, bowed submissively.
Read the full story (in Finnish) here
Even the Oulu sexual assault cases beg a sensible question of the police and social workers: Did they do their jobs? Lack of effective regulation? Is it easier to pin the blame on asylum seekers?
It all boils down to denial and lack of effective regulation.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. Despite the name changes, we believe that it is the same party in different clothing. Both factions are hostile to cultural diversity never mind Muslims and other visible minorities. One is more open about it while the other says it in a different way.
A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.