Think of it. Finland’s largest daily, Helsingin Sanomat, publishes a story if the country’s deportation. system is broken. For the story, the daily uses as sources well-known xenophobie Joakim Vigelius of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, Social Democrat MP Eveliina Heinäluoma, who has a wishy-washy stance on migrants, and National Coalition Party MP Heikki Vestman, who justified as chairperson of the constitutional committee the shelving of Finland’s human rights obligations on the passage of the pushback law.
The migration debate in Finland seems very much like the lack of pushback against President Donald Trump by republican legislators. In Finland, we consider migrants, especially Muslim asylum seekers as a threat. We do not give such people the benefit of doubt.
The article is highly revealing exposing what Helsingin Sanomat thinks of undocumented migrants which it slaps on the “illegal” label.
Vigelius, who like Vestman to trash international agreements, said that the present asylum system is based on “outdated” international human rights conventions and that these should change.
Source: Helsingin Sanomat
‘It cannot be right that even after ten years and ten rejected applications, an asylum seeker is still residing in Finland,” he pointed out.
Apart from using MPs who would care less about undocumented migrants, a big shortfall of the article is that is does not care to mention the suffering present laws cause on such people. Migrant Tales has documented many such cases.
The Ulysses Syndrome is a chronic disorder and helps understand the trauma suffered by undocumented migrants.
In another article by Helsingin Sanomat the following day that interviews Left Alliance MP Anna Kontula, who raised matters that were sidestepped in the arricle.
Kontula considers a bigger problem how even small children may be held in detention for long periods of time while awaiting deportation with their parents.
“It is absurd that people have built family ties or found jobs while here, only to be deported if they originally submitted their application on grounds that are no longer valid in their current situation,” she said.
Moreover, it should be pointed out that the ongong cultural war and the rise of the far right in European politics use migrant-bashing to prop up their election prospects. We do this even if our societies are graying.
Another matter that the Helsingin Sanomat article should have shed light is on how law, which the three MPs believe must be drafted to make deportations easier, how they have contributed to the problem.
Thanks to the 107 MPs that voted on April 13, 2016, to approve law 2/2016 that did away with granting residence permits on humanitarian grounds, Finland faces today an unprecedented rise of undocumented migrants, which rose from a few hundred to thousands.
Go to this link to see who voted in favor of scrapping residence permits on humanitarian grounds.
We return to a question: Is it a crime to flee a failed state like Iraq embroiled in violence and search for a better life in Europe? Isn’t that what migrants and asylum seekers have always done?
