Deportation is one of the cruelest matters about migration.
Another deportation ruling hangs over an Iraqi family of five who has lived in Finland for ten years. Tragic is the fate of the children, aged 16, 14 and 7 years, who don’t read and write in Arabic and remember their parents’ former home country through tales and online meetings with their grandmother.
The deportation order was given on 7 January and can happen at any moment.
“We came in 2015 to Finland and our journey lasted 13 days from Iraq,” said the father with evident concern about their future. “My wife is sick and needs to be operated.”
Their eldest daughter, who is 16 years old and is a ninth grader, speaks perfect Finnish and saw the deportation order of her family as “an injustice.”
The family has received 10 rejections for asylum from the Finnish Immigration Service.
She does not remember the long trip from Iraq to Finland but remembered that Turkey was a beautiful country and that she slept a lot during the journey. “The four-hour trip on a [rubber] dinghy from Izmir [Turkey] to the [Greek] island of Lesvos was scary,” she continued. “We the children sat in the middle and the men on the side so nobody would fall overboard.”
The family’s future looks uncertain in Iraq.
“I don’t believe that Iraq is a good country,” the daughter continued. “Iraq has suffered from wars, people are mean and life is difficult. I will not be able to succeed at school because I do not know how to read or write in Arabic even if I speak the language.”
Despite all the uncertainty and hardship that the family has endured in Finland, the father said that he did not hold any grudges on Finland.
“We are still hopeful that we may stay in Finland,” he concluded.