By Dana
If u stab a good human’s spirit ur spirit will end up being fed to the demonsA country that has a social system but no social system at all, u think and u go nowhere.
A country that strikes out social habits, minds, people, ideas, speech and thoughts; the term social is a strange one because being alone is perfectly fine, the best choice.
Don’t be shocked by a country on this Earth, but it’s true: even if dreams rise from the earth, give them up, it’s only a dream; remember u can’t do that here.
Hate has an extensive market in a country where love is worthless, a country that tries to put you down and tells you that u r nothing.
A country that is proud, but about what??? No/one knows, it’s a secret. Oh ha ha ha ha , ho ho ho ha HA!
Warning: Finland up ahead. Source: 123RF.
U be careful and don’t lose ur happiness when u come to Finland, don’t lose it, make sure you save it for urself because you’ll need a lot of it, almost in all of ur moments here. We all know that happiness resides in u and u can’t buy it from shops and stores. U should build it in ur heart and cells and allow it to expand in ur veins, but a warning: Finland is a country against your happiness.
In Finland, u don’t fit in anywhere because nowhere doesn’t have the power to accept u.
In Finland, the police and the law are the holy book, the supreme moral power
If the police beat u in front of others, those that watch will do so apathetically; even ur friends will tell u that’s normal in these parts,
So tell me what’s all this talk about respect for women? Nothing, really. Not even a gram of importance.
The courts will support the police and they will dance a dirty dance with them with the help of words and ur time; they will force u to obey the law and tell u, ”sorry that’s not possible, there is nothing you can do or say because the police are Holy.”
Oh yes, true, holy mixed with the rude stench of crime, and many other kinds of smells that hide from our noses; u can even scent those bad thoughts in bad people when u are in contact with them. Sometimes u don’t need any contact with these people because you can sense their sick minds on TV, the media, newspapers. Nobody can hide from them.
U r now foreigner in these parts, that’s a mark on ur forehead, that’s a good reason for everything and everyone to be against u; actually everyone has a right to be against u because u don’t belong here in the first place, but hey, who said the Finns did?
They came to this land a long time ago before I was born. Did I break some law for coming here?? Fine, you came to this land before me, but that doesn’t matter even if you are ten years my senior.
Ur age has no bearing inside the circle of time, because sooner or later we’ll die and leave this life.
Ignorant words from someone who clearly hasn’t been abroad very much. Be a black man in Hong Kong or Japan or South Korea and see how well people treat you there (sarcasm). Or be a white man in South Africa. If living in Finland is so revolting, there are always other options…
–If living in Finland is so revolting, there are always other options…
Why is it so hard for you to accept other people’s opinions? I don’t see any racism here but a person expressing herself, which is a good and healthy thing.
FH
Please explain how those other options solve the problem of living in Finland or admit that your argument was empty rhetoric.
An equivalent view of road safety is that if a road is dangerous, then you should choose another route. How does that make the road any safer?
It’s not hard for me to accept other people’s opinions.
I just find it weird. I have an afrikaner background and when the apartheid ended in South Africa (thank god), my parents, who always spoke against apartheid, received so much threats and racial slurs that we had to move. I was still young then and didn’t fully understand the situation. My parent’s didn’t want to stay there, but they never asked any pity or whined about the situation; they took action and moved somewhere where they can start again.
Frank, there are many options one can take. One of them is moving out. But just because a person doesn’t feel good in a country shouldn’t mean that he or she should leave. It’s good to air differences because we can learn from them. More importantly, the person who expresses these grieivneces can learn something from them.
In other words, if a person feels excluded from society, it’s a tragedy in many ways. I would rather prefer that that person would speak out than stay cooped up in a corner with his or her thoughts.
FH
In other words, you were refugees. Our more rabid contributors would call your parents welfare shoppers and argue that you should have moved to Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe or somewhere closer.
I have to disagree with Dana on this one. We’ll know some Finns are xenophobic and socially aukward when it comes socializing with vicible immigrants but your text is abit too harsh to Finns, we’re after all living in Finns land and we should not respond hate with hate but love, we should show example to Finns that we’re humanbeings just like them, the only difference between native Finns and us is only cosmetic, we should show them exceptance but we should hate Finns because of the racist ones. I myself ive been treated very cruely by some Finns, ive been attacked, racially abused and it made me an actavist to be against racism but i don’t hate all Finns for the wrongdoings of those racist ones who did me wrong.
What I have learned in Finland is that people who learn the language and get a job are mostly welcome in here.
We weren’t refugees per se, because my father luckily got a job offer from here. But when we arrived in Finland, my parents put me to school and they learned the language. Never needed any social welfare and at the end it wasn’t so hard to live a new life here considering the fact that South African culture is very different from Finnish.
FH
Mostly? Let’s put up a sign in the shop, shall we? Our customers mostly receive friendly, efficient service.
By this reasoning Albert Einstein and other prominent Jewish émigrés from Germany in the 1930s were not refugees. The fact that your family had certain skills and a sackful of Krugerrands does not exempt them from refugeehood when you already stressed that they moved because of a perception of persecution.
Your story already includes enough detail to indicate that this migration occurred after the Finnish Aliens Act was amended to classify migrant workers as at least potentially permanent immigrants. Early 1999 would be my best guess, and if I am right, then ask your parents whether there was ever any uncertainty about their right to remain permanently in Finland. I guarantee that there was. Ask them about status B1 and status A2.
There was a choice in the matter? How old were you?
So they sent the child benefit back, never set foot in a health centre or dental surgery, arranged entirely private solid waste management and sewerage, put you in an entirely privately funded school (there are no such schools in Finland for children of school age) and otherwise avoided all publicly financed services?
I don’t think so.
I would like to know why is it so hard to live here? Is it continuous persecution? Random violence? If so, those are clearly something that police should investigate immeaditly.
Or is it one thing that has left her bitter?
I have many non-native friends in Finland. Couple of them have faced violence or ethnic slurs but those are very random and rare occurrences, but it seems this Dana clashes with the locals again and again. Why? I’m NOT saying that it’s her fault or anything, but remember that it always takes two to tango…
FH
An interesting line of questioning and conclusion coming from someone who entered this thread by accusing the author of ignorance.
How many of your “non-native friends” are working in occupations for which they were trained, and how many have progressed as far and as rapidly in those occupations as their qualifications would normally warrant?
I’m NOT saying that you are prejudiced or anything, but someone thinks that it’s OK to blame the victim based on no evidence whatsoever.
All I wanted is an answer and you didn’t answer to that. You think we should not question something only because someone says they don’t like to live here. Wow! That’s very constructive. It’s not ignorant to ask what’s the reason.
Actually all of them. One is a police, couple of them are entrepreneurs and the rest work in an international corporations. None of them complains which is interesting…
So you think that world is always black and white? That one is always good and one is evil. You still didn’t answer to my question. Why is it so hard to someone to live here while some don’t seem to have any problem at all. And don’t bring me any skin colour BS – many of my friends are black. The world is only as good as you want it to be.
And what are planning to do with this kind of situation? So now you think we should respect everyone as individuals and not as a representative of his background, but when someone from minority treats someone from majority badly and racist that’s not clearly and issue because you dont’t even wanna see that victim as an individual.
Nazi card and your point was?
Your point?
My parent were never unemployed, didn’t ask any support from KELA or any other place. They worked and payed taxes like everyone should. Their taxes partially paid my education. So if you try to say that we are the same as all welfare shoppers you are sorely mistaken. Are you accusing every immigrant the same way?
FH
It is quite evident that your background has affected your attitudes more profoundly than you realise. Your parents always spoke against apartheid, so how come they didn’t wind up on the same list as Bram Fischer, Beyers Naude, Ingrid Jonker, Andre Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, Max du Preez, Koos Kombuis and Carl Niehaus? Were your parents ANC members? Don’t bother to answer. It’s because this “speaking against” was always done in a risk-free context. This kind of “opposition” expressed from a position of comfortable privilege is merely another form of complicity. Where did the sackful of Krugerrands come from? Sale of a house and/or farm? Who paid for the education that enabled your parents to join an internationally mobile élite?
You mentioned Nazis. I only pointed out that posing as a migrant worker in order to hide your refugeehood is nothing new. Albert Einstein is merely a famous example of this. As the refugee motivation is concealed, such individuals do not normally come to public attention. This form of migration is also only available when the receiving country recognises employment as a path to permanent immigration and settlement. Such recognition in Finland began in the 1990s.
If the 1984 Aliens Act had remained in force, then your parents would have remained temporary migrant workers (status B), they would still hold South African passports, and so would you. The reform of policy concerning migration for employment was finally completed with the 2004 Aliens Act. Your family evidently came to Finland at a time when considerable uncertainty still prevailed among migrant workers as to how and when their immigration would be recognised as permanent.
I should add that the reform of Finland’s immigration and settlement system was the outcome of sustained and strenuous campaigning by foreigners in Finland (the founder of Migrant Tales was one of these). You owe them a considerable debt and you do them a grave disservice by characterising them as complainers.
Did you notice that none of your “non-native” friends has secured a job in the mainstream domestic private sector? Do you count yourself as “non-native”? Try getting a job in paper mill management.
So you think all the people who work for example in the Amnesty or some other organization and don’t get their name in news are worthless? Great values you got there, friend! You can oppose apartheid without being a member of the ANC, for your information. My parents voted in 1992 against the aparthaid and Nelson Mandela for president in 1994 – even if it meant the end of their priviledges. You are telling me that they didn’t do enough only because their names aren’t mentioned in the newspapers? Wow… that’s rich!
And I count myself as a non-native because I wasn’t born here and I don’t have any finnish heritage. It does not make me less finnish however, because I have learned their ways and live like them.
And it seems that every success story from immigrant is against your agenda. Nothing is good enough for you when you hear that immigrant can be a successfull here. Why? There’s always seems to be an excuse for everything. But when a non-educated immigrant cannot be a CO in a big company you cause a shitstorm and think that it’s racism and unfair.
And criticizing something on the internet in a free country is really brave thing to do! Ironic isn’t it?
–And criticizing something on the internet in a free country is really brave thing to do! Ironic isn’t it?
Sure it is. It’s a million times better than being silent. We hope that others will be inspired by Migrant Tales to use all their rights and this country’s institutions to lift their voices. Only good matters can come out of this.
If you have a society where people cannot air their differences and which is undemocratic, people will become radicalized. In Argentina, a whole generation became radicalized and joined guerrilla movements. They chose that path because they didn’t have any choices. That’s how sick those societies were under military dictatorships. South Africa was under apartheid the same kind of place, if not worse.
In the United State, we had the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The rest is history.
Exactly! But this kind of activism is also pretty much done in a risk-free context and some people accused my parents doing the same when that couldn’t be more far from the truth.
My family were harassed by the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging because my parents opposed the apartheid and by the radical ANC members because we were white. Not a very easy and safe situation now, is it? Afrikaners who opposed the apartheid were pretty much secluded from afrikaner community.
And do you think my parent’s would have joined in an organization that sings “kill the boer, kill the farmer?” Don’t bother to answer… Those experiences you can’t learn from Wikipedia.
–Exactly! But this kind of activism is also pretty much done in a risk-free context and some people accused my parents doing the same when that couldn’t be more far from the truth.
Risk-free environment? I have had death threats and malicious emails sent to my employers. I wouldn’t call this a “risk-free” environment.
The rest of our associate editors on Migrant Tales are anonymous because it’s too dangerous to be publish with your own name.
Then that was also my mistake which I should apologise.
BTW, don’t you think that the assumption that my family owned “a sackful of Krugerrands” is a bit offensive considering that Krugerrands has a very bad name? It’s like accusing every angolan using blood diamonds as their currency.
This conversation has really gone off track…
–This conversation has really gone off track…
Then help to put it back on track.
I think the best way to help you is to let this whole site be. I don’t have anything else to say. Maybe I’ll create an account in Uusi Suomi some day and continue discussing with you there. Until then, adios!
Dana
Well, for some, it can seem like that. But you don’t have to be an immigrant to find the deck is stacked against you in Finland, or that you can be let down by the authorities or that there is a passive acceptance (Eeastern European style) of the strong arm of the law.
As a nation, Finland is as happy and unhappy as any other nation, I would say, both from personal experience and from having long experience of following well-being studies in Finland. Many efforts are also made to study the special challenges of immigrants and immigrant women. Finland’s institutions make some efforts towards improving the situation, but the tricky part is actually getting real first-hand experience of the problems. Surveys are poor instruments in this respect, though a much-favoured tool of the public institutions.
Ironic, then, that when Dana presents her own sentiments and difficulties in being accepted, that she immediately draws severe criticism. Perhaps she is too quick to assume her treatment reflects a ‘national character’ of Finns, but then again, other people are just as quick to dismiss her problems and to claim that ‘if you are a good one, then you will do fine’. The first defence is that somehow it must be Dana that has failed, as if failure of the Finnish authorities was not possible.
I’ve seen this before. An almost total belief in the power of Finnish experts to somehow know all the problems and to have already worked out all the solutions in regard to immigration, so any problems that are left must be the fault of the immigrants themselves – and this coupled with a stony faced resentment at any suggestion that actually maybe Finnish experts are not so clued up about the problems or alternatively, in a position to do anything much about them, except report on them. This surprises some Finns.
On the whole, I’d say Finns are a bit sensitive to criticism, either from other Finns but especially from outsiders. I’ve seen it in the workplace and in private life. Finns like to ask the questions and be in control, but the minute that the tables are turned, then Finns seem to get overly self-conscious and tetchy. Some are downright defensive and rude, merely for opening the door to the idea that something in them or in Finnish society is ‘less than perfect’.
I’ve seen the same thing too in language lessons, an unhealthy focus on ‘perfection’, meaning of course that many older Finns struggle to speak English merely because of the utter embarrassment it brings and the feeling of condemnation from fellow Finns for not being ‘perfect’. I’ve also seen the sense of relief and liberation among Finnish learners of English when they find that a teacher is not interested in pointing out each and every error, but rather in helping them develop a normal conversation, where people can have a laugh, discuss and ponder in relative safety, with only the occasional question or correction. From feedback I used to get as a teacher, this was not the norm in the classroom, where the focus was on ‘correctness’, meaning people took few risks for fear of failure.
One might call it a crisis of competence, often covered up by ‘group think’, which is another way of saying, ‘let’s have a meeting and see if we can stumble towards some kind of consensus on a cover-up of our individual incompetence’. In fact, Finns really like it when someone is brave enough to stand up and lead, simply because it takes the pressure off them and they can let that person get shot down.
I don’t mean to generalise, but I have worked with upwards of a 100 different private companies in Finland during my teaching days, and even now in my public sector work, I attend an endless round of meetings where I see the same dynamics working themselves out again and again.
Of course, workplace griping is not unique to Finns. But what is unique is the constant interest and self-referencing to ‘being Finnish’, like it was a black hole, pulling everything to its centre. Maybe this a modern thing – a globalisation thing, or just an existential thing that attaches to ‘nation states’, where existential angst simply gets projected into some kind of ‘national project’.
Frank
The thing that gets me about you is that you have Dana put into a category. Maybe she’s putting Finns into a category and so that invites the same from you. But the neutral position is to want to find out more. Your position seems more like putting forward an agenda – something that reads like:
1) someone who complains about Finland must lack ‘international experience
2) that a lack of success is down to lack of language skills or not having a job (without considering for a second why there might be deficiencies in these areas)
3) that anyone who complains about life in Finland is necessarily ‘ignorant’
4) that anyone who complains is seeking pity or whining
5) that the ‘solution’ to an immigrants problems are that they as individuals must take action and no focus at all is put on those that would be persecuting them or on changing elements of the system that discriminates against them
6) that people getting support from Kela are somehow less worthy of respect or dignity
7) that violence and ethnic slurs are okay if they can be dismissed as ‘random’ and ‘rare’. At what point, I wonder, do they stop being ‘random and rare’ events in your book, considering that most of us only have about a dozen good friends who would actually tell you in some detail about their experiences?
8) that it always ‘takes two to tango’, meaning, I assume that all problems faced by immigrants must therefore be partly the fault of the immigrant, that part being the one that is always focused on. Much easier to individualise the problem and avoid having to face the disconcerting fact that official authorities might behave in anything less than a perfect and selfless manner, God forbid!
9) that because some immigrants succeed, then it means that failures among other immigrants must be their personal shortcomings.
Having put together this picture of your views, I really cannot see any room to offer or argue an alternative view. I can see you wheeling out one excuse or another to dismiss anyone’s negative experiences.
However, you ask why it is that some succeed and some don’t. Well, people are different. The same can be said for the link between poverty and crime. Many people have dismissed the link for the very same reason, that many people are poor and are not criminals, so it’s no ‘excuse’ for those that are. I think a concept that would help you is ‘at risk’. If you are in the habit of hopping down the stairs on one leg, then there is a better chance that at some point, you will come a cropper. It’s the same with poverty. While wealth moves in one direction, risk moves in the opposite direction, the risk for poorer health, poorer education and social resources, risk for environmental deprivation, risk for discrimination, risk for marginalisation. Why does this happen? Well, while you try to figure it out, don’t lose sight of the fact it does happen – and not just to immigrants, but natives too. The point is that immigrants often suffer multiple vulnerabilities and risks.
So, do we kick em while their down, or do we try to build a ladder to help them up? I think I know what you’ve chosen to do.
If you read the earlier text from Dana, you can actually figure out what is so wrong about Finland:
She cant get her family here on finns expense
That is what this writing boils down too. Thats why she comes up with these “no love” “police sucks” “dreams crushed” style of things.
Ofcourse she adds stuff that is only intentionally offensive like
“A country that is proud, but about what??? No/one knows, it’s a secret. Oh ha ha ha ha , ho ho ho ha HA!”
As every country in the world can be assured to be proud of something. This line can be only understood to meant to offend people. Somehow people here seem to see it as “expressing themselves – which is a good and healthy thing”
Also the fact that people here are not like in Iran seems to ruff her off in wrong way. Yes finns hardly are as social as in some other cultures. However mocking it is no cool. Making me feel she is rather unable to live with people whose culture is vastly different than hers. Maybe she indeed would do better living with her relatives in Germany in their little iranian enclaive…
doesn’t she see any good things in Finland?
–doesn’t she see any good things in Finland?
Why are you so hypersensitive about what people think about their lives in Finland. I don’t get it.
“In Finland, the police and the law are the holy book, the supreme moral power”
And why should this be other vice?
Finland is one of most stable societies, I hope you do not wish to change that?
“If the police beat u in front of others, those that watch will do so apathetically; even ur friends will tell u that’s normal in these parts”
Statistically there is quite a lot of violence, between the Finns themself.
Police brutality is very rare, and Finns trust their Police-force for a good reason.
Did you really get beaten up by police and why?
Would you please explain with little more details?
and Finns trust their Police-force for a good reason
Okay u can trust ur police, u can hugs ur police as u wish, u have free will like ur police
Did you really get beaten up by police and why?
No am joking on MT, police was dancing infront of me to make me happythen gave me flowers and chocolates.
Would you please explain with little more details?
Would u please explain more about yourself and ur job? Why u want to know more? Specially dont forget u r a person who wordship police so if u trust ur police i dont trust u.
Or maybe u want come to past and watch how ur dirty police beated me, sorry we cant go to past its not possible.
when ur ombudsman and humanright, parliament and court were against me even with my record and paper
Then how can i trust u and expalin u more???
Sorry u r not talking to a child, but to a very intelligent person, dont doubt
Bravo to me for always