A friend from South America called me and said how a construction company he worked for exploited its workers. Migrant Tales hopes to denounce the company located in the Turku area.
“I know of a South American couple who the the owner [of the company] brought to Finland,” he said. “They worked long hours with no days off and wanted to go back to their country after working for a month and a half even if they planned to stay till November.”
The owner paid he woman 16 euros and the man 101 euros for a month and a half of work after discounting their plane ticket and insurance.
Finding a job as a migrant in Finland can lead to exploitation and abuse. The source of the article is not in the picture.
According to my friend, he worked for the same construction company 15 hours a day seven days a week, sometimes until five in the morning.
Blue Reform* minister for European affairs, culture and sports, Sampo Terhois politically ambidextrous: He can say one thing and state a totally different thing. It is like coming out of the closet and going back in. The opportunism in such ambidextrous behavior is believing that others don’t notice. And we do.
In the statement below, Terho gets tough on Muslims but takes a more benign view of Foreign Minister Timo Soini’s right to attend anti-abortion gatherings abroad as a member of the government.
In the first quote below on the left, he states the following about Muslims: “A country that accepts refugees and immigrants cannot tolerate that its culture would die. Those who move here must inevitably change and adapt to our basic values.”
But then he makes an about-turn on the foreign minister’s case, who is also a member of the same party: “Soini has personal beliefs, an opinion he has a right to have. Personal opinion and freedom of religion are Western values based on human rights.”
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 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. One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic.
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.
A new survey by PEW Research Center shows that there is wide support in several EU countries for taking in refugees. The report shows that Spain is the most welcoming while Poland and Hungary are the least responsive.
Another EU country in the survey, Italy, also scored far behind Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, France, United Kingdom, and Greece.
As Finland holds its parliamentary elections in April 2019 and EU elections a month later, parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), Blue Reform,* and politicians of the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) are eager to capitalize on anti-immigration sentiment.
And that is what is happening now after a massive police operation took place over the weekend and which led to the arrest of two suspects, an Estonian and Russian citizen, suspected of laundering money.
MP Suna Kymäläinen of the Social Democratic Party, who got re-elected in 2015 thanks to her anti-Russian stance on real-estate purchases, reiterated her calls for tighter controls on non-EEA citizens. PS MP Tom Packalén, who has built a reputation on his anti-immigration views, said that parliament should speed up a law that would force non-EEA and EU citizens to get a special permission to buy land.
Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö said that the new law would grant the government the right to intervene in transactions that it sees jeopardizing national security.
Timo Soini on menettänyt kaikki: hänen populistinen, maahanmuutto- ja naisvihan puolue perussuomalaiset ja siniset. Hän on tehnyt paljon tuhoa suomen hyvä maineen. Samaan ryhmään ovat kokoomus ja keskusta.
Soini saa luottamuksen äänin 100-60 vaikka hänen kantaa aborttiin on suomen lain vastaan.
Just like President Donald Trump has destroyed the US’ standing in the world, what wreckage has Finland’s immigration and asylum policy brought on our society and our country’s name?
Thanks to years of anti-immigration rhetoric and hardline policies by the former and present government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, Finland has sunk into a dark hole where values like human rights and social equality are forfeited for cheap nationalism and by fortifying structural racism.
Finland’s immigration and asylum policy has a clear message to Muslims and non-EU citizens: Stay out!
Maria Lohela, former speaker of parliament and PS MP, is a good example of how racism has become a part of our institutions. She got elected with her Islamophobic rhetoric. She is today part of the Blue Reform block. Source: YLE.
Just like the media in the United States is fighting tooth and nail to expose the corruption, racism and kakistocracy of Trump’s administration, the media in Finland has an important job as well to make sure that parties like the Perussuomalaiaset* and their allies in parliament and elsewhere, don’t take Finland for a ride as happened before the 2011 parliamentary elections.
A thirty-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who was deported from Finland three months ago got in touch with me Thursday morning. His messages on Messenger were simple but behind them were evident uncertainty and anxiety. We spoke in Finnish by phone later in the afternoon. Ali had learned a lot of Finnish in the two and a half years he waited unsuccessfully for a residence permit.
Ali said that even if he considers himself an Afghan, he had never been to Afghanistan until he was deported to that country.
“I don’t have anyone here,” he continued. “I was born and raised in Iran. I don’t have any work, money or family [in Afghanistan].”
I told him that I heard he was deported to Afghanistan.
Ali said that he hopes to move back to Iran but this is difficult since he doesn’t have the financial means.
“I don’t wander outside the home in Kabul after 8 pm because it is dangerous,” he said. “There have been a lot of bombings and killings in Kabul.”
There is good and bad news after Sunday’s parliamentary elections. The bad news is that the far-right Sweden Democrat saw its support rise by 4.7 percentage points to 17.6% compared with the elections in 2014, according to Svenska Dagbladet. The good news – if it can be considered as such – is that the result was well below expectations.
Writes The Local: “But the pre-election polls had clearly got into their [Sweden Democrats] heads: YouGov had them polling at 25 percent and becoming Sweden’s biggest party – the same YouGov that got the party right last time. Other pollsters said they’d adapted their methods and were better equipped this time to gauge the SD vote, with Ipsos and Demoskop for example putting them around the 18-19 percent mark. But who could really tell?”
Certainly, Sunday’s election result will make Social Democrat Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s job difficult in forming a new government. The present situation may mean the Social Democrats forming a government with a right-wing party that would exclude the Sweden Democrats.
The fact that the Sweden Democrats became the country’s third-largest party – not second-largest, according to some polls – and that migration and crime took the front seat of the political debate, reveals something disturbing about the Nordic countries. Norway, Finland, and Denmark, whose far-right Danish People’s Party does not form government but supports it, all have seen the rise of the populist anti-immigration parties.
How is it possible that Nordic countries, which profess being the most liberal and which base their social policy on equality could be so xenophobic and Islamophobic?
In all of the Nordic region, we have seen far-right populist parties rise in this century with a hostile even vicious anti-immigration and anti-cultural diversity agenda. Of all the Nordic countries, you are the only one in the Nordic region where populist anti-immigration parties have not formed directly or indirectly a part of government.
A poll in November, however, showed a sharp rise of the far-right Sweden Democrats to 21.5% when compared with 12.9% it got in the 2014 parliamentary elections and not trailing too far behind the Social Democratic Party (25.7%) and Moderates (22%).
The Sweden Democrats are the third largest party today in the 349-seat Riksdagen (parliament) with 49 seats (12.9%) in 2014 compared with 20 seats (5.7%) they won in 2010.
In an analysis piece by Expo, an anti-racism and anti-fascism NGO in Sweden, they explained the rise of the Sweden Democrats in 2010 to the Riksdagen in the following words:
“The Sweden Democrats gain from presenting themselves as an alternative to the so-called establishment,” wrote Expo chairman Daniel Poohl. “The bloc politics that has marked the election campaign has turned the Sweden Democrats into a distinct third alternative, an underdog.”
Poohl continues to warn us in 2016 about the Sweden Democrats: “That’s where we come in. This is the white paper [stating that they aren’t a racist party and have no ties to fascism] that the Sweden Democrats would have to do, but will never be able to write. The racism found in the Sweden Democrats isn’t something that belongs to history but is a part of the party’s concept.”
Migrant Taleswrote the following letter to Sweden in june 2015 warning about the perils of playing ball with a populist party that loathes immigrants:
“Today, you, dear friend in Sweden, are the only country that can restore sanity to this part of Europe and effectively challenge this force that is undermining and threatening our Nordic values. We need you to hold out and show leadership, which has been shamefully lacking in the rest of our region.”
However, it looks like there is a tear in the cordon sanitaire that excluded the Sweden Democrats from Swedish mainstream politics. Anna Kingberg, the head of the Moderates, said that her right-wing conservative party would be ready to negotiate with the Sweden Democrats, according to Politico.
Sweden heads for the polls on Sunday to elect 349 seats to the Riksdag (parliament). Despite the good showing in the pollsof the far-right Sweden Democrats, which has roots in the neo-Nazi movement, is slated to capture 20% of the votes.
The rise in popularity of the Sweden Democrats has been fast and a reminder that Sweden continues to have serious unresolved issues with racism.
The Sweden Democrats entered the Riksdag in 2010 for the first time with 20 MPs (5.7%), and four years later they more than doubled the number of MPs to 49 (12.9%).
Contrary to other Nordic countries like Norway, Denmark, and Finland, Sweden has refused to cooperate with anti-immigration parties. There are some signs that this may change with parties like the conservative Moderates offering an olive branch last year to the Sweden Democrats.
Since Finland is a close neighbor to Sweden, a good showing by the Sweden Democrats in Sunday’s election could boost the populist anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset.* Finland has parliamentary elections in April 2019.
The parliamentary elections of September 9 are exposing Sweden’s dark side. Source: The Local.
The interesting question to ask with respect to the rising popularity of the Sweden Democrats, and ever-growing xenophobia in what is probably one of Europe’s liberal countries, why are we in this political bind?
Many factors are at play. One of these is Swedish exceptionalism, which portrays a myth of a white near-perfect society until migrants arrived and ruined it all.
What surprises me a lot is how migrants are being singled out as “the problem” and “cause” of Sweden’s problems. How many politicians are asking how the dismantling of the social welfare state, rising discrimination, social exclusion and the lack of political will to tackle these social ills are at the heart of the problem?
Scapegoating migrants for Sweden’s woes is punching below the belt and turning one’s back on the country’s more serious problems like social inequality.
Even if there are some troubling question marks of US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy and that his administration deported 2.5 million people, or more than any other president in US history, he does have a point in the following quote:
“Appealing to tribe, appealing to fear, pitting one group against another, telling people that order and security would be restored if it weren’t for those who don’t look like us, or don’t sound like us, or don’t pray like we do – that is an old playbook, it’s old as time.”
Sunday’s election result in Sweden will reveal a lot of ugly things about the country that we knew but which politicians rarely acknowledged. One of them is racism, social inequality, and exclusion.
Despite assurances by Nordic countries of social equality, each country in northern Europe has seen the rise of hostile anti-immigration parties that target migrants and minorities. Apart from Sweden, such parties share power in government in Norway (Progress Party), in Denmark (Danish People’s Party), and in Finland (Perussuomalaiset, today Blue Reform).
All of these populist parties miss the mark by a long shot because migrants and minorities are not the main cause of these countries’ woes.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 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. One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic.
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.
Katso alkuperänen piirros 
