“We have always returned people there, and we seek to continue to do so. There is a false notion, if you could call it that, that a repatriation agreement must be signed before the police can carry out a forced return, but it is not true,” National Police Board Chief Superintendent Mia Poutanen, is quoted as saying in YLE News.
This statement by Chief Superintendent Poutanen has a lot of Iraqi asylum seekers worried. It is then possible to force Iraqi asylum seekers who got a negative decision from the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) to go back to their country?
Read the full story here.
One asylum seeker that Migrant Tales contacted expressed shock but knew that Iraqi asylum seekers are deported back to Iraq against their will.
The whole process, which appears to be full of legal contradictions and question marks, is the result of a law that did away with residence permits on humanitarian grounds.
Before the law was passed in the spring, an Iraqi didn’t have to return to his home country if he refused to. In such a case, he or she was granted a temporary residence permit.
Since asylum seekers who get their first negative decision and later on their appeal turned down for asylum can apparently opt to stay in Finland as undocumented migrants. As a result of the law that did away with residence permits on humanitarian grounds, the number of undocumented migrants will rise as a result from a few hundred to thousands.
One may ask which MPs and which parties voted to do away with residence permits on humanitarian grounds.
Here is the bill and which MP and party voted for it in April.
A total of 107 MPs voted in favor of the bill while 29 voted against. Sixty-three weren’t present during the voting. Along party lines: Center Party (33 in favor/16 absent); National Coalition Party (20 in favor/17 absent); Perussuomalaiset* (26 in favor/11 absent); Social Democrats (23/4 against/7 absent); Greens (10 against/5 absent); Left Alliance (9 against/3 absent); Swedish People’s Party (6 against/4 absent); and Christian Democrats (5 in favor).
What is surprising and baffling about the vote is the Social Democratic Party and the fact that one of its MPs, Nasima Razmyar, who was once a quota refugee, voted for the bill.
Social Democrats like Tarja Filatov, Susanna Huovinen, Tytti Tuppurainen and Erkki Tuomioja are the only MPs from that party that voted against it.
Visible minorities like MPs Jani Toivola and Ozan Yanzar of the Greens voted against the bill.
* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We, therefore, prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings. The direct translation of “Perussuomalaiset” is “basic” or “fundamental Finn.”