When it comes to injecting fear in Finnish blue-collar workers, SDP MP Eero Heinäluoma is no beginner. Apart from his incredulous claim in Swedish daily HBL that new immigrants will cause racism because they will take jobs from Finns, he has been a skillful fearmonger for quite some time.
One of the most suspect of these unfounded scare tactics was made by him and trade union SAK before Estonia’s EU membership in 2006. According to him, some 500,000 Estonian workers, the entire workforce of that country, would invade Finland when Estonia would become an EU member!
If I were a populist or a politician that wants to instill fear among some Finns for short-term political profit, I would use the foreigner-invasion card. Finnish politicians, populists and others have used it in the past very successfully. It is a bit like scaring children by telling them that the “big bad wolf” will come to eat them if they misbehave.
The only problem with this tactic, however, is that it has never happened.