I have covered and written many news stories about deportations of asylum seekers. The last one was from a family that called me pleading if I could find them a lawyer because their appeal was rejected. When the asylum seeker broke the news about the appeal over the phone, a sense of powerlessness overtook me….
Tag: asylum policy
Linkedin: Down the populist path
A good question is why the public’s fascination with far-right populism has caught on. US President Donald Trump is one sour example but so is the changing political landscape of Europe. In Finland, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s National Coalition Party (NCP) believes it can continue to do business with the anti-immigration Finns Party (PS) and form…
Ahti Tolvanen*: Finland’s pushback law undermines the rule of law
The problem with this law is that it calls into question the whole idea of the rule of law. It allows the Finnish government to declare that there is a threat at the border of a “hybrid invasion”.This declaration can be made based on secret security information the government may claim to have and no…
Finland’s immigration policy has been for decades racist by design
Claim: The deportation law has nothing to do with migration policy. Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, among other Perussuomalaiset* politicians Migrant Tales: It has all to do with migration policy! The pushback law has not only brought several pressing questions about how Finland respects Human Rights, its Constitution, and international agreements, but it continues to reveal…
Mari Rantanen has no credibility and should resign – her racist posts reveal who she is
In the face of the far right in government, the only thing that Prime Minister Petteri Orpo can parrot is that we have a good government program. The recent MEP election revealed how little credibility Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government has. The Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, suffered a stinging blow. The National Coalition Party (NCP) was spared…
The Perussuomalaiset’s political Stalingrad
I still remember clearly the 2011 general election when the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party saw the number of MPs surge to 39 from 5 previously. Some thought that the PS would implode as the Rural Party did in 1972. It took over 13 years for the PS to suffer its worst election loss in the European…
The government’s anti-racism program stops racism on paper
The Finnish government has called for comment on its proposed six-million-euro action program against racism by June 10th. The program’s development began last year when then President Sauli Niinistö was questioned at an international press conference about racist remarks made by ministers in the Petteri Orpo government. Announced in May, the program calls for anti-racist…
Finland’s pushback law will cause death, suffering, and loss of face
National Coalition Party Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government is drafting a new pushback law that permits Finland to subvert human rights, international law, and the rights enshrined in its constitution. Even if the law gets approval from parliament, it will not solve but worsen the problem at the Finnish-Russian border. Considering that Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Interior…
Let the asylum seekers in and help us solve our demographic woes
THE STORY WAS UPDATED There is a strange logic that is counterproductive, like shooting oneself in the leg. Finland has a labor shortage that is going to get worse. According to some sources, Finland will need up to 50,000 migrants a year to plug the deficit. I wonder why these types of estimates haven’t been…
Finland: Between xenophobia and a hard place
Apart from being the most right-wing government in a hundred years, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government is doing everything possible to disenfranchise migrants and minorities. We can mention raising the citizenship requirements from five to eight years and excluding Russians from having dual citizenship as indicators of how xenophobia is driving Finnish politics. One Russian…