Plans to administer a written test as part of the citizenship test is the latest example of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party. It should be clear to everyone that the aim of the test is not to help naturalized citizens to be a part of society but to monitor them and keep them on a short leash.
Senior advisor Suvi Pulkkinen of the Chamber of Commerce stated outright in Iltalehti that a citizenship test would not be necessary since the rules for obtaining citizenship are sufficiently strict.
“In that case, it should also be organized differently,” she said. “There is a huge risk that it will become a new bottleneck for obtaining citizenship and, as a result, for attracting the skilled workers that companies need to Finland.”
Simo Grönroos, the third vice president of the PS, lashed out: “The chamber of commerce replacement theorists are worried about the citizenship test. In their opinion, the border should be open and citizenship given to everyone freely.”
The government’s (PS’) citizenship law and test are a farce and a slap in the face to migrants and minorities. Their main message is suspicion. We should do everything possible to push back on these racist laws and government. Their aim is not to empower but to keep the migrant community on short leashes.
A new population forecast from the Itla Children’s Foundation delivers a stark warning: by 2035, the number of children in Finland will fall by nearly 20 percent. In some regions, the decline will be catastrophic. Kymenlaakso is expected to lose more than a third of its child population, while even growth regions such as Pirkanmaa will see stagnation rather than renewal.
Finland is hardly alone in facing falling birth rates. Across the EU, ageing populations and declining fertility are reshaping societies. What sets Finland apart, however, is not the problem itself—but the political refusal to confront it.
Instead of embracing immigration as part of the solution, Finland has spent the past decades moving in the opposite direction. Since its electoral breakthrough in 2011, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* has built its success on anti-immigration rhetoric, transforming hostility toward migrants into a central political theme. That message has paid off at the ballot box, but it has done nothing to prepare the country for its bleak demographic future.
Today, the party’s chairperson and minister of finance, Riikka Purra, regularly amplifies messages that frame immigration as a threat rather than a necessity. Statements suggesting that only Finnish citizens should be entitled to social welfare are not only morally troubling but also constitutionally questionable. More importantly, they signal to the outside world that Finland is closed, suspicious, and unwelcoming.Facebook
This is a dangerous signal to send at a time when Finland desperately needs workers, taxpayers, and young families.
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavionot only recently praised Donald Trump’s speech at Davos but President Javier Millei’s policies in Argentina. Those two admissions by Tavio reveal how the minister would turn Finand into a hellhole for migrants and Finns.
Finnish ICE? A raving Trump-loving lapdog who impoverishes and sends 50% of the population to poverty?
Apart from austerity measures forcing poverty rates to climb, Finland has more for now carried out the same policies of driving people to poverty.
“We agreed to continue communicating about effective ways to break down regulations,” Tavio was quoted as saying in state-party media Suomen Uutiset. “Perhaps Finland can learn from Argentina’s experiences. Of course, we still have the challenge of the EU, which is a bureaucratic superpower.”
An Argentinean family tells about their plight under Millei.
“This is very hard. Before, we had a home. We had access to subsidies. But [the Argentinian government] suddenly took everything away,” Marianela Abasto told Al Jazeera, her face a mix of sadness and resignation. “I don’t know what we are going to do.”
Finland, the happiest country in the world—so sings the choir of statistics, gently accompanied by the pleasant rustling of freshly increased government salaries and bonuses. What an excellent job they must be doing! Their rising compensation stands as living proof of national happiness. Meanwhile, the healthcare system is invited to explore the art of efficiency without resources, social welfare practices the virtue of austerity, and housing benefits master the elegant trick of disappearing without farewell. Unemployment benefits, too, grow philosophical: they still exist, but mainly as an idea. Mass layoffs? Naturally—a small and necessary sacrifice at the altar of “labor-market flexibility.” Trade unions are carefully weakened, no doubt to spare them the exhausting burden of influence. Progress, after all, must hurt—preferably someone else. But let us not despair. Finland remains the happiest country in the world. One merely has to ask, in the true spirit of the Enlightenment:happy for whom, exactly.
*Sami Rusanen is “an international lawyer, legal counsel, critical analyst, executive consultant, project & HR Manager, Investment” (Linkedin)
We have all witnessed how Donald Trump’s administration, the self-proclaimed authoritarian unleashing violence, racism, abuse and imperialism, has gone berserk. Even if it is clear what type of an accused convict president we are dealing with, the saddest matter to watch is how EU politicians are bending the knee to Trump.
One of the first leaders I would purchase kneepads is French President Emmanuel Macron. After criticizing Trump about tariffs, the US president leaked a letter by him where he wrote that he agrees with what he is doing in Syria and “we can do great things in Iran.”
Let’s not forget kneepads for NATO chief Mark Rutte, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her vice president, Kaja Kallas, and a long list of other EU leaders who have turned a blind eye on the atrocities and war crimes in Gaza. Since I live in Finland, I would purchase kneepads for President Alexander Stubb and Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen.
The most Trumpian party in Finland is the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*. PS MP Laura Huhtasaari, who has openly supported Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, openly said that the US is the only country that can guarantee Greenland’s security.
Apart from the PS, the National Coalition Party led by Stubb, Valtonen and Prime Minister Petteri Orpo are the most subervient to Trump, who could slap them in the face and then Stubb would ask if he wants to play golf.
Good advice for the EU: The best way to deal with the Russian threat is to negotiate directly with Moscow. Sabre-rattling and threatening with a crumbling NATO will not do it. Where is Finland’s foreign policy heading after NATO?
California Governor Gavin Newsom is one of Donald Trump’s biggest critics. “He is a T.rex. If you don’t mate with him you’ll be devoured.”
Now Trump is telling the Norwegian government he has lost interest in peace because he did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize!
This should be a signal, even to those slow to catch on, to get off his team.
He just invaded Venezuela, may bomb Iran again soon, possibly even Mexico in addition to annexing Canada. Now, which one of these is Finland as eager NATO newcomer, keen to go to war with if called upon under the alliance’s charter by its most powerful member, the USA? I don’t have to ask around much to know the average Finn’s answer in “none of the above” and many will add “are you crazy?”
Then there is the matter of Trump’s threat to annex Greenland which is most of the territory of our Nordic ally and friend, Denmark, by military force if necessary. In this case Finland would have to choose between its most powerful ally, the USA or it’s neighbour, Denmark- if push came to shove. If it came to a conflict it would be almost impossible for us to keep out of it the way things stand now.
The chaos in world politics created by Trump’s tariff-wielding in magnified manifold in the crises NATO is now in.
But as the Chinese proverb said, crises also creates opportunity. The opportunity provided for us by Trump’s bluster is to get out of a sinking NATO before all hell breaks loose. We could also still cancel the F 35 fighters like Spain, Portugal and possibly Canada and save ourselves millions. Does anybody in the Finnish leadership still believe Trump will be generous enough to supply spare parts to keep those F 35s flying if there is the slightest disagreement with him when we may be defending ourselves? After this Greenland spat it’s hard to believe such gullibility still survives in any serious degree. There is every reason to believe that even now Trump is installing secret incapacitating technology in the planes yet to be delivered. It is hard to imagine he is not capable of just that after inserting his egotistical whine about not getting the Prize into his military strategy. He has show his cards, we just need to read them.
It is time for us, I mean Finland, to get out while the getting is good. While at it we also need to cancel the Defence Cooperation Agreement which would make it easy for Trump to occupy Finland if he gets it into his head to do so. A likely scenario for that is not hard to imagine in this conflicted state of the world.
Getting out would take us back to 2022 when we in Finland were living in a peaceful and non-aligned country refusing to get mixed up in wars or sending weapons to anyone fighting them.
We could also eventually rearrange peaceful trading relations with and through Russia and using the Saimaa canal to help pull ourselves out of a recession. The rest of the EU and Europe would soon learn to accept this as they did before in other troubled times. Even if returning to the old status quo took awhile, we would still be in a better position than the mess we are now heading for.
Migrant Tales context:In 2016, we reported about the terrible treatment of asylum seekers in the northern town of Kolari. Lapin Kansa, a Rovaniemi-based daily, got intereted in the story and helped the demontration to get national attention. One of the reasons why the demonstration was organized was against the asylum center’s deputy manager Jari Sillantie. One editor spoke to me later angered and questioned if Sillantie was a racist. The story below should answer that question. I believe that this demonstration was the first that caused the sacking of a manager.
I do, and very vividly. Jari Sillantie was the deputy manager of the northern Finland Kolari asylum reception center that sacked him after some 140 asylum seekers protested his management style.
Even if his management style and Facebook “likes” did not reveal his attraction to the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, they did speak volumes about his anti-immigration views (see picture below).
After all of the asylum seekers at the reception center demonstrated on May 4 and forced the Red Cross, which managed the reception center, Sillantie was sacked and deemed “unsuitable for the job.”
We learned more things about Sillantie: His heart is with the Islamophobic PS party, and he was convicted for tax fraud in 2018. He owes 666,000 euros in back taxes to the state.
Jari Sillantie, who was sacked as deputy manager of the Kolari asylum reception center in 2016, was not suited for the job. His “likes” on Facebook, which have now been deleted, are an assortment of far-right associations and politicianslike Laura Huhtasaari.
Sillanpää is a good example of the hypocrisy of the PS. He states in his campaign message all the racist talking points of the party. Migrants should follow the law but Sillantie and the PS have special privileges.
Sillantie’s message comes in loud and clear in his campaign poster: Vote for Finns first!
Thanks to the asylum seekers of the former Kolari asylum reception center, the media, and our work, we were able to expose Sillantie for what he was: a questionable person who wanted to make the lives of asylum seekers as difficult as possible.
Since the 1970s, Finnish identity has undergone a profound transformation, closely tied to Finland’s shift from a largely homogeneous country of emigration to an increasingly diverse society shaped by immigration. What was once a marginal issue has become central to political debate and everyday conversations about belonging. Migration has not only changed who lives in Finland, but also how Finnishness itself is understood, questioned, and redefined.
In the 1970s, Finland was primarily a country people left rather than moved to. Tens of thousands of Finns migrated abroad, especially to Sweden, in search of work and better economic opportunities. Migration at the time was seen mainly as a practical response to labor demand, not as something that challenged national identity. Finnish society was widely perceived as culturally and ethnically homogeneous. Being Finnish was closely associated with speaking Finnish, sharing a common historical narrative, and fitting into a relatively uniform cultural framework. Apart from the Swedish-speaking minority and the Sámi—whose voices were often sidelined—internal diversity received little public attention.
This began to change slowly in the 1980s. Finland started to receive small numbers of refugees, including people fleeing war and political repression in Vietnam and parts of Latin America. There were also labor migrants and Finns returning from Sweden. Yet immigration remained limited in scale and visibility, and it rarely sparked broader political debate. Finnish identity was still largely seen as stable and clearly bounded. Integration, where it was discussed at all, was understood as a one-way process: newcomers were expected to adapt to Finnish society, rather than society adapting in response.
The 1990s marked a turning point. The collapse of the Soviet Union reshaped migration patterns across Northern Europe, and Finland was no exception. Ingrian Finns arrived from Russia under policies that framed them as ethnic “return migrants.” At the same time, Finland began to receive more asylum seekers, notably from Somalia and the Balkan region. Finland’s accession to the European Union in 1995 further embedded the country in European migration and asylum frameworks. Migration became more visible, and with visibility came debate—about citizenship, integration, and who could truly belong. Finnishness started to shift, slowly, from a narrowly ethnic concept toward a more civic one, based on citizenship, language skills, and participation in society. Still, anxieties about cultural difference and social cohesion were never far from the surface.
I consider the US the most lawlwss country in the world by far.
Jeffey Sachs
In the summer I wrote an opinion piece for Verde about how the Finnish government’s and the European Union’s apathy towards the war crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza. I described the indifference as water off a duck’s back.
The inaction to the suffering of others has its consequences. Apart from being a cowardly act, those who collude in such silence opportunistically believe that they will not suffer the same fate as those who are oppressed.
The latest example was the illegal invasion and kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.
While US President Donald Trump is a threat to the international order, what worries me most is the near-silence and lack of resolve of European leaders like Finland’s President Alexander Stubb.
In a recent posting, I asked when Stubb was going to play golf with Trump and his cheerleader South Carolina Senator Graham Lindsey.
While politicians like Stubb may be towing a sensitive line between Finland’s interests and dealing with a felon and convict, we should all read US political writer Oliver Kornetzke’s descriptions of Trump.
Source: Facebook
Apart from Trump being “the festering carcass of American rot,” I am concerned about the silence and complacency to the oppression and injustices that overwhelm us.
Apart from the hypocrisy of Petteri Orpo’s government and its toothless challenge of the racism of the PS, one of the most shameful decisions by parliament was the passage and extension of the so-called Border Act, which disregards the human rights of asylum seekers and weakens the principles of the rule of law.
Finland, like many of its politicians, believe that they can oppress and denignate migrants from their high and dry places without understanding that they may one day be in the situation, asking for asylum and getting hostile rejections.
The PS, like some other politicians, are racists. All they know to do is label and victimize migrants and minorities. It is like when women were fighting for their civil rights and one of the arguments against them was they “they weren’t ready” to handle their civil rights.
Preposterous! Also is our leaders’ silence and tiptoeing around Trump as he shreds the rule of law and international order.
Shame on MTV, the privately owned TV station! Why? They are at it again with gusto exploiting crime by youths especially perportrated by so-called “youths of migrant backgrounds.” In one stroke of a paint brush, MTV with the help of Markku Heinikari, head of the police criminal unit. The MTV stars propping up the racist narrative are all there again: Ivan Puopolo and Tiia Palmén, who never answered my emails to her concerning MTV‘s biased reporting.
It is sad, even irresponsible, for the police and the media to label all youths taking into account how heavy the label weighs on these adolescents. Heinikar as well as MTV are ignorant of Finnish immigration history, when Finns were suspected for every crime in Sweden?
With the latest story about youth crime committed by “a majority of adolescents with migrant backgrounds,” MTV pours on again its racism. Policemen like Heinikari do nothing more than reinforce the racist labelling. Imagine, ALL youths “with migrant backgrounds” are guilty of being criminals or potential criminals.
Heinäkari is an old guest of MTV’s reporting on youth crime. He labelled shamelessly again ike in the past all brown and black youths as criminals. The police states in the picture above: “Migrant background is a clear link in youth robberies, migrant background and in led crime from Sweden.” He does not, however, offer no proof except his opinion, which some would state are racist.
Migrant Tales formed part of a team that exposed in a report how far-right parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* used the youth gang “problem” to help them lure voters.
Former Helsinki Police Chief Commissioner Jari Taponen admitted in the report, “The saddest thing about the youth gang debate is that it labels all minority youths (as potential criminals).”
The fact that media like MTV would care less about their reporting is nothing new taking into account how it has framed the topic.
A story titled “The Government Plans to Tighten Integration Rules” was published by MTV, a private television company, but was taken down almost immediately. The reporter who interviewed Interior Minister Mari Rantanen was Ivan Puopolo, well-known for his anti-immigration views. European Islamophobia Report 2023
Other media like Helsingin Sanomat also reported on this phenomena. However, none like MTV, have done so with so much enthusiasm.
