Tag: Finnish Immigration Service

How racism and suspicion have ruined Finland’s centenary celebrations of 2017

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If there is a party pooper in this year’s centenary celebrations it’ll be ourselves: the politicians, the urban tales, prejudices, racism and suspicion that has raised its head with ease in Finland as of late.

The names and the parties of these killjoys are well known to us: President Sauli Niinistö, the Jussi Halla-aho crowd of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, ministers like Paula Risikko, Center Party Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, white Social Democrats and socialists, Migri (Finnish Immigration Service), bigoted groups like Suomi Ensin, Suomen Sisu and a long list of others.

Like the United States under Donald Trump and post-Brexit Europe, Finland too has seen the rise of a hostile political force called populism. Like a cancer, it spreads scapegoating migrants and minorities. Populism always fails and ends in disaster because it offers simple unworkable solutions to complex problems. It’s like offering a terminally ill cancer patient aspirin to relieve the pain.

One of the official logos of Finland’s centenary celebrations.

What happens when a government and country starts to believe in its own prejudices? For one, it causes unneeded suffering on people.

Take for instance one of the government’s favorite justification for tightening immigration policy: pull factors like social welfare. But is that the real reason why asylum seekers come to Europe?

Studies have shown that it’s not the main cause. Many asylum seekers come from countries where there is no social welfare and therefore don’t have a clear idea what it is. If social welfare was the main pull factor, why do some migrants go to the United Kingdom, where there is lower social welfare than France which is more generous?

Want to know what real factors bring a fraction, yes a fraction, of asylum seekers to Europe. Check this video out by Migration Matters.

One of the most ignorant and populist claims parroted by some politicians is that asylum seekers should be taken care of in camps near their home countries. Interior Minister Risikko, who should know better, reinforced this misconception when she visited a Suomi Ensi gathering last week.

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Day 10 of the Helsinki demonstration by Iraqi asylum seekers: “We will demonstrate for as long as necessary”

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Here’s a show of respect and admiration for the Iraqi asylum seekers protesting in cold February in Helsinki against the harsh asylum policies of the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri), which is an extension of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government.

Nour M Jamal is one of the many Iraqis that have taken part in the demonstrations demanding a change in asylum policy and deportations by the police service.

“We feel disappointed with the authorities even if [Interior Minister Paula] Risikko and the head of Migri [Jaana Vuorio] visited us,” he said. “Both of them didn’t say anything new.”

Jamal said that one of the nice things about the demonstration is the support they have received from the Finns.

“People that pass by have shown their support to us giving us money, clothes and even demonstrating with us,” he said. “We are grateful to them and appreciate their support.”

The picture above shows a large number of demonstrators including children and women.

“To those that claim wrongly that we left our women and children behind,” continued Jamal, “we tell them that they can speak to the women who are with us in the tent.”

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Interior Minister Paula Risikko compares asylum seekers demanding justice to bigots

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Green Party Chairman Ville Niinistö correctly criticized Interior Minister Paula Risikko Saturday for stating that Iraqis concerned about being deported to their country as “extremists” that are in the same league as racist bigot groups like Suomi Ensi. 

The conservative National Coalition Party interior minister’s rhetoric derives from President Sauli Niinistö’s claim in May of last year that only extremists debate while the silent majority is silent.

Such a simplistic analysis by the president is how disgraced former US President Richard Nixon wanted to capitalize on a song called Okie from Muskogee that was supposed to depict, among other things, that most USAmericans weren’t against the Vietnam War and didn’t take drugs.

President Niinistö’s comments and views about Finland’s ever-growing culturally diverse society have revealed his suspicion. Certainly eyeing reelection in 2018, the Finnish head of state has made statements in the same way as anti-immigration politicians do. He first makes them and then retracts.

Here’s a good example:

“At some point, someone has to recognize that, here and now, we cannot fulfill all of our obligations under international agreements,” according to the Helsinki Times.

And then retracted in Helsingin Sanomat:

“I never said anything like that [ditching international agreements]. What I said was that it’s difficult here and now to meet all the obligations [of such refugee treaties].

Tweets Green Party head Niinistö about Risikko putting asylum seekers in the same group like bigots:

He states: “Unacceptable that Risikko equates an asylum seeker family that is worried about its life as extremists like Suomi Ensin.”

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A Finnish asylum policy that is doomed to fail

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It’s been well over a year since tens of thousands of asylum seekers came to Finland from countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and others. An important watershed in the history of these asylum seekers took place in May, when an assessment by the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) saw parts of countries like Iraq are safe to return asylum seekers.

The decision by Migri in May very much defined the government’s asylum policy on what it would do to the majority of refugees that came to Finland. The new policy would tighten immigration policy and pass laws in parliament that would make family reunification near-impossible and undermine asylum seekers’ due process by, for example shortening appeal times.

While the government and Migri are doing everything possible to get rid of as many asylum seekers from Finland, it’s clear that many refugees cannot return back to their home countries because it’s too dangerous.

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Ahmad Liath: “I left Iraq because I long for freedom”

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Ahmad Liath was twelve years old when he left Iraq in 2005. Two years before that year, the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and in 2004 his father was killed.

After the invasion by the United States and its allies, thing didn’t get better but worse in Iraq. A testimony of the latter is the violence and death that we commonly read in the news from Iraq today.

Like thousands of other Iraqi asylum seekers, Liath, who lives in the city of Tampere, located 178 km north of Helsinki, came to Finland in the fall of 2015. Like many of his fellow countrymen, he too got a rejection for asylum from the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) in January. His mother, however, who came with him to Finland, got a positive decision from Migri ten days before his rejection.

Eleven years is a long time for anyone to be on the road. Liath first moved from Iraq to Syria in 2005 and stayed there until 2010, when fighting in that country’s civil war got worse. He moved to Turkey and then in 2015 to Europe.

“Even if I have lived most of my life in Syria and Turkey, I still don’t know what having a home means,” he continued. “I’ve been called a lot of names during my travels like asylum seeker, tramp, bum, hobo, and wanderer. I’ve taken a lot of insults, suffered racist attacks and seen my human rights trampled,”

Liath said that one of the matters he learned after being on the road for such a long time is that you learn to mistrust everyone, especially your countrymen.

“In Austria I got a negative decision for asylum because the interpreter, who was an Iraqi, told the immigration authorities that I wasn’t a real asylum seeker,” he said.

Liath says that despite his fears and mistrust of people, he’s able to stay focused on his long journey. “I left Iraq because I long for freedom,” he said.

Liath stated that if he can settle down in Finland he’d like to study a profession like computer science and work for a company.

“It’s been difficult to go to school for me since we’ve been near-constantly on the move and I’ve been obliged to work in order to help my mother and sister,” he added.

Before coming to Finland, the young Iraqi asylum seeker moved to Germany, where he stayed at an asylum refugee center in Karlsruhe, after being in Austria and Hungary. He too took the so-called “road of death” that hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers took in 2015 through Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary.

“The worst place that I visited was Hungary and in Serbia they treated us like animals,” he said. “I was locked up [in Hungary] for a month for crossing the border.”

Around 1,300 people lived in an asylum center in Karlsruhe, Germany. “Imagine what the WC looks like or when you have wait in long lines for food or get you phone charged,” he said. Picture by Ahmad Liath.
The food served at the asylum center in Karlsruhe in Germany. Picture by Ahmad Liath.

“We were 12 people in a tiny cell that was only 15 square meters,” he said. “We had to take 4-5-hour shifts sleeping because all of us couldn’t lie down on the floor at the same time. We were locked up for 22 hours and allowed to go outside for only two hours a day.”

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Iraqi asylum seeker SH was released today after being detained since January 6

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SH, the Iraqi asylum seeker who was detained by the police on Janaury 6, was released today from Helsinki’s Metsälä immigration removal center. SH was detained on the same day together with KM, who was released from detention on January 12.

“I’m really happy and now I must renew my work permit,” he told Migrant Tales this afternoon.

Read the full story here.

SH said he will return to Laitila where he was working at a bakery.

UPDATED (7:32 am): Iraqi asylum seeker MS’ deportation from Oulu Airport in Finland postponed due to diorderly behavior

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UPDATED (7:35 am): Iraqi asylum seeker MS’ deportation from Oulu Airport in Finland to Iraq was postponed Tuesday because he wasn’t permitted to board the plane by the pilot in command due to his disorderly behavior.

A reader sent us the following information about what social media sites wrote about what happened Tuesday. Here is an edited version of the message to Migrant Tales:

MS wasn’t allowed to board the flight. He shouted and struggled [with the police] and was refused entry on the plane by the captain. His hands and legs were tied and placed him on the ground with his stomach pressed on the ground. They [police] took him back to a cell in Oulu and he was then transferred to the Metsälä detention center in Helsinki. He is now in Metsälä. This person is really brave and I hope he’ll be freed soon. It’s so sad to see how they treat him like a criminal. 

We wrote earlier Tuesday:     

Migrant Tales has access to a video published in the Facebook group called Suomi ja Pakolaiset where MS is awaiting deportation inside a police van at Oulu Airport in northern Finland. MS was detained by the police on Friday. 

MS states in a video at the airport that some Iraqis have wrongly accused him of committing a crime. Whenever an Iraqi is going to be deported, its customary that some Iraqis wrongly believe that the person is being deported because he committed a crime.

In this case, MS has not committed any crime, according to him.

He said that while he was speaking inside the police van at the airport, there was a camera recording him and spraying some substance [possibly a sedative] to calm him down. “And it smells bad,” he added. MS asks why he’s being deported even if there is no deportation order. “Let’s see what will happen,” he said. “I’ll be in Baghdad soon.”

From a video that was taken by MS today inside a police van at Oulu Airport.

MS inside the police van talking about his last moments before being deported to Iraq.

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What message does Finland want to send to Iraqi asylum seekers by deporting them to a country that it has no repatriation agreement?

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The case of two young Iraqis, KM, and SH, who were detained by the police on Friday and who will apparently be deported from the country on Monday are a case in point. To KM and SH, there is another Iraqi national, AM, who will be deported together with KM and SH. All three are being held at the Helsinki detention camp of Metsälä. 

The police, who are carrying out these deportations, will not give for obvious reasons details on how they plan to deport Iraqi nationals who have gotten a negative decision on their asylum applications from the Finnish Immigration Service and district court.

Migrant Tales reported on Friday the detention of two young Iraqi asylum seekers that will be deported. Is this a scare tactic and a clear message by the authorities that they want these people to leave? We believe so. Read the full story here.

Here’s the question: How can Finland deport thousands of Iraqis from Finland if there is no repatriation agreement with Iraq?

The Iraqi Ambassador to Finland, Matheel Chayif Al-Sabti, spoke to Migrant Tales on Wednesday, was clear on the matter:

“The Iraqi government does not accept forced deportations [and] this is officially the position of the Iraqi government now because we know of the [difficult] situation in Iraq…So, now there is nothing that Finland can do to those [Iraqi] people.”

Iraqi Ambassador to FinlandMatheel Chayif Al-Sabti states that the Iraqi government doesn’t accept any forced deportations.

He said that Iraq would not grant permission to any special flight carrying deported Iraqis to land in the country because there is no repatriation agreement or memorandum of understanding with Finland on forcibly returning people to Iraq.

“So now you have to accept this idea [that there is no agreement],”  Al-Sabti continued. “I said it many times to Päivi Nerg, the deputy interior minister, I then said it to Hanna Helinko, the director general of the Finnish Immigration Service, and I said it at all of my meetings with the minister of foreign affairs [Timo Soini] that Iraq will not accept people who are deported.”

The ambassador said that Iraqis who came to Finland from fall 2015 should be accepted as guests taking into account the difficult situation in Iraq.

Al-Sabti went as far as to say that the Iraqi embassy would not even issue any laisse- fair travel documents to Iraqis who refuse to return to their country.

Migrant Tales will publish Thursday a more extensive interview with the Iraqi ambassador.

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