Labor immigration to Finland Archives

MTV3: Kauppalehti: Siivousfirmojen pitää irtisanoa maahanmuuttajia

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Migrant Tales

Comment: What can you make out of this story below? MTV3 claims, quoting business daily Kauppalehti, that the office that hands out work permits in the Uusimaa region of Southern Finland wants cleaning companies to hire EU nationals. This may be easier said than done.

MTV3 reports that the employers of the cleaning companies are pretty irritated by the recommendation since finding such workers among EU nationals are scarce. Siskon Siivous general manager, Pasi Hämäläinen, said that two thirds of the company’s employees come from outside Europe.

” This latest case does give the lie to claims about alleged welfare shopping by humanitarian migrants,” writes JusticeDemon in a thread.

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Uudellamaalla kiistellään siivousalan työvoimatilanteesta, kertoo Kauppalehti. Uudenmaan työlupayksikkö on evännyt työlupia afrikkalaisilta ja aasialaisilta siivoojilta ja kehottanut yrityksiä palkkaamaan siivoojia Euroopan talousalueelta. Luvatta jääneet siivoojat olivat olleet töissä jo vuosia, turvapaikkahakemuksen käsittelyn kestäessä.

Read whole story.

Thank the immigrants of Finland!

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Migrant Tales

While some parties like the anti-immigration True Finns boast that they are responsible for bringing the debate on immigration and refugees to the national spotlight, nothing could be further from the truth.

Those that have brought the issue to national attention are none other than immigrants and refugees of this country.

They if any have shown the weaknesses and the strong points about our society. In the process they have also revealed pleasant and unpleasant matters about ourselves like the role of racism.

Would there be such a big debate if only a handful of immigrants lived among our ranks?

Probably not.

The national debate on immigrants is nothing more than reaction to the ever-growing immigrant population and its future role in our aging nation.

Too many of those taking part in the national debate are busy reacting to immigration as opposed to taking proactive stances and asking how do we make it work.

If a country wants to be receptive to immigration it has to see it through many angles. Why would any sensible person want to move to a country that vilifies certain groups and has a schizopohrenic view of the outside world?

Thus some of us want to slam the door on Muslims but promote “good” immigraition to the country; we want Finland to be a springboard to the Russian market even though prejudice against Russians is a serious issue.

Handing Finland’s future immigration policy to groups like the True Finns or succumbing to a policy of fear to the outside world will be like shooting oneself in the leg.

These groups, and those that side with their cause, will be the ones that will end up creating those ghettos and social inequality that they claim to be defending us from.

SDP MP Eero Heinäluoma’s fearmongering now and then

Posted on May 13, 2010 by Migrant Tales

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.