Tag: social exclusion

New Finnish naturalization laws will hit the country negatively

Posted on by Migrant Tales

As Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Interior Minister Mari Rantanen aims to tighten naturalization laws, the impact of such changes will knock Finland negatively.

Rantanen said last year that not only will residence time rise from 5 to 8 years, but also a citizenship test will be given and a tougher language test.

Europe is lost. It believes that short-term solutions like fences will save it from itself.

While the government, especially the PS and the National Coalition Party (NCP) see migrants as a threat, the question we should ask is why stricter naturalization laws are needed and, importantly, what kind of a slippery slope is it.

While the government complains that not enough is being done to encourage integration, tighter naturalization laws will do just that, making pathways to integration more difficult by marginalizing migrants and exposing the hostile environment.

If you don’t have Finnish citizenship you cannot vote, especially against those who are excluding you from being an equal part of society.

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Media Monitoring Group of Finland [1]: How big is the PS’ crocodile tears?

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They are pretty big if you look at the latest tweets by Perussuomalaiset (PS)* head Riikka Purra and former party secretary Simo Grönroos. MTV broke a news story Saturday about human trafficking in Finland. . A sensible politician would look at the story, side with the victims, and ask how this could happen in Finland.

But not the PS. They are out to prove that if you bring labor migrants from outside the EU, these people will work for low wages and not even understand that they are exploited.

The PS lesson?

Don’t bring labor migrants from outside the EU.

Now shed some big crocodile tears for public consumption.

Source: MTV and Twitter.
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Kokoomus and Perussuomalaiset: Two different views on labor immigration

Posted on by Migrant Tales

On Monday, we saw the stances of the radical-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and National Coalition Party’s (Kokoomus) views on the role of labor immigration outside the EU. On MTV, PS’ Sakari Puisto faced off with Pia Kauma of Kokoomus, while on A-studio, Leena Meri of the PS debated with Elina Valtonen.

It is depressing to watch the debate about Finland’s need to attract labor migrants from outside the EU. The adjectives used to describe them are insulting: social welfare migrants and low-income migrants who will accept low pay and any work offered.

It is a bad standing point: Why would I want to come to a country that wishes me so much harm and intends to relegate me to second-class and marginal status?

The most surreal debate between the two shows was on MTV.

While there was a difference of opinion on labor migrants between Puisto and Kauma, both favored limiting or excluding newcomers from getting social welfare.

The debate between PS MP Sakari Puisto and Pia Kauma was surreal. Puisto spoke against migrants from outside the EU, and Kauma who is in favor. Both were, however, of the same opinion about the social equality of such migrants. Both would take away their rights, so they can’t use social welfare. Would I move to a country that sees me as a second-class member of society? Source: MTV

When such a suggestion was made, the host didn’t even bother to ask if excluding non-citizens from getting social welfare was unconstitutional, which it is.

Kauma strongly criticized PS leader Riikka Purra’s statements against labor immigration outside the EU.

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The PS’ and Kokoomus’ “concern” about Finland’s minority youth gangs is dishonest and a political stunt

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Watching weekly Thursday’s question-and-answer session between the opposition and government can cause nausea. With parliamentary elections six months in April, expect opposition parties like the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) to increase their attacks against ALL migrants.

The truth about the PS and Kokoomus, the biggest and second-biggest opposition party, respectively, is that they have declared hostile and open warfare against migrants and minorities in Finland.

Making up fear scenarios and copying the success of the Sweden Democrats in September’s elections in Sweden is what the PS and Kokoomus want to convey to their prospective voters.

The debate about youth gangs in Finland shows the social inequality that migrants and minority youths suffer in Finland. Read the full story here.

Mark my words, after the April parliamentary election, those xenophobic cries will simmer down. The ever-hostile rhetoric of the opposition has nothing to do with solving migration or gang violence. They are deceitful and an election stunt to lure voters.

Kokoomus must look a bit worried about the elections in Sweden. The open support of their sister party, the Moderates, enabled the Sweden Democrats to become the biggest right-wing party.

The lesson we learn repeatedly is that right-wing parties that support far-right ones lose support. Why would you vote for a party that is a lighter version of the real xenophobic thing?

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Third culture: Misconceptions like “traveling opens your mind.” Answer: Not always.

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Third culture children are those who grow up in a country other than their parents’.

I have traveled since I was a year and a half between continents and boarded airplanes throughout my life like buses and heard many times a given assumption that traveling is supposed to open your mind.

True or false?

FACT 1: While traveling may sometimes broaden your horizons about different countries, cultures, and peoples, it may have the opposite effect and reinforce your prejudices and racism toward others.

FACT 2: While traveling opens your mind to the world, your peers may not like your “open” views. It is a classic situation that may lead to bullying. Your difference becomes a source of scorn.

My eighth-grade classmates in 1968. While I hope some of these students had a pleasant journey through middle school, mine was marred by mistrust, ridicule, outsiderness, rejection, and ostracism. I survived Blessed Sacrament and became a stronger person from it. This picture has been posted on social media. I hope my former classmates don’t mind if they appear in this post.

I attended a conservative Catholic middle school in Hollywood, California. Since I had traveled so much and lived in many countries during those early teen years, my view of the world was very different from my classmates.

The situation led to bullying, even by the teachers.

One of these teachers was Vincent Orlando, who taught history. I must have been 13 or 14 years old at the time.

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How the Finnish media Others racialized pupils

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One of the casualties of the war in Ukraine will be social rights and the recognition of racialized people in Finland. Are we witnessing more aggressive reporting as a result?

Helsingin Sanomat published Wednesday a whole spread about how “over half of the students at several schools in Espoo don’t speak Finnish as their mother tongue.”

And it leads the story claiming that a researcher warns that what is happening in Espoo is a part of a “worrisome” European trend.

Sounds pretty sensationalist, right?

To top it off, Yle published a survey a day earlier showing that a majority of Russian speakers in Finland have a negative view of the country’s membership in Nato.

The Yle story labels Russians in such a toxic way that it feeds the Russophobia beast that resides inside many Finns.

The story can only be accessed through a paywall.

The Helsingin Sanomat, like the Yle survey, have a common message: Don’t trust “foreigners.” They are a problem.

Another question that the Helsingin Sanomat article raises is the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS).* We have heard for a long time how the Islamophobic party has spread ethnonationalist views and the great replacement theory.

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How will we treat Ukrainian refugees in Finland?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The interior ministry estimates “tens of thousands” Ukrainians moving to Finland as a result of the war in that country, according to  Yle News. There are about 7,000 Ukrainians in Finland, but Anna Rundgren, a ministry of interior senior specialist, believes that the actual figure is several times higher.

In 2015, the country saw a record influx of people coming here. Thirty-two thousand four hundred seventy-six asylum seekers, mainly from Iraq (20,485) and Afghanistan (5,214), came to Finland in that historic year. The country’s first wave of refugees was in 1921 when some 6,500 Russians from Kronstadt island in the Gulf of Finland fled the Bolsheviks.

Any sensible person should understand that the Ukrainian newcomers are an important human asset to the country. If we want to make Finland their new home, we must also treat them with respect and be vigilant so they will not fall prey to human trafficking and exploitation.

Read the full story here.

The treatment that some Iraqis, Afghans, and other non-EU asylum seekers received in Finland from 2015 was shameful in some cases. In May 2016, Migrant Tales, Rovaniemi-based daily Lapin Kansa, and the asylum seekers of the Kolari asylum reception center forced the Red Cross to fire the deputy manager of the camp Jari Sillantie.

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A-Studio: Riikka Purra wants to tighten Finnish citizenship law, do away with pull factors

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Riikka Purra, the favorite to win the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* leadership at the party’s annual meeting over the weekend, said Wednesday at Yle’s A-Studio was one of the many steps she took wants to tighten citizenship laws.

This summer, the first vice president of the PS said that the party would not join any government that would not tighten “significantly” immigration policy.

Riikka Purra and Sakari Puisto at Yle’s A-Studio.

The present chairperson of the party, Jussi Halla-aho made a surprise announcement in June that he would step down as party chairperson.

Even if Purra did not mention how she would tighten citizenship laws, members of the PS have spoken of raising the requirement for citizenship from five years to as much as ten years.

Purra also victimized as usual low-wage migrants and how family reunification laws should also be tightened further.

She claimed that Finland’s family reunification laws are not as tight as Sweden’s. Factcheck?

Some see these proposed changes in the immigration law and limiting social welfare to migrants and even Finns as the neo-conservative fact of the party.

Few will argue that if the PS is in government, it will severely undermine the rights of migrants, workers, and groups like single mothers.

Even if there is a lot of hostility and bravado, especially in Purra’s comments, it is clear that it will be difficult to recognize Finland if the next prime minister of Finland is from an Islamophobic party like the PS.

Biden inauguration: Words of unity and inclusion that reverberate in Finland

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After four years of chaos and division, an illness that even inflicted the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and politicians in other parties that sow division heard long-overdue healing words.

Without losing sight of the wars, CIA-inspired coups, and the human destruction brought on by the United States, it took a despot-inspired president like Donald Trump to give US’ exceptionalism a forceful blow.

President Joe Biden taking the oath of office and poet Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet. Source: Washington Post

The division and hatred sowed in the United States have long roots in the country’s history and are also present in Finland as our population becomes more diverse culturally and ethnically.

One party, the PS, has built its politics on sowing ethnic hatred, rage, violence, and bigotry on brown Finns and other people of color. Politicians in the National Coalition Party, Christian Democrats, and others have flirted with such toxic ideas.

President Joe Biden is correct in stating that we must not stand idle or be silent. “Uniting to fight the foes we face: anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness, and hopelessness. With unity, we can do great things, important things,” he said in his inaugural speech.  

Are the same foes that Biden cites the same ones sowing discord in Finland?

I believe so.

A politician who spreads racism lives in constant conflict. How can he or she accept that some people have all the rights and others only on paper?

Twenty-two-year-old Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet ever, offered us today in Finland and the EU some sobering thoughts in her poem, The Hill We, Climb:”

“And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.”

Kotoutuminen #10: Misleading expectations that will keep you (dis)integrated

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Many, if not most migrants who have moved to Finland, have heard the following claim: Learn the language, and presto you are integrated.

While learning the language of your new homeland helps, it is only one of many things that will help you adapt to society.

Finland’s integration policy is similar to Sleeping Beauty. It is waiting for a handsome white prince (a super migrant, perhaps?) to kiss and wake her up. When that happens, our problems will vanish and we will live happily ever after. Source: Disney.,

Erna Bödström’s dissertation, “Welcome to Fantasy Finland,” points out a lot of facts why Finland’s official integration process is selective and exclusive.

Apart from painting a rosy picture of white Finnish society where visible migrants are sometimes doing menial work, integration does not promote interaction between white Finns and migrants and visible minorities.

Another observation that Bödström makes is that there is nothing in the integration brochures about racism and how difficult it is to find work.

Bödström sees integration as a process where the newly arrived resident becomes familiar with the social services and entering the labor market.

Some politicians, as we saw during the hysterical reaction of the Oulu sexual assault cases, claimed outright that Finland’s integration program has failed.

Failed?

True.

The integration program is, in many respects, a tool used by the state to show off its exceptionalism and society’s best side. Another role it appears to have is to exclude newcomers and minorities from gaining social and political power.

See also:

*Kotoutiminen is a he Finnish term for integration. It came about in the late-1990s because there was no such term in the Finnish language.

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