Thank you Social Democrat MP Eero Heinäluoma for improving immigrants’ lives in Finland. Some students told me that people stopped them on the street and asked them that they should leave Finland because there is no work for them.
I wonder how many immigrants have been harassed as a result of Heinäluoma’s statement?
UPDATE (May 8): An interesting development in the immigration debate in Finland is that more people like Akava union chairman Matti Viljanen have spoken against Heinäluoma’s comment on immigrants. He said that Akava supports the government’s initiative to make it easier for labor immigrants to move to Finland. Viljanen expressed concern over how racism is overtaken the ongoing immigration debate.
In an interview in the Swedish daily HBL, the SDP MP said that labor immigrants that come to Finland will fuel racism because they will take jobs away from Finns. In the statement, Heinäluoma indirectly condoned racism since it stopped immigrants from taking jobs from Finns.
The MP conveniently forgot that 2.7% of Finland’s population are foreigners and that unemployment among the immigrant community stood at a lofty 26% at the end of 2009.
Does anyone need any further explanation why racism continues to be an issue in Finland?
Nobody can force anyone to give a job to an immigrant. Unemployment has hit Finns too over the years. The immigrants are facing reality in Finland regardless of what the cause. I can remember when we came to Canada. They called us DP’s and gave us a rough time. We were picked on in schools and discriminated against. What is this? It is reality. Do we hate Canadians for having put us through this? No. We persevered and came through just fine because we didn’t care what we did to earn a living. If a person is unemployed for a long time, you have to ask, why? You can’t blame it on racism forever.
Hi Osmo, gathering from you name you must be a Finnish Canadian. When you speak of that kind of treatment you got, which decade are we speaking of? Even though harassing people because of their background is “a reality,” there is no reason why it should be tolerated. The only thing that has to be done is to follow the law. In Finland, as in other western democracies, racism is a punishable crime. There are many factors for long-term unemployment. One of these can be the lack of equal opportunity in society.
Heinäluoma and others like him are the ones fueling racism and that happens to be a punishable offense in Finland. Not that anybody would ever dare drag a politician to jail for having committed a crime, even when it reaches the extreme of firing an unregistered gun (c.f. Tony Halme case).
Hi Martin-Éric, why, then does not sombody do something and sue the politician for inciting racism and hatred towards minorities.
Ask those politicans what they would think about the idea of exchanging those 140.000 immigrants in Finland with the 240.000 Finns living/working abroad… 🙂
xyz, you make a good point. The problem with some Finnish politicians is that they still live in the stone age with respect to ethnic relations. Do they know or are they playing stupid to cash in politically?