I was surprised to read the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party’s municipal election program on refugees. It states that municipalities should not accept refugees because the best way to help these people is in refugee camps bordering their country.
Finland holds municipal elections on October 28. The PS are expected to be one of the clear winners of the election, according to some polls.
Read the PS municipal election program here (in Finnish).
It isn’t surprising that an anti-immigration party like the PS believes that refugees would be “culturally closer at home” in such camps.
The PS solution to the refugee problem is to keep them as far as possible from Finland no matter how desperate their situation. Source: Benedict Wachira blog.
On top of this, PS chairman Timo Soini said today on YLE that he’s not against immigration but suggested that only super immigrants should move to Finland.
Soini said that his party wants to help Finland’s needy such as the poor, pensioners and marginalized people. For the PS, refugees do not belong in the latter group.
In his usual populist style, Soini said that Finns should not change their way of life because of immigrants.
For anyone curious, but not too enthusiastic to read the generic hubbub that nation wide programs for municipal elections always are, the refugee policies are discussed at page 21.
I presume the sentence Enrique refers to is this: “Perussuomalaisten mielestä valtion olisikin järkevämpää tukea auttamista lähtömaata lähempänä olevilla alueilla, jolloin todennäköisesti saadaan aikaan sama tai jopa parempi lopputulos pienemmillä taloudellisilla resursseilla.”
That talks about areas closer to their home countries, and does not necessarily mean the refugee camps (though in practice, it often would).