Finland's treatment of asylum seekers backfires

I already had a post planned out and I even began writing it. But before I could finish it, something happened that I simply can't ignore. The thing is that in response to the 2015 refugee crisis, Finland's current government led by prime minister Juha Sipilä has made some questionable changes to our immigration policy, especially when it comes to the treatment of asylum seekers. This has led to a massive increase in the percentage of rejected applications and recently news stories have revealed the dark consequences this has. The worst part is that the government was warned this would happen, but they chose to push through the changes to legislation anyway and has refused to scale back their changes despite heavy criticism from the opposition and groups like Amnesty International.

What changes have they made? For one, they made restrictions to the access for legal help for asylum seekers. In court, asylum seekers can't be represented by private law firms, meaning they have to rely on public legal aid offices. The Finnish Bar Association criticized this decision over fears that the legal aid offices wouldn't have the necessary resources to properly perform the task. Also, the rewards paid to attorneys representing asylum seekers were changed, meaning instead of being paid by the hour, they are paid a certain amount, meaning it might not be worth it to take difficult cases. The window during which you can appeal your case was also shortened from four weeks to three weeks. In order to handle the high number of applications, immigration officials were told to make faster decision, apart from which, around 400 more people we hired to make decisions. There have been questions asked on whether or not the new people hired were given proper training. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Access to legal help has been restricted while on the other hand, the process has been sped up, which probably explains a lot.

Before going any further, we have to talk a bit about the Dublin Regulation. This is an EU law which determines which member state has to examine application for asylum. There are also three non-EU states that are a part of the system. To put it simply, the regulation states that the application has to be examined by the first country an asylum seeker arrives in. As you might guess, the system is not perfect, so in practice it means the first country the person in question first applies for asylum. What this means, is that if you apply for asylum in, let's say in Estonia and get rejected by the Estonian officials, you can't start the asylum process from the beginning in another member state. So for example, if in this hypothetical situation our asylum seeker would cross the border to neighboring Latvia to apply for asylum there, the Latvian authorities would have the right to deport them back to Estonia. And now we get to the darker stuff.

Just a few days ago, news broke that courts in Lyon and Toulouse in France had decided not to deport three asylum seekers back to countries they had previously applied for asylum in, going against the Dublin Regulation. One of these three was an Iraqi man who's application was rejected in Finland. The courts sighted non-refoulement, a principle of international law forbidding countries receiving asylum seekers from returning them to countries where they have a likely chance to face persecution. In other words, the French court had doubts on whether or not Finland's immigration policy does enough to protect people who may potentially face death in their native countries. This is problematic to say the least. In response to this news, Green League MP Ville Niinistö filed a question to the government over their immigration policy. Then just after this, news broke that an Iraqi man who's asylum applications was rejected by Finnish authorities had been shot dead in Baghdad mere weeks after repatriation.

The man in question was a 46-year-old man named Ali. According to his own story, he worked as a police officer in Iraq before leaving the country and arriving in Finland in 2015, with his then 19-year-old daughter Noor. According to Ali's story, he took his work seriously and refused to take bribes, which caused him to face the ire of some armed groups operating in the country. Ali decided to return to Iraq voluntarily, while his daughter Noor still remains in Finland waiting for deportation. Since arriving in Finland, Noor had married an Iraqi man living here and the couple has two daughters. Just like her, the small children are facing deportation as well, with the immigration service claiming that it would be in the "interest of the children" to be raised in their "home country" of Iraq, surrounded by their relatives. Again, the two children were born in Finland, not Iraq and their father lives here, meaning that if Noor getting deported would break up the family. Also, considering the fact that their grandfather died mere weeks after returning to Iraq, can it really be considered safe for them to return?

Recently Finnish immigration system has received criticism from UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. The organizations concern is that Finland has increased the use of the concept of "internal flight" as a reason to reject applications. Essentially, the idea is that a person can be safely returned to another part of their native country than where they originally left from. Unfortunately, the response to this criticism from Jorma Vuorio, the leader of the Finnish immigration agency has been dismissive. As you can read from the article I linked above, Vuorio is pretty much dismissing the criticism because the organizations views are not binding. In the Finnish article his comments were at least painted as more dismissive. The original article was actually in Swedish, which I'm not too fluent in, so I can't comment on that. Whatever he originally said, I think it's a questionable to say the least to try dismiss criticism from international organizations. UNHCR was founded for the specific reason of helping refugees and I think it's fair to say that if they point out flaws in a country's system, there really is something wrong.

What has the response to these news been? Well, as I mentioned, Green League MP Ville Niinistö filed an official question to the government over their immigration policy. Multiple high ranking politicians on the left have been heavily criticizing the governments policies on this issue. The government on the other hand has pretty much refused to take any responsibility over their policies and as I just mentioned, the immigration officials haven't done that either. And unfortunately, based on the political developments I've seen in last few years, I'm skeptical that they actually will change anything. But, if you think I'm giving up, you're mistaken. Finland is seeing a parliamentary election next year so if nothing else, this will be a pretty major part of the election. But, we shall see.

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