Family ties can outweigh criminal record in deportation decisions

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By Mikko Paakkanen
     
      A long line of property crime is not necessarily enough to get a foreigner deported from Finland if he or she has been in the country for a long time.
      Someone with refugee status can even commit a number of violent crimes without being sent out of the country. However, crimes involving drugs can get someone expelled more easily.
      Helsingin Sanomat went through the decisions handed down by the Helsinki Administrative Court on appeals against deportation decisions. There were 30 of them, or about half of the equivalent decisions made by all of Finland’s administrative courts.
      Most of the appeals, a total of 23, were for deportation. Five of the people in question were sent out of the country for illegally residing in Finland - not for any crimes they may have committed.
     
The issue of deporting criminals has been in public debate ever since the shootings at the Sello shopping mall in Espoo, because the gunman, a Kosovo Albanian, had committed a number of crimes before, but had not been deported.
      The law sets fairly vague standards for when a criminal should be deported. The total evaluation involves consideration of many other factors than crimes committed, such as family ties to Finland, and how long a foreigner has lived in Finland, and with what types of permits are involved.
      Last year officials - mainly the police - made 154 deportation recommendations to the Finnish Immigration Service. The Immigration Service decided to expel 124 of them.
      The decisions can be appealed to an administrative court.
     
Two such appeals came from Kosovo Albanians, each of whom had approximately equally strong ties with Finland. The younger one, 26 years old, had a wife and other relatives, while the older one, who was 39, had a child. Both arrived in Finland in 1992.
      The younger one had a record of a number of property crimes, such as theft and fraud involving instruments of payment. Some of the crimes were committed before he had reached the age of 18. He was allowed to stay in Finland, even though the Finnish Immigration Service recommended that he be deported.
     
The younger man’s crimes were not seen to be the most serious, and speaking against a deportation was the long time that he had spent in Finland.
      The older man had to leave, and was not allowed to appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court. His criminal record included an eight-year prison sentence for aggravated drug crime.
     
Drug crimes were the most common type of crime that led to the confirmation of a deportation decision at the Helsinki Administrative Court last year. More than half of those deported for criminal activities had a record of drug crime. The rest had mainly committed crimes of violence.
      One Estonian, who had a history of five aggravated drug crimes, was deported, even though citizens of the European Union are not sent out of the country easily.
     
Deporting a refugee also requires good reasons. Two Vietnamese men over the age of 50 had their refugee status revoked after they had both committed numerous crimes, but it only one of them was ordered deported.
      The men came to Finland as part of the country’s refugee quota in 1987 and 1990. Both had strong family ties to Finland. One had six children, a grandchild, and a wife, while the other had five children and lived with a woman.
      The criminal history was quite similar, including assaults and threats. Both had one incident of an aggravated assault and battery. The one who was ordered deported was the one who had come in 1987, who also had a six-year sentence for aggravated drug crime. He has applied for the right to appeal from the Supreme Administrative Court.
     
The Supreme Administrative Court established guidelines for deporting foreigners for crimes just over a year ago in decisions it made on three Somalis who had committed robberies, among other crimes.
      In the view of the court, the crimes in all three cases outweighed other factors, such as the men’s ties to Finland. The court later overturned one of the deportations, because it was felt that it would have been unreasonable to send him to Puntland, where he had never lived.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 31.1.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Somaliland wants to send deportee back to Finland (13.3.2009)
  Immigration Service does not want to reconsider deportation of Somali (18.2.2009)
  Remorseful Somali man awaiting deportation fears return to former home country (9.1.2009)
  Deportations of Somalis convicted of street robbery deferred (24.8.2007)
  Ombudsman for Minorities objects to deportations of Somali criminals (16.8.2006)
  Espoo shooting: why was Ibrahim Shkupolli not deported? (4.1.2010)

MIKKO PAAKKANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
mikko.paakkanen@hs.fi