Frontier Guard warns against bringing unknown foreigners by car to Finland
Woman offered money to take foreign men into car in Stockholm bound for ship to Finland
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A Finnish woman who was sitting in her car in Stockholm waiting to get on board a car ferry bound for Finland early this month says she was approached by two foreign men who offered her money to take her onto the ship in her car.
The first man came to speak to the woman as she was waiting to get through the vehicle check-in and onto the car deck. He offered her the price of a ship ticket in exchange for giving him a ride.
The woman refused. The man repeated his offer a couple of times, and finally left. Shortly thereafter another man came to ask the same question, but the woman turned him down as well. Both men spoke English.
The woman, who works with issues related to foreigners in Finland, said that it was hard to determine the origin of the two, but that they did not appear to be from the Nordic Countries.
"I didn’t start asking them anything. I simply refused to give them a ride."
Janne Piiroinen, the head of the border inspection section in Helsinki, says that the woman did the right thing when she turned down the men’s request. He believes that the two were quite possibly trying to enter Finland illegally.
Piiroinen says that taking someone on board in those circumstances could expose the driver to prosecution for arranging illegal entry into Finland, or aiding and abetting violation of the state border. The punishment for both crimes is more severe than that which the illegal aliens themselves would face.
"The men perhaps thought that it would be easier for them to get into Finland if they were in a car next to a Nordic person", Piiroinen ponders.
The problem is probably not a very widespread one. Neither the shipping lines Viking Line and Silja Line, nor the Helsinki police, nor the border inspectors of Helsinki or Turku have heard of other cases in which motorists had been offered money for a ride onto a car deck. In any case, as both Finland and Sweden are signatories of the Schengen Treaty, travel between the two countries is not normally subject to border inspections.
Piiroinen says that would-be illegal entrants have occasionally tried to hide in cars en route to Finland in Estonia and Russia, but very few such attempts have been reported.
"We have wondered why there are not more such attempts. In other parts of Europe there have been these truck and container cases. We have imposed crackdowns to see if people are being smuggled in heavy road transport, but we have never found anybody", Piiroinen says.
However, a few would-be illegal aliens have been found in pleasure boats and cargo ships.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 19.9.2005 - TODAY |
 Frontier Guard warns against bringing unknown foreigners by car to Finland
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