Ministries want to increase occupational immigration into Finland

Skills should be better channeled and exploited

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A working group set up jointly by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labour wants to increase occupational immigration and to support the employment of immigrants. It proposes that a total of EUR 85 million, to be used between 2008 and 2012, should be allocated for this purpose in the upcoming government programme. In addition, further funding would come from the EU.
      According to a fresh report submitted by the working group, Finland should be more active in enticing foreign labour into the country. Moreover, the skills of educated immigrants already resident in Finland should be exploited more fully.
      "This is such an important issue and project, and one for which funding simply has to be found", says chair of the group Marita Savola, from the Ministry of Education.
     
The report reveals many obstacles that immigrants have been facing in Finland.
      Firstly, those immigrants who come to Finland to work are given almost no guidance on how to integrate into Finnish society.
      Furthermore, hardly any teachers with foreign background have been trained, even though there is a steady demand for them in Finnish schools with immigrant pupils.
      As there are no turnkey programmes for competence training, it is especially difficult for immigrants to get retraining and to complete their education in Finland in order that their existing foreign qualifications would match with the Finnish requirements.
      A majority of foreigners do not acquire Finnish recognition of their foreign studies and qualifications, as for example, the language requirements are hard to accomplish: they should have an almost perfect command of Finnish.
     
However, there is a consensus of opinion within the public administration on the support for immigrant employment, and several ministries were cooperating for the newly completed report.
      "Now it is up to the next government to show whether or not this issue is worth investing in", says Marita Savola.
      Next autumn, the situation for certain highly-educated immigrants could weaken, when the so-called Specima project comes to an end. The project was organised by the employment office of Turku and the University of Kuopio, and financed by the European Social Fund (ESF).
      Specima has involved a competence training programme for physicians, pharmacists, dentists, teachers, and nurses, among others.
      "Often highly-educated immigrants are unemployed or employed in unskilled positions, even though they may represent skill areas which face labour shortages", notes Hannu-Pekka Huttunen who is in charge of the Specima project.
      A shortage of labour already exists in certain critical areas in Southern Finland, for example in the transport and health care sectors, and the next worst situation is in trade and the construction industry.
      In order to prepare for a potential shortage of labour, which is looming in the future, the City of Helsinki has appointed its first director for immigrant issues. Dr. Annika Forsander, 41, took office on April 1st.
      Only around five to ten per cent of those foreign nationals moving to Finland at present do so primarily to study or to work. A much larger group are here for family reasons, or are refugees or so-called "returning Finns".


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Re-trained immigrants to alleviate shortage of pharmacists (10.1.2007)

Links:
  Ministry of Labour
  Finnish National Board of Education: Recognition of foreign studies and qualifications
  Ministry of Education

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