Photograph to be included in foreigners’ residence permit stickers
|
|
Residence permits for foreigners living in Finland are to contain a photograph of the holder in the future. A working group of the Ministry of the Interior believes that such a change would enhance overall security, lead to greater efficiency in controls, and make falsification of residence permits more difficult.
The working group presented its proposals to Interior Minister Kari Rajamäki on Thursday.
Travellers’ visas to Finland already have photographs of the bearer on the sticker.
Under the proposal, an applicant for a residence permit will be required to include a high-quality photograph with the application. The photograph is to be scanned and entered into the Register of Aliens.
The group proposes that children would also be required to have a residence permit sticker with a photograph, regardless of whether or not the child has a travel document of his or her own. The child’s residence permit sticker could be pasted into the parent’s passport.
"This would be a way to reduce the practice of sending children alone to Finland for the purpose of seeking asylum, and it could also prevent trafficking in children", the working group says.
Currently, it is enough to have the child’s name in the passport, which makes it very difficult to ascertain the child’s identity during a border check.
Inspector Pasi Nokelainen of the Finnish Border Guard says that a residence permit sticker with a photograph would make it easier and faster to determine the authenticity of a document, and the identity of the bearer, because the photograph in the document could be compared directly with the one in the official database.
The working group had no proposal for when the residence permit with a photograph should be introduced. Technically, such a move would be possible in September at the earliest.
The proposed change would be a temporary measure; in a few years’ time the European Union is planning to introduce a special residence permit identification card. In addition to a photograph, the EU residence permit ID card would also include a fingerprint as biometric identification.
Helsingin Sanomat
|
| 7.4.2006 - TODAY |
 Photograph to be included in foreigners’ residence permit stickers
|
|
