REBUTTAL: “Alarmist worst-case scenarios do not promote integration”

Frank Johansson

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By Frank Johansson
     
      Ilkka Salmi, the head of the Security Police, and Jorma Vuorio, director-general of the Finnish Immigration Service, want more resources to be allocated to the integration of immigrants. This is very good.
      However, the actual message of the writers appears to be one of sounding the alarm over potential threats and apportioning guilt on people fleeing human rights violations. Neither of these promote the integration and assimiliation of immigrants.
      The writers link asylum-seekers with terrorism and gang warfare through a comparison with France and Sweden which lacks credibility. The situations in both of those countries differ sharply from that in Finland both historically and numerically.
     
The increase in the number of asylum-seekers has sparked unnecessary hysteria. The way that the writers compare numbers of asylum applicants in 2008 and 2007 is misleading, because they fail to mention that in 2007 the figure was at a record low.
      In the “record year” 2008 there were just 74 more people seeking asylum in Finland than in 2004. Already in 1992, 3,634 people came to Finland. If Finland had started to develop its ability to handle asylum applications already in the 1990s - something which is an international obligation, and not a choice - we would have no problem in handling the 6,000 applications predicted for this year.
     
The main reasons why people flee from Iraq and Somalia are the wars that are taking place in these countries, and the persecution that the people there experience.
      The article by Salmi and Vuorio is completely lacking in the human rights perspective.
      One would hope for a broader point of view from the director-general from the Immigration Service, and also from SUPO.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 7.6.2009
     
     
The writer Frank Johansson is the executive director of the Finnish section of Amnesty International.

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 DEBATE: “Time running out on immigrant integration”

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