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Technical bottleneck leaves thousands of residence permit applicants in Finland unanswered

Xinhua, March 1, 2017 Adjust font size:

A major delay in the processing of renewals of Finnish residence and work permits from people outside the EU/ETA has dismayed applicants and antagonized employers.

Tiina Suominen, Director of Immigration at the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) told Xinhua on Monday the delays have been caused by the transfer of the processing of renewals from the police to the Migration Service.

Suominen said the number of unfinished cases was a surprise. Many applicants had apparently wanted to hand in their papers locally to the police as it was still feasible.

From the start of 2017, the customer service of Migri has to be used and Migri offices are much fewer in number compared to the police service units. Applications can be done electronically on line, however.

"Some nine thousand residence applications were unprocessed at the time of the administrative change at the turn of the year. Some 900 were work based applications," she said.

A press release from Migri dated on Tuesday said decisions have been made on 2,100 applicants out of the 9,000 in total, some 1,100 are being processed and the rest of about 5,800 are still waiting to be processed.

The backlog is being worked on with overtime, but applicants may have to wait even two months more, she added. Suominen assured the agency will do its best to serve its clients.

The police force had largely used paper documents, and thus Migri has to scan the documents first, which has added to the workload.

The situation is worst for people who have gone outside the EU and presumed the permits to be ready when they return. Now they may have to await abroad.

Mikko Rasanen, a senior adviser in the Confederation of Industries told Xinhua the situation was unexpected. "We had been assured no problems would arise from the transfer, but apparently the paper work transferred from police stations was overwhelming," he said.

Residence and work permit holders are allowed to remain in Finland and continue working while a renewal process is under way, he noted. "But those who have for one reason or another decided to leave the Schengen area face problems in travelling back to Finland, if the permits have expired," Rasanen said.

The average processing time for an expert level employee in Finland has been 18 days only. For regular skilled labor, the time may be as much as half a year as the labour market need has to be verified.

Rasanen underlined it has been the longstanding view of the industries that work-based immigration should be as easy as possible. "It is not always easy to find people who match Finnish needs and who actually want to come to work in Finland," said Rasanen.

"When such a person has been found, the administrative hassle should be minimized. Currently, administrative needs require the applicants to travel to a Finnish mission for identification, for example," Rasanen added.

Settling down in Finland is not always easy either, particularly if family members accompany the permit holder, Rasanen commented.

The delay in processing residence and work permits is not associated with the increase in the number of asylum seekers in Finland, interviewees said. Endit