HELSINGIN SANOMAT
INTERNATIONAL EDITION - HOME
Monday, August 30, 2010
newsinsidRecent years have seen a sharp rise in applications from Somalis living in Finland for family unification. The increase has been sixfold in the past four years, and nearly 5,000 requests are now awaiting processing by Finnish officials.
The main idea behind family unification is that a refugee who has been granted a residence permit in Finland, has been allowed to apply to allow his or her spouse or children to settle in Finland. In the past two years, however, there has been a sharp increase in the number of applications for foster children.
Jorma Vuorio, Director-General of the Finnish Immigration Service, says that Finland gets proportionally the highest number of applications for Somali foster children in all of Europe. He says that the number of family unification applications for Somali foster children began to grow when DNA tests began to be used to ascertain biological parenthood.
Somali League chairman Abdirashid Dirie attributes the increase in applications for foster children to the deterioration of the situation in Somalia in recent years, with an increase in fighting among the various factions.
“In our culture, relatives must care for the children of relatives if the parents die. I don’t think that there is anything more to this”, Dirie says.
Batulo Essak, a nurse, and a Green member of the Vantaa City Council agrees. “A long war affects the number of foster children. There are now vast numbers of fatherless and motherless children. All adults have to provide for the children of relatives. I am also providing for the children of my sister, because their father died”, Essak says.
Minister of Migration Astrid Thors (Swed. People’s Party) is calling for tighter regulations for family unification of refugees. She proposes that applicants should be required to have a passport that includes their fingerprints.
Somali applicants can apply for such passports from their diplomatic missions in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, or the Kenyan capital Nairobi - both cities with Finnish embassies where family unification applications are handled.
Sweden already requires passports from applicants, which has led to a reduction of unfounded applications.
Finnish law now provides for the biological testing of the ages of residence permit applicants who claim to be underage dependants of someone already living in Finland.
However, these tests can only be conducted in Finland. Age determination at the embassies in Addis Ababa and Nairobi is based on a visual evaluation by the Finnish official in question.
The Dutch and the Norwegians conduct biological tests in Africa.
The Ministry of the Interior suspects that some of the applications are without foundation, and that the surge in applications cannot be explained by the chaotic situation in Somalia alone.
The lopsided gender ratio also raises suspicions. A report by the ministry notes that 70 per cent of applications for foster children aged 13 to 17 in the first half of this year were for girls. However, in figures for the summer, requested by Helsingin Sanomat, there was no more imbalance.
The ministry’s report notes that there is a danger that the foster child system can be used as a means of human trafficking.
Somalis currently have to wait an average two years and four months for a decision on family unification. Under the law, a decision should come in nine months.
The Ministry of the Interior calculates that it would need EUR 1.8 million to dismantle the backlog of applications, and even this would only ease the backlog, but not eliminate it.
“Negative decisions cannot be handed down if no reason can be found for them”, observes Heikki Taskinen a high-ranking official at the Finnish Immigration Service. “If there are no resources, the proportion of positive decisions will increase significantly. Then there will inevitably be people among those coming to Finland, who do not meet the criteria.”
Source: HELSINGIN SANOMAT