HS Home 15.1.2002 - Numbers of asylum-seekers down by half; should reception centre network be downsized?

By Irja Hyvärinen

A total of roughly 1,600 individuals sought refuge and asylum in Finland in 2001. The figure for the previous year was just under 3,200. The reduction is directly attributable to the amendments to the Aliens Act passed in July 2000, which were designed to shorten the duration of the asylum application process and to discourage bogus applications from residents of countries considered safe.

Prior to the changes, Finland - like many other European countries - had encountered problems with large flows of such claimants, who were attracted by the very slow processing procedure.

Now a study is being prepared to examine whether it is also necessary to close some of the country’s reception centres, in the light of the dwindling number of asylum-seekers.

“During the course of this spring

, we shall have to consider whether it makes sense to maintain the current complement of centres”, says Veikko Pyykkönen, a senior planning officer at the Migration Division of the Ministry of Labour. He takes the view that there is no cause for any abrupt decision-making.

“There are a great many refugees on the move in Central Europe, and for instance Sweden had 23,571 asylum-seekers last year. This brings them pretty close to our doorstep”, Pyykkönen notes.

Finland currently runs 14 refugee reception centres. Around 2,300 people live in them. “At least for the time being we shall be going on with the same capacity”, says Pyykkönen.

Finland closed down three reception centres in 2001

, and a fourth, at Joutseno, was scaled back from 500 places to 150. In addition, so few unaccompanied children sought asylum last year that separate units for children were closed down at two centres.

The current occupancy rate at the reception centres is around 80%, or perhaps slightly less. Last year the Directorate of Immigration was able to clear the log-jam of asylum applications since more decisions were made than applications came in. The average processing time was around 15 months.

This spring roughly 300 refugees will be arriving in Finland from camps in Iran and Turkey. Nearly 230 of these people have fled from Afghanistan, and the others are from Iraq and Iran. All are so-called quota refugees. Finland is one of a dozen or so countries that takes refugees on a quota basis, with the numbers approved annually during national budget negotiations.

The 300 refugees were selected

from the camps last fall. They will not be coming to the reception centres unless it is in exceptional circumstances, as they have already been “placed” in municipalities that have signed on to the system.

In this case they will be going to Hyvinkää, Hämeenlinna, Kotka, and Mikkeli, according to Leni Salmelin, whose responsibilities at the Ministry of Labour include quota refugees and their placement. Municipalities took in around 1,200 persons in 2000; this figure included quota refugees, asylum-seekers who have received a favourable decision, and persons admitted under the family reunification scheme.

“Those who are coming later this year range from one-parent families to large families of nine persons, but all the locations have not been fully worked out as yet”, says Salmelin.

Finland currently takes around 750 quota refugees

each year, or roughly half as many again as during the 1990s. In certain years during the 1990s an additional quota of 200-500 refugees was admitted annually.

Their background is carefully documented through interviews at the camps, and security questions are handled by the Security Police.

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.1.2002