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Ministry recommends six-month visa requirement for Slovaks
- On Monday the Finnish Ministry of the Interior forwarded a recommendation to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggesting the re-institution of visa requirements on citizens of Slovakia. The previous visa requirement was in force from last July to November, and on this occasion the request is for a six-month temporary term.
- The six months should be enough, in the view of Minister of the Interior Kari Häkämies, to bring about alterations in Finnish aliens legislation to cope with the current spate of asylum applications. Häkämies admitted that re-introducing visas for travellers from Slovakia was an extremely blunt and heavy weapon, and hoped that in future it would be possible to use the revamped Immigration Act in the reception of asylum-seekers.
- Readers of these pages will know some of the background to this matter, but briefly what has happened is that large numbers of Slovakian gypsies have arrived in Finland (rather more than 1000 last summer and increasing numbers in recent weeks) seeking asylum and claiming persecution at home. This has been part of a Europe-wide migration and has caused problems in a number of other EU countries. There is widespread sympathy for the plight of the Slovakian gypsies, whose educational and working conditions clearly leave much to be desired, but there is also a general consensus that they are not suffering persecution as such, and do not qualify for political asylum. Some are suspected of having turned the entire asylum-application venture into a means of travelling around Europe from one country to the next. For example around 10% of the ones who have arrived here in the last few weeks were among those who also attempted to gain entry last summer.
- This would all be perfectly straightforward, but Finnish legislation on the processing of asylum-seekers is extremely ponderous, and apparently requires upwards of six months before a negative decision can be handed down, even if the rejection is known practically immediately. In the case of last summer's influx of Slovakia gypsies, many left of their own accord after some months in Finland, knowing that sooner or later they would be expelled. The visa requirements in July were a stop-gap to prevent even greater numbers coming in.
- Clearly a better solution is to have some means of speeding up the asylum processing procedure, and this is what the latest visa requirement period must be used for.
- See earlier stories
here,
here, and
here.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 11.1.2000
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