On to my reply.
First of all, I mistakenly assumed the number the Finnish immigration office gives on their page for admitted refugees is, in fact, the total number of refugees admitted to Finland. Apparently it isn't, so my bad.
It may not seem like a lot, but it's a lot for a country Finland's size. My "admitting everyone" in any case referred to a potential future situation where the number of applicants has risen sharply. Which is not all that potential anymore, now that their number has in fact risen sharply.
The number has risen sharply, but this is not indicative of a general trend. In fact, the number of refugee admissions provides an excellent example of how fundamentally dishonest people, like one J* H*-A* use statistics. Here, from the Finnish Immigration Service, are the numbers for refugee applications received per year in the 2000's.
2000: 3170
2001: 1651
2002: 3443
2003: 3221
2004: 3861
2005: 3574
2006: 2324
2007: 1505
2008: 4035
As you can see, 2007 was a record low in applications in the 2000's, while the 4035 applications of last year are only 200 more than in 2004. Looking at the numbers, there is so far no clear rising trend. So your potential future situation is a possible future situation.
Also, how is slightly less than 2000 refugee admissions in a year "a lot for a country like Finland"? That's, what, 0.0004 percent of our population of five million? Each year there are some 60 000 Finnish people born; admitting 2 000 refugees in addition to them doesn't exactly unbalance our population structure dramatically.
I don't see how this is a lot for Finland in any way.
I did not say "for a single crime", but "for a single serious violent crime". I was not suggesting that we deport people for shoplifting, chewing khat or even having a minor fight or cheating sossu out of a bit of money. Shit happens. When shit start happening to the extent of aggravated robbery with assault and battery, it's time to shovel it out. To me it's monstrous to let them stay.
To me it's totally monstrous to suggest that if a person makes one mistake, they're deported from Finland forever. It's the height of naïvete to assume, like you do, that a population can be divided into criminals and non-criminals, and we should expel all the criminals. If a policy like that had a positive effect on crime rates, there would be no crime in Britain because they expelled everyone who committe a "single serious violent crime" to Australia.
However, I feel the constitutional issue is more important, and you're actually quoting the wrong part of the Constitution:
Perusoikeudet
6 §
Yhdenvertaisuus
Ihmiset ovat yhdenvertaisia lain edessä.
I believe a case can certainly be made that revoking the refugee status of a person immediately on their commiting a crime and expelling them in addition to the regular punishment is treating them less than equally.
And yes, it doesn't say "citizens". Human rights in general apply to humans, not just humans who are citizens of your particular polity. There are very good reasons for this.
Foreigners are less equal. They can't vote, and they usually need residence permits to stay in Finland. Foreigners can be deported for a single crime, and sometimes are. A person who has come here to work is denied a residence permit renewal if he or she loses the job just before the renewal and doesn't immediately find a new one. People who come here to work don't get the same social security as Finns until they get a permanent residence permit, and if their contract is short enough, they don't get any social security at all. I am not even talking about the status of students.
Refugees, on the other hand, are holy cows who are sometimes impossible to deport even after a series of convictions for aggravated assaults, batteries and robberies.
This is a disingenuous argument, for a simple reason. The juridical difference between a refugee and a foreign national is very simple. Most foreign nationals can be deported to their country of citizenship, but refugees are considered to be fleeing from persecution by that country, which is why deporting them is an entirely different matter from deporting, say, a British national.
Equality before the law doesn't mean everyone who lives in the country has to be allowed to vote or to be paid Social Security, it means they have to be treated the same before a court. And if a Finnish citizen is sentenced to four months for robbery, but a Somali refugee is sentenced to four months plus deportation to a war zone for the same robbery, then they're rather obviously not being treated equally before the law.
"Finland is admitting less than one thousand asylum seekers per year, and this number is not going to change dramatically despite the fearmongering going on."
Would you like to define "dramatically", and the timescale?
I've done all this already in my Finnish blog, but for the purposes of this discussion, I don't see the massive flood of refugees that hatemongers like Halla-aho are predicting. The claim is theirs, and they have no evidence for it except saying so.
"But the idea that "something's gotta give" is just exaggerating the nature of the problem so much that it's hard to understand where you're coming from. I don't understand this Finnish "refugee hysteria" at all."
That's simple. First of all, people have noticed that the refugees are very much overrepresented in violent crime statistics and underrepresented in the employment statistics. Second, we have the unfortunate example of other European countries in front of our eyes. And third, the number of applicants is up.
This is a handy summary, so let's get to it.
First of all, I direct you to Heikki Kerkkänen's massive post on "immigration criticism".
Miksi Suomen maahanmuuttajaväestöstä väestöosuuteensa keskimääräistä isompi osa syyllistyy seksuaalirikollisuuteen?
Keskimääräistä isompi osuus seksuaalirikollisuudessa tiettyjen kansalaisuusryhmien kohdalla (joilla siis on muun kuin Suomen passi) on paitsi Iivarin (Stakes 2006) tutkimuksissa että Oikeuspoliittisen tutkimuslaitoksen tutkimuksissa esiin tullut fakta, jonka kieltäminen ainoastaan hankaloittaa sosiaalityön kehittämistä ja tärkeiden sukupuolijärjestelmää koskevien keskustelujen rakentavaa ja järkevää aloittamista. Se on liian tärkeä sosiaalipoliittinen kysymys jätettäväksi Halla-ahon tapaisten ksenofobisten diletanttien reposteltavaksi.
Ensin täytyy muistaa, ketkä rikoksiin erityisesti syyllistyvät: nuoret miehet. Lisäksi täytyy katsoa perinpohjaisesti kaikki taustamuuttujat. Oikeuspoliittisen tutkimuslaitoksen mukaan maahanmuuttajarikollisuutta on
"selitetty ensinnäkin maahanmuuttaja- ja kantaväestön sosiaalisen aseman, ikä- ja sukupuolirakenteen ja muiden kriminologisten taustamuuttujien eroilla. Lisäksi maahanmuuttajien on todettu kohtaavan syrjintää taustansa vuoksi esimerkiksi työmarkkinoilla ja yleensä arkielämässään. (Esim. Diesen 2005, 256–257.) Sen vuoksi tilastollisessa tarkastelussa olisi tärkeää vakioida sosioekonominen asema, perhesuhteet, ammattiasema, koulutus ja muut heidän sosiaalista ja taloudellista asemaansa kuvaavat tekijät (Iivari 2006, 36–
37; vakiointiyrityksistä esimerkiksi Ahlberg 1996, 45)." (Niemi, Honkatukia&Lehti 2008, 274)
Ilman vakiointeja selittävät muuttujat menisivät persiilleen kuin perussuomalainen "maahanmuuttokritiikki", koska esimerkiksi väestöryhmien ikärakenne on Tilastokeskuksen mukaan alla olevan näköinen:
Vakiointien jälkeen maahanmuuttajaväestön rikollisuus on Stakesin erikoistutkija Juhani Iivarin "Tuomittu maahanmuuttaja"(Stakes 2006)- teoksen mukaan 1,5- kertaista valtaväestöön nähden.
(...)
Väitän, että vakiointien jälkeinen rikollisuuden 1,5-kertaisuus on selitettävissä niillä eri tavoilla, joista Mukhtar Abib on puhunut (kursivointi meikäläisen, tarkoitettu allekirjoittamaan niitä asioita jotka itse näen keskeisimpinä):
"Moni somali on samaan tapaan sosiaalisesti huono-osainen kuin suomalaisetkin rikoksiin syyllistyneet. Mutta lisäksi heitä rasittaa syrjintä. Moni lapsi ja nuori kokee ahdistavaksi sen, että koulussa kaverit eivät hyväksy ja oman paikan löytäminen on vaikeaa. Kun lapsi yrittää kertoa kotona vanhemmilleen, että koulussa on ongelmia, tukea ei juuri tarjoudu, jos isä ja äiti ovat kielitaidottomia ja sopeutuminen suomalaiseen yhteiskuntaan kesken.
Tämä synnyttää vihaa ja katkeruutta. Tarjolla ei ehkä ole muuta puolustuskeinoa kuin samastua niihin suomalaisiin tai muunmaalaisiin nuoriin, jotka tekevät rikoksia.” (Helsingin
Sanomat 22.1.2006).
En allekirjoita Helsingin kaupungin sosiaaliviraston nuorisoyksikössä työskentelevän Abibin hieman ärsyke-reaktio-tyylistä näkemystä täysin, mutten näe sitä myöskään vääränä. Se on hyvä Helsingin Sanomien lehtijuttuun tehty tiivistys poikkeavien alakulttuuristen ryhmien synnyn lähtösyistä.
He uses rape as his example, but the same basic logic applies to all violent crime statistics. When we adjust for overrepresentation in the age groups that commit the most crime, the per capita violent crime committed by refugees is not markedly larger than that of the general population. When we take into account socioeconomic factors, the difference is easily accounted for.
So basically, taking all factors into account, refugees do actually commit crimes at approximately the same frequency as the general population.
Secondly, the unfortunate example of other European countries is something we have to be aware of, sure. But despite what Halla-aho and his like are peddling, Finland is a long way from having ethnic ghettos like those of Paris. What we need to learn from the situation in other European countries is how to stop it from happening here. In my opinion this means a stronger policy of integrating refugees and other immigrants into society, not demonizing them as criminals and trying to erect barriers of entry to stop them from coming here.
Third, the number of applicants is up from last year's record low, yes; we did this already. We'll have to see what happens. But applications would have to increase massively before we can really
**
To finish with your last thoughts:
I really wouldn't worry about refugees if they found jobs fast and committed crimes with approximately the same frequency as Finns. This is, unfortunately, not the case.
To start with finding jobs, this is a problem with our integration policies, not with the refugees themselves. I direct you to Eero Iloniemi's column in Nykypäivä:
Yksi maahanmuuton epämiellyttävistä totuuksista on, että heikko sosiaaliturva nopeuttaa integroitumista. Kun maahanmuuttajalla ei ole turvaverkkoa, hän on pakotettu etsimään töitä ja sopeutumaan.
Yhdysvallat on tästä selkein esimerkki. Se on onnistunut integroimaan uudet tulokkaat paremmin kuin yksikään toinen teollisuusvaltio. Yhdysvaltojen kansallisen maahanmuuttofoorumin (National Immigration Forum) mukaan maahanmuuttajat työllistyvät jopa kantaväestöä paremmin. Vaikka vain 11,5 prosenttia maan väestöstä on maahanmuuttajia, heidän osuutensa työvoimasta on 12,4 prosenttia.
Läntisistä teollisuusmaista vain Yhdysvallat, Kanada ja Australia ovat onnistuneet muuttamaan maahanmuuttajat kulusta tuloksi. Yhdysvalloissa maahanmuuttajilta saatavat verotulot ovat yli kymmenen kertaa suuremmat kuin heidän aiheuttamansa sosiaalimenot. Suomessa tilanne on lähes päinvastainen.
It's clear, to me, that the problem is not with the refugees but with our social security policy. We need to reorient our social security to encourage people to work.
In short, the reason refugees aren't finding jobs fast enough is, in my opinion, social democracy, not the refugees themselves. And as for violent crime, as I said, taking all factors into account refugees commit violent crime at approximately the same frequency as the Finnish population.
So this is my point: you don't need to worry. This is not nearly as big a problem as people like Jussi Halla-aho and other propagandists would have you believe. Nothing is going to "give" any time soon.
This is not to say that there aren't problems with refugees and their integration into Finnish society; far from it. I don't see any reason why we can't go about solving these problems in a constructive way and continue to admit refugees and other immigrants to Finland and see them become a net benefit to society.
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