Comment: This is a tragic end to a long saga between the late Eveline Fedayel to remain in Finland with her son. After a number of applications to the Finnish Immigration Service, Fedayel whose illness was life-threatening was supposed to leave the county in June. You can read more on the case by visiting Helsingin Sanomat.
In my opinion, this case is tragic and shows what happens when public servants become inflexible in a situation that requires a dose of common sense and compassion.
What are your thoughts on the topic?
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Eveline Fadayel, 65, an Egyptian woman who was granted a residence permit in Finland after a lengthy appeal process last month, died from a long-term illness early on Tuesday, the Finnish Ecumenical Council said.
Last year, the ailing woman’s battle to remain in the country to live with her sons in Vantaa triggered a debate about Finland’s residence permit legislation.
Eveline Fadayel (Photo Kimmo Mäntylä)
The Finnish Immigration Service’s decision to grant the residence permit came after the European Court of Human Rights condemned the Finnish authorities’ plans to remove Fadayel from the country.
STT
Well, leftists in general and multiculturalists in particularly all for our laws and constitution, as long as it’s not immigration laws.
–Well, leftists in general and multiculturalists in particularly all for our laws and constitution, as long as it’s not immigration laws.
Does this make any sense?
lol@Tony the Toby
Your previous comment on this subject was:
The truth is, you really haven’t got a clue but you think you should comment anyway. For all of your bluster about assimilation, this is the most absolutely unFinnish thing you can do.
For the record: we know that you are there. You don’t have to remind us with constant inanities.
My understanding is that ECtHR imposed a stay of execution on expulsion measures in this case pending its own examination of the human rights aspects. I don’t believe the court entered a finding on the merits of complaint against Finland.
More generally, it is interesting how the prompt legislative attention promised by various prominent politicians has failed to materialise. The surprising thing here is not so much that the promise was not kept – nobody with any understanding of the Finnish immigration system expected otherwise – but that these recent cases generated sufficient public reaction to elicit such promises in the first place.
My own recollection of the offending statutory provision is that this was the outcome of party political horse trading and was one of the conditions imposed by the National Coalition Party for supporting the associated Aliens Act amendment package. Cases of present kind were freely predicted at this time. To be fair to the Coalition Party, they were concerned at the potential costs of the more humane approach that was originally proposed. Regardless of the promises made by the sponsors in grandparent immigration cases, it is not legally possible to opt out of mandatory health and social welfare provision. This means that the health and social welfare systems must be adequately resourced to meet the potential costs of this immigration. There are arguments both ways here, but the Coalition Party view was not completely off the wall.
“Does this make any sense?”
Well tell us then, do you think illegals should be deported?
The view point was that the family would provide for the grandparent and not the state.
In today’s economic climate this view is very misguided. The head of the family could be the next victim in off a wave of redundancies and therefore the state would have look after all the family.
A law like the “Grandmothers law” would have never been passed in or until the economic climate would have approved.
And this close to a election “Major laws” rarely get passed
View
You are essentially explaining what I said, but this is a very complex question indeed.
We already apply criteria that amount to a means test in some cases of temporary spousal immigration and foreign students, but this has no relevance to immigration for permanent settlement, nor is there any need for actuarial calculations concerning the risk that a guarantor will not be able to honour a guarantee that a permanent immigrant will not become a burden on the public purse. This kind of language is only used by countries that lack universal mandatory health and welfare systems (such as the USA).
The crucial point for Finland is that nobody can voluntarily relinquish their rights under the health and welfare system. This is not the same as voluntarily declining to exercise those rights (we have heard at least one prospective immigrant in this blog declaring that s/he will never claim anything in Finland, though I suspect that s/he is unaware of the huge financial sacrifice involved in declining all public services while nevertheless paying tax on an earned income that is high enough for this to be feasible). Central and local government must nevertheless budget on the assumption that everyone living in Finland has access to public services according to need. You may carry a card saying do not resuscitate unless financially secure, but it would be a breach of duty for any public health care employee to comply with such a request.
Elderly people are entitled to a considerable range of public services based on need, and this is a significant cost factor affecting immigration by the retired parents of immigrants.
Of course these cost factors also apply to foreign spouses and children, but we do not exclude such immigrants.
On the other hand, the economic impact of remittances to dependent relatives living abroad can also be considerable. Families in Finland can also be severely debilitated by the stress that is involved in trying to care for these relatives remotely. Businesses in Finland can be disrupted by the constructive expulsion of key employees, whereas foreign investment of financial resources and skills may be affected by the ability of migrating specialists to provide housing for their elderly parents. The ability to do this already influences the migration choices made by leading professionals from China and India. I suspect that if Nokia Corporation advised the Finnish government that it is considering the transfer of its R&D department to a location that is more accommodating towards the parents of Chinese and Indian engineers, then these foreign engineers would suddenly discover that their parents were “wholly dependent” and qualified to move after all. Such is realpolitik.
The fear that elderly and infirm visitors will be unwilling or even unable to leave the country tends to deter immigration authorities from issuing visas to these visitors, whereas attempts to expel them for overstaying can easily cause humanitarian and human rights problems of the kind seen recently. I understand that Finland already has the worst human rights record in the Nordic countries in terms of the total number of complaints upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, despite the fact that we joined the Council of Europe 40 years later(!)
It is because these questions are so complex that nobody who is seriously ITK expected a change in the law to happen quickly. I would nevertheless be surprised if the present policy survives for more than 5 years, which is the normal gestation period for reform in this field.