Finland's government this week revealed its state budget plans for the final two years of its term in office, with the topline figure of one billion euros in cuts grabbing the headlines.
Less attention was, however, given to an item far down the laundry list of proposed cuts — the government's plan to significantly reduce funding for integration services.
In this episode, APN visits the International House in Tampere — a one-stop shop for the city's immigrant population to get help on everything from legal advice to finding a job — and hears about what these services currently offer, and what losing them might mean.
"It's like getting the advice of thousands of people who have come here before you," Inna, who fled her native Ukraine in the months after Russia's invasion in 2022, tells APN.
Rizhna Khorshid, team leader with the multilingual guidance unit, notes that helping people in the early days of their arrival prevents them from suffering more intractable problems later on.
"If they fall through the cracks in the beginning it's very difficult to catch them later," Khorshid tells the show. "The whole purpose of these services is to grab them from the beginning so that they can independently become active members of the society in the future."
This is especially true for a newcomer's employment prospects, Khorshid's colleague Mari Taverne says.
"If a person doesn’t have access to integration services such as language courses, it will take them much longer to get a job," Taverne adds.
Controversial comments
We also delve into the racism row that overshadowed the government's budget negotiations, a furore sparked by Finns Party MP Teemu Keskisarja's controversial comments about "low quality" immigrants coming to Finland.
"Insulted," Yle Arabic journalist Esraa Ismaeel Saed tells APN about the reaction among Finland's Arabic-speaking community to Keskisarja's comments. "It's also very surprising for some people, because since when are human beings judged by their quality? It's really sad to hear, especially here in Finland."
This is not the first time this government has found itself at the centre of a racism storm, and Helsingin Sanomat's political reporter Marko Junkkari tells APN that the Finns Party's need to address its plummeting support will likely lead to more such controversies.
"I think we will see more scandals, we will see more people saying more things that the prime minister doesn't like. We will see what happens, but I'm pretty sure that that wasn't the last of them," Junkkari says.
We also round up the rest of the week's news from Finland, including some practical advice from Yle News reporter Matt Schilke on what to do if you encounter a bear in the Finnish forest.
Listen to the episode via this embedded player, on Yle Areena, via Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ronan Browne presented this episode of All Points North and the sound engineer was Matias Puumala.
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