Official statistics on immigration, demographic change and the related social impacts in Finland and across Europe. All data on this site is based on public, verified sources. The goal is to make statistics more accessible and to promote a fact-based immigration debate.
Common claims about immigration fact-checked against official statistics.
Immigration brings labour and fills the labour shortage.
Labour migrants exist, but they do not describe the whole flow: in OECD permanent-type inflows, work was 16% and family 55%. In 2024, 44.5% of refugee-origin people were outside the labour force entirely, and even of those in the labour force, 52.3% were unemployed. The foreign-background unemployment rate was 16.7% (native 6.6%).
Nearly a third of income support goes to foreign-language speakers.
More. According to Kela, foreign-language speakers received 24% of income support, 172 million euros, in 2017 and 41%, 408 million euros, in 2025. Their share of the main income-security benefits rose from 15% to 20%, about 1.8 billion euros. At the same time fewer of them draw support: 23% of foreign-language adults received income support in 2017 and 18% in 2025, while their number grew from 373,000 to 646,000.
The care worker shortage will be solved by immigration.
Immigration has already filled half of the care sector's growth. There were 202,862 care and health care workers in 2023, of whom 22,884, or 11.3%, were of foreign background, against 3.1% in 2010. Of the 35,440 workers added between 2010 and 2023, 17,622 were of foreign background. Among nurse-level professionals the foreign-background share was 4.4% and among physician-level specialists 7.8%. Of employed people of Philippine background, 43.5% work in care occupations.
Immigrants are not overrepresented in crime statistics.
In Statistics Finland suspect data, foreign-background people are about 2× their population share in all offences. For sexual offences, the overrepresentation of major refugee-origin countries in Finland is many times the native baseline: for example Iraq 14.6×, Syria 14.1×, and Afghanistan 10.0× (Statistics Finland 2024). Violent crime shows the same order of magnitude: Iraq 10.5×, Somalia 8.1× and Syria 7.2×. Age and sex standardisation lowers the figures somewhat, but does not explain all of the gap.
The map zooms out to Europe and the areas become countries. The figures come from Eurostat and national statistics for 2021–2025 and are not directly comparable with the Finnish municipal map.
The charts run from demographic change to economic effects, crime, migration and the asylum system, and societal effects. Under each chart's title is a short finding from its figures. The table and the sources are under the chart, and the share button gives a link, an image or the data as a CSV file.
The charts on benefit dependency and on taxes and incomes divide people of foreign background into five groups by background country. The groups come straight from the source, kuntaluvut.fi.
The chart of the share outside the labour force groups people by citizenship, and its groups are narrower. The large refugee countries are the same four, but Eastern Europe there means Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Estonia, and Western countries Sweden, Germany and the United States. The Middle East there is the Middle East without the large refugee countries.
In the other charts' menus, the quick choice Large refugee countries picks the same four: Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria.
Public debate on immigration has produced target figures and promises. Some of them can now be checked: the target year has arrived, or the number demanded has been reached.
This part collects the claims as they were stated and places the measured outcome beside them. The point is not to catch individual speakers out but to look at what followed from the targets. It opens with a map that shows, one year at a time, which countries people moved to Finland from and on what grounds.
In 1990, 1,186 foreign-born people moved to Finland. The largest origins were Sweden with 372 and the former Soviet Union with 341, and the third largest, Germany, sent 36 people. In 2024 the figure was 56,110, forty-seven times as many, led by the former Soviet Union with 8,048, Ukraine with 7,200 and the Philippines with 3,706.
The map shows this one year at a time. The thickness of an arc is the number of people who moved to Finland, the thin arc in the other direction is the people who moved from Finland to that country, and the colour says which grounds were the most common among that country's applicants that year.
The balance of grounds shifts more within a decade than the totals suggest. In 2015, 31,707 people applied for international protection and 5,976 on the basis of work. In 2019 work was the largest ground with 11,813 applications. In 2024 the largest was family with 22,267, and in 2025 work-based applications were down to 10,752 against 22,592 family-based ones.
The thickness of the map's arcs comes from this table: immigration and emigration by country of birth, whole country, from 1990 onwards. It covers every registered move, including those by EU citizens, who do not appear in residence permit statistics.
The map's colours come from this source: first residence permit applications on work, family and study grounds, plus asylum and temporary protection applications, by citizenship from 2015 onwards. The figures are applications lodged.
Below is the history of immigration to Finland one year at a time, from the year Finland acceded to the Refugee Convention. Each year carries its own figures and what was said about the arrivals at the time. The quotations are verbatim and each has its source beside it.
The emphasis is on speech. How presidents, ministers, party papers and letter-writers talked about arrivals has varied more than the numbers have, and often in the opposite direction. What is known about the same subjects today is collected in the knowledge base.
Finland acceded to the Geneva Refugee Convention. The implementing decrees were issued on 5 December 1968.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 129, lainaa: asetukset 812–813/1968On 6 May 1970 the Aliens Office reported 1,752 refugees residing in the country, a figure compiled for the 20th anniversary of the Geneva Convention.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 129A military junta seized power in Chile on 11 September 1973 and the first asylum seeker soon arrived at Finland's legation in Santiago. Finland took a group of one hundred.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 40–44By the end of 1975 Finland had received 151 refugees, of whom 32 to 42 had already moved on. The Chilean group stood at 118 in March, 92 of them Chilean citizens.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 44On 3 September 1976 the Ministry of the Interior appointed a committee to prepare a reform of aliens legislation. Finland had no Aliens Act, only the decree of 1958.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 55It would be more sensible to consider the forms and extent of financial aid than to daydream about bringing boat people to Finland. The number of refugees Finland could place would in any case be so small that it would make no difference to the refugee problem.
The governing party's paper rejected taking boat people. Five days later, after the government decided to take a hundred, the same paper wrote: "Now that this road has been taken..."
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 50, lainaa: Suomen Sosialidemokraatti 2.7. ja 7.7.1979The foreign press points an accusing finger at our country: every Western European country except Finland has taken in refugees.
The National Coalition Party's paper. The book notes that every governing party gave evasive statements.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 50, lainaa: Uusi Suomi 20.6.–5.7.1979The cabinet's foreign affairs committee refused the UN's request to take boat people on 21 June 1979 and decided on 4 July to take a hundred. The first arrived in the autumn.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 51Finland's first Aliens Act (400/1983) was passed on 26 April 1983 and entered into force on 1 March 1984. Its decree was late, so March 1984 ran without one.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 59 ja liite s. 185Finland admitted 134 disabled Indochinese refugees and 15 family members.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 51At the end of the year the cabinet's foreign affairs committee decided in principle to take about a hundred new refugees a year. This is the origin of the refugee quota. That same year the government had admitted nine refugees and ten family members.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 51In March 1986 Ilta-Sanomat measured support for relaxing immigration policy. It stood at 15 per cent of citizens. The Immigration Service's own history uses the figure to show that four years earlier, in the 1982 uproar over the turning back of a Salvadoran priest, public opinion had been measured "only in the corridors of parliament and among journalists". Between what the politicians said and what the public thought there was a considerable gap.
Ilta-Sanomat 18.3.1986, siteerattuna: Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 56–57There are 12 to 15 million refugees in the world. Let us use the larger figure. The Finnish people are one per mille of the world's population. Our responsibility would then be one per mille, that is 15,000 refugees. [...] Those would be the limits, 15,000 to 75,000, depending on the point of comparison.
An interview in Helsingin Sanomat's monthly supplement. According to the book, Sorsa meant directing development aid to UNHCR for 15,000 refugees, but the statement was at once read as a demand for 15,000 quota refugees a year.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 67, lainaa: HS Kuukausiliite 1987It is quite possible that our population will not develop the way many consider desirable. We once had a debate that labour should be brought into this country, and it met a lot of resistance then. It is quite possible that this is the very same phenomenon under a slightly different name. And it is quite possible that it would be to our advantage to take in people of an advantageous age.
An A-studio interview. According to the book it irritated the Swedish People's Party's papers and MPs, who held that fitness for work should not be a criterion in selecting refugees.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 71, lainaa: Yle A-studio 23.9.1987The first wave of Magdalena Jaakkola's series of attitude surveys. Of the respondents 41 per cent would have admitted more refugees than Finland was taking. The series put the same questions five times up to 2007, and this was its most receptive reading on refugees.
Magdalena Jaakkola, Maahanmuuttajat suomalaisten näkökulmasta, Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus 1/2009Magdalena Jaakkola's partial study came out in early October 1987, from interviews made between May and July. It overturned myths: Finns related to foreigners "considerably more positively than has been presented in the media". The most hospitable were highly educated Swedish-speaking young women, and sympathy depended on where the arrival came from. The most interesting finding was a collective misperception: most Finns believed others to be more prejudiced than they actually were.
HS 7.10.1987 ja Magdalena Jaakkola, Suomalaisten suhtautuminen ulkomaalaisiin ja ulkomaalaispolitiikkaan (Siirtolaisuustutkimuksia 21, 1989), siteerattuna: Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, s. 69–70Helsingin Sanomat counted the letters its own readers sent in the summer of 1987. Half of the writers opposed refugees coming to Finland, a smaller group supported them and some took no clear view. The writer of the summary could find no arguments among the opposing majority beyond unemployment, the housing shortage and safety. In the autumn twice as many letters arrived, of which the paper published a third.
Helsingin Sanomien yleisönosastoyhteenveto 1987, siteerattuna: Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 66The Ministry of the Interior's Aliens Centre was founded on 1 June 1989, replacing the Aliens Office.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 77–78The starting point has been that the Ingrians are Finns. Their forefathers were moved to that region under Swedish rule and they have been through a great deal there. It can be compared to return migration. No decisions have been made in this sense regarding other Finnic peoples.
An interview with the foreign correspondents' association. According to the book it took the Aliens Office by surprise and was read as an order to proceed. The return migration of Ingrian Finns began here.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 82, lainaa: Koivisto, Historian tekijät (1995), s. 298–299 · HS 5.4. ja 27.7.1990Somali asylum seekers began arriving via the Soviet Union. Almost 200 came through Vainikkala on 26–28 November 1990, and 230 by train on 30 December. From the start of the year to November the arrivals numbered about 1,500.
MTV Uutiset 15.2.2015, Salaiset arkistot 1990 · Leitzinger 2010, s. 85The Somalis should be stopped at the border. Take down their names and promise to consider. State that the Soviet Union is a safe country. If someone disagrees, then we argue. If these are not stopped, how would any others be.
From Koivisto's own memoirs. On 30 November 1990 the Holkeri government prepared a decision under which arrivals via the Soviet Union could have been turned back at the border. Prime Minister Holkeri opposed it and the decision was never used. A form often repeated in public, in which Koivisto is said to have spoken of shooting the arrivals, appears in none of these sources.
Koivisto, Historian tekijät (1995), lainattu Kaleva 17.8.2017 ja MTV Uutiset 15.2.2015 · Leitzinger 2010, s. 85Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 85, lainaa: Koivisto, Historian tekijät (1995), s. 292The height of it was when Somalis arrived from Leningrad on a Finnish bus and at the border it was merely noted: right, refugees, fine. Off to Lahti. Not even the names were taken down.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 85, lainaa: Koivisto, Historian tekijät (1995), s. 292I feared that a sharply grown flow of refugees would quickly give rise to xenophobia.
welfare refugees ... well-meaning fools
Two expressions from the speech. According to the book Ilaskivi meant the Somalis and the Finns who granted residence permits and social security too readily. The speech won him popularity that did not carry the 1994 presidential election.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 70EVA's autumn 1990 measurement (n = 2,426) is the oldest run of immigration questions it has. Two figures give the setting of the time. The claim that it is "better to pay Finns to have children than to increase refugee immigration" was accepted by 69 per cent and rejected by 17. The claim that "the growing labour shortage can only be solved with foreign labour" was accepted by 14 per cent and rejected by 68.
EVAn Arvopankki, osuus laskettu vastausjakauman lukumääristä. Arvopankki julkaisee painottamattomat vastausmäärät, joten osuus voi poiketa prosenttiyksikön tai kaksi EVAn omista painotetuista julkaisuluvuista · EVAn kansallinen asennetutkimus, syksy 1990It wears on me that there is some elite telling the people what to think..., that one should somehow grovel before other people.
An Ilta-Sanomat interview. According to the book the press pressed Koivisto six times in January 1991 to condemn popular hostility to foreigners, and he repeated that he had seen no evidence of such an attitude.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 85, lainaa: Ilta-Sanomat 11.1.1991 · Koivisto, Historian tekijät (1995), s. 294Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 71–72There is a great deal of sanctimony here that the border must not be closed. Anyone who sets foot across the border and says I request asylum should be taken in, in this world situation. [...] And what if large numbers really do start moving from there? It would be far better to support their efforts rather than hinder them, so that no new migration of peoples takes place.
The reformed Aliens Act (378/1991) entered into force on 1 March 1991. The Ombudsman for Aliens and the Asylum Board began the same day. Reception centres were put on a statutory footing on 31 December 1991.
Ulkomaalaislaki 378/1991, FinlexRefugees from the wars of Yugoslavia's break-up began arriving at the start of the year, mostly Kosovo Albanians. In June the Aliens Centre took part for the first time in selecting quota refugees, in Turkey, from where Iraqi and Iranian Kurds came. The last Vietnamese boat refugees were selected in August.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 51, 88–90The image of a closed society and an isolated people is largely a myth of the post-war era.
The article was written in the middle of the first Somali arrivals and the recession. According to it Finland probably had over 40,000 foreigners in 1914 and 24,451 at the end of 1920, and before the Second World War more foreigners lived in Finland than in Sweden. At the end of 1991 there were 37,579 foreign citizens.
Antero Leitzinger, Ulkomaalaiset Suomessa, johdantoa immigraatiohistoriaamme, Siirtolaisuus–Migration 4/1992, s. 27–31, ja Tilastokeskus, väestörakenneAn act (14/1993) provided for exceptional handling of certain Yugoslav citizens' asylum applications. On humanitarian grounds Finland took patients from Sarajevo's hospital with their companions, 111 at once and 140 more in 1994.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. 88 ja liite s. 188The second wave of the series, at the bottom of the recession. Only 20 per cent would now have admitted more refugees, and six in ten would have admitted fewer foreign job-seekers than Finland was taking. The six-year fall on the refugee question was 21 percentage points.
Magdalena Jaakkola, Maahanmuuttajat suomalaisten näkökulmasta, Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus 1/2009EVA's spring 1993 measurement (n = 2,367) asked whether respondents believed racism and xenophobia would rise in Finland over the following ten years. It was thought likely by 65 per cent. In the same measurement 61 per cent held that capable Finns moving abroad is a bigger problem for Finland than foreigners arriving.
EVAn Arvopankki, osuus laskettu vastausjakauman lukumääristä. Arvopankki julkaisee painottamattomat vastausmäärät, joten osuus voi poiketa prosenttiyksikön tai kaksi EVAn omista painotetuista julkaisuluvuista · EVAn kansallinen asennetutkimus, kevät 1993There were 839 asylum seekers, against 3,634 two years earlier. The government later noted: "In 1994 to 1997 fewer than 1,000 asylum seekers a year arrived." There were 3,538 Somali citizens living in Finland at the end of the year, against 1,882 in 1992.
The number of Somalis grew throughout the decade even though few asylum seekers arrived. The growth came from family reunification and births, not from new applicants.
Hallituksen esitys 66/1998 vp, Edilex, ja Tilastokeskus, väestörakenneFinland joined the European Union on 1 January 1995. The Directorate of Immigration was established as an independent central agency on 1 March 1995.
Laki ulkomaalaisvirastosta 156/1995, FinlexThe refugee quota had been 500 since 1989. For 1995 and 1996 an additional quota of 500 refugees from the former Yugoslavia was confirmed, so the quota was 1,000 in those years. In practice 221 quota refugees were received in 1995 and 817 in 1996.
The quota went unfilled almost every year. In 1997 it returned to 500.
Hallituksen esitys 66/1998 vp, Edilex, ja Pentikäinen, Loputon matka, Työpoliittinen tutkimus 274, taulukko 1The Joensuu skinheads came to national attention when Darryl Parker, the American signing of the Kataja basketball team, left the city after skinheads attacked him. In November 15 skinheads were charged with assaulting and threatening Somalis.
Yle wrote in 2023 that the skinhead problem only reached the public then, although the violence had gone on for years.
Yle 21.7.2023, Skinit herättivät Joensuussa pelkoa 30 vuotta sittenThere were 711 asylum seekers, the fewest of the decade. According to the Ministry of Labour, immigrants' unemployment rate at the end of the year averaged 47 per cent. For Bosnians it was 92, for Iraqis 89, for Vietnamese 76 and for Somalis 75 per cent.
The figures are from the 1998 integration bill, which used them to justify the law. They are the baseline against which later employment figures can be read.
Hallituksen esitys 66/1998 vp, luku 3.2, EdilexIn 1997 the Directorate of Immigration decided 742 asylum cases. Four people were granted asylum, 16 a residence permit on grounds of need for protection and 231 on humanitarian grounds. In 1995 to 1998 asylum in the strict sense was granted to 4, 11, 4 and 7 applicants a year.
The figures are from the table in the government's 2002 Aliens Act bill. They show that in the late 1990s people stayed almost entirely on humanitarian permits, not on refugee status.
Hallituksen esitys 265/2002 vp, taulukko 3, lähde Ulkomaalaisvirasto, EdilexOn 16 October 1997 the government adopted its immigration and refugee policy programme, the first of its kind. According to it "quickly adopting the language and the rules of society is a precondition for succeeding in Finland". The programme proposed raising the refugee quota by one hundred a year up to a quota of one thousand.
The quota was still 500 in 1997. In 2019 Rinne's government promised to raise it to at least 850, and in 2023 it was 1,050. In June of that year the next government cut it to 500.
Hallituksen esitys 66/1998 vp, luvut 1 ja 5.1, Edilex, siteeraten ohjelmaa464 relatives of refugees were received through family reunification, the most of the decade. In 1999 the figure was 155.
Public debate assumed family reunification would keep growing. In the Ministry of Labour's series it peaked in this very year.
Pentikäinen, Loputon matka, Työpoliittinen tutkimus 274 (2005), taulukko 1, lähde työministeriöThe government submitted the integration bill. According to it "at the end of 1997 about 80,600 people, about 1.5 per cent of Finland's population, were foreign citizens. The corresponding figure at the start of 1990 was about 0.4 per cent." The refugee population was about 15,500. Those who had come through the work permit procedure were estimated at under 10,000.
The 1998 budget had provided for 600 quota refugees and 500 family members. In the event 308 quota refugees were received.
Hallituksen esitys 66/1998 vp, luvut 3.1 ja 5.1, EdilexThe same bill admitted the problems of reception: "The average length of accommodation is over a year." About one asylum seeker in ten was detained, and detention took place in facilities intended for criminal suspects, "although under international agreements this should not be done".
In December 1997 there were 11 reception centres with 1,250 places. In 2015 there were eventually about 140 centres. What reception costs today is collected under the costs of reception.
Hallituksen esitys 66/1998 vp, luvut 2.2 ja 3.8, EdilexThe Act on the Integration of Immigrants and Reception of Asylum Seekers (493/1999) entered into force on 1 May 1999. Integration had a law of its own for the first time.
The act tied support to obligations. For the first three years labour market support was paid only as integration support, and the basic amount of income support could be cut by 20 per cent if an immigrant refused an integration plan, and by 40 per cent for repeated refusal. That structure is still the basis of integration support. What integration costs and how far it reaches is under the cost of integration.
Laki maahanmuuttajien kotouttamisesta 493/1999, FinlexOn 23 April 1999 Finland announced it would receive a thousand evacuees from Kosovo within two weeks. Five hundred came in the first week, 164 of them to the Joutseno reception centre. According to the Ministry of Labour some of the arrivals were in poor health.
The UN refugee agency put the reception request to Finland the same day. The same spring also brought Finland more than a thousand asylum applications from Slovak Roma.
Yle 23.4.1999, Suomeen tuhat Kosovon pakolaistaThere were 4,410 Somali citizens living in Finland at the end of the year, almost a thousand fewer than a year earlier. Somali speakers, however, numbered 6,251, more than ever. The gap is explained by 1,208 Somalis receiving Finnish citizenship this year and 476 the year before, as the first arrivals of the early 1990s met the residence requirement.
From here on the citizenship statistics show a different picture from the language statistics. Every later claim about the number of Somalis depends on which figure is used.
Tilastokeskus, väestörakenne ja Suomen kansalaisuuden saaneet, StatFin 11rg, 11rl ja 11l3In July 1999 Finland imposed a visa requirement on Slovak citizens after about 1,100 asylum applications from Roma from that country. Yle reported on 8 July 1999 that dozens were already returning home.
There were 1,516 Slovak applicants in 1999. In 2001 there were 88. The visa requirement lapsed when Slovakia joined the EU on 1 May 2004.
Yle 8.7.1999, ja hallituksen esitys 15/2000 vpEVA's long population question begins in spring 1999, and it begins at the floor of its own series. The claim that an ageing and shrinking population requires making it easier for foreigners to move here was accepted by 18 per cent and rejected by 61. It is from this level that the 29-point shift EVA referred to in 2021 is measured.
EVAn Arvopankki, osuus laskettu vastausjakauman lukumääristä. Arvopankki julkaisee painottamattomat vastausmäärät, joten osuus voi poiketa prosenttiyksikön tai kaksi EVAn omista painotetuista julkaisuluvuista · EVAn Arvo- ja asennetutkimus, kevät 1999, n = 2 186An accelerated asylum procedure was enacted in the summer of 2000. An application from a safe country of origin had to be decided within seven days. The bill recorded that 3,106 asylum applications were made in 1999, of which 1,516 came from Slovakia, and that 29 people were granted asylum.
In 2001 there were 88 applicants from Slovakia and three from Poland. The 2003 Aliens Act bill concluded that the law's aim had been well achieved.
Hallituksen esitys 15/2000 vp, EdilexOur historical ethnic minorities and immigrants bring Finland language skills, cultural competence and other resources that we have so far learned to use for the common good only on a very small scale. Reporting that makes it possible to condemn a whole ethnic group, or to brand all immigrants as criminals and benefit abusers, must always be avoided.
A speech at the European Cultural Foundation seminar on immigrants between two cultures, a year after the Slovak Roma asylum row. In the same speech the president noted that the foreign-citizen share of 1.8 per cent was the lowest in Western Europe.
Tasavallan presidentin kanslia, presidentti Halosen puheet: Euroopan kulttuurisäätiön seminaari 31.10.2000Statistics Finland's population projection of 1 October 2001 stated: "Annual net migration has been assumed at 5,000 people." It projected the population to grow until 2023 and to decline after that.
Realized net migration in 2001 was 5,802 and exceeded the assumption every year after that. From 2007 on it was more than double the assumption. The assumption applied to the whole projection period, not to a single year.
Tilastokeskus, väestöennuste 2001, tiedote 1.10.2001The transitional periods must be flexible, and their possible shortening can be considered on a tripartite basis in due course.
A transitional period meant the right to keep workers from the new EU countries out of the labour market for up to seven years after accession. Finland applied one when Estonia and Poland joined in 2004 and dropped it on 1 May 2006. SAK backed the restriction but warned that it is circumvented by sending workers as service providers. That was exactly the reason the Minister of Labour Filatov gave five years later for abandoning it.
SAK, tiedote 27.4.2001A society growing multicultural is a richness and an opportunity. It requires tolerance and openness to interaction. New cultures need not take anything away from Finnishness, they can widen the room to live and act.
A speech at the Academy of Finland seminar on Finland in a multicultural world, two weeks after the 11 September attacks. The president observed that although the shrinking labour force had put the need for immigrants on the agenda, they were still felt to be a threat.
Tasavallan presidentin kanslia, presidentti Halosen puheet: Suomen Akatemian seminaari 27.9.2001On 1 November 2002 the government submitted a bill for a new Nationality Act. Under it "a Finnish citizen would retain their citizenship even if they acquired the citizenship of a foreign state by application or in a comparable way". At the same time naturalisation would as a rule require six years of residence instead of the previous five.
The bill noted that it had earlier been thought undesirable for Finland to acquire minorities holding the citizenship of two states. The act took effect on 1 June 2003. There were 18,041 dual citizens at the end of 2002 and 197,944 at the end of 2025. The residence period was cut to five years in 2011 and raised to eight in 2024.
Hallituksen esitys 235/2002 vp, Edilex, ja Tilastokeskus, väestörakenneOn 20 December 2002 Paavo Lipponen's second government submitted a bill for a complete reform of the Aliens Act. Its justification stated: "The number of foreigners residing in Finland has risen in ten years from about 25,000 at the start of the 1990s to over 100,000." Long processing times were described as a problem that showed up in complaints to the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
The bill lapsed when parliament ended its work before the March 2003 election. The next government resubmitted it in June 2003, and the act took effect on 1 May 2004. Parliament had called for the complete reform as early as 1998.
Hallituksen esitys 265/2002 vp, Edilex, ja hallituksen esitys 28/2003 vpInterior Minister Ville Itälä is pressing for an official immigration policy to be created for Finland. According to Itälä, who spoke at the Council of Europe ministerial meeting on Monday, foreign labour will be needed in the care sector within the next few years.
Yle's report from the Council of Europe migration ministers' meeting in Helsinki. In the same report Johannes Koroma of the employers' confederation TT said it was high time to decide on Finland's immigration policy. The new Aliens Act was being drafted.
Yle Uutiset 17.9.2002: Siirtolaiskokous korosti yhteistyötäThe programme of Matti Vanhanen's first government of 24 June 2003 promised: "Where the dependency ratio so requires, the government will promote a work-based immigration policy." It also promised a flexible transitional period at EU enlargement and a separate immigration policy programme.
All three were delivered on schedule: the Aliens Act 301/2004, the transitional act 309/2004 and the immigration policy programme of 19 October 2006. How the ground for entry shows in employment two decades later is under grounds for entry.
Pääministeri Matti Vanhasen hallituksen ohjelma 24.6.2003, valtioneuvoston julkaisuarkistoStatistics Finland reported on the Ministry of Labour's Työvoima 2020 forecast in September 2003: "When the labour outflow exceeds the inflow to the labour market by a good 10,000 people a year at the end of this decade, the annual difference rises to nearly 20,000 in the next decade."
The same article warned: "There is a risk that we will have a large number of unemployed people and a large labour shortage at the same time." The working-age population began to fall around 2010, but after the 2009 recession unemployment did not fall durably and the labour shortage was widely discussed only in the 2020s.
Tilastokeskus, Tietoaika 9.9.2003, työmarkkinaneuvos Matti SihtoFinland cannot have an immigrant and migration policy that departs from our population policy. These must be woven into our general population policy.
The party won three seats. Its leading vote-getter Tony Halme took 16,390 votes in Helsinki, five times what the party chair Timo Soini had guessed before the election.
Perussuomalaisten eduskuntavaaliohjelma 2003, ja Yle Elävä arkistoImmigrants are a richness for Finland. Finland needs a clear immigration policy that separates refuge from work-based immigration.
The programme for the March 2003 parliamentary election. It called for work-based immigration to be made easier. The government's bill for a new Aliens Act was tabled in June.
Vihreän liiton eduskuntavaaliohjelma 2003, Pohtiva-arkistoThe new Aliens Act (301/2004) entered into force on 1 May 2004, the day Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland joined the EU. Finland kept transitional restrictions on workers from those countries until May 2006.
Ulkomaalaislaki 301/2004, FinlexMigration forecasts for the enlargement were described the same year: "Estonia would then send 15,000 people a year to Finland and the other current candidate countries 1,000 a year in total." Lower estimates put migration from Estonia at 4,000 to 5,000 a year.
There were 14,000 Estonian citizens living in Finland at the end of 2004 and 25,510 at the end of 2009. The increase was 2,000 to 3,000 a year, the level of the lower estimates.
Elli Heikkilä ja Taru Järvinen, Talous & Yhteiskunta 1/2004The Family Federation of Finland's population policy programme set an annual net migration target of 7,000 people. It proposed that Finland move to active immigration.
The target was exceeded every year from 2005 on. The figures put forward ten years later were five times as large.
Väestöliitto, Väestöpoliittinen ohjelma 2004, lainattuna teoksessa Olemme muuttaneet 2005In Soini's view the act must include a real fast-track deportation procedure for manifestly unfounded asylum applications, as is already in use in many other EU countries.
Parliament was finalising the new Aliens Act and had just rejected faster fast-track deportations. In the same report Suvi-Anne Siimes of the Left Alliance demanded that applications continue to be handled individually.
Yle Uutiset 27.3.2004: Turvapaikkahakemusten käsittelyajoista erimielisyyttäForeigners working in Finland are not a cost to society, nor do they create any particular competitive threat to Finns
A speech at the industry days in Raisio two days before EU enlargement and the entry into force of the new Aliens Act. Employers opposed the two-year transition period imposed on workers from the new member states.
Yle Uutiset 29.4.2004: TT: Ulkomaista työvoimaa tarvitaanWhether it is because of a generous reception system with high daily allowances or something else, asylum shopping must be curbed by joint effort in the EU.
Rajamäki said about 70 per cent of applicants in July 2005 were unfounded. There were 3,574 asylum seekers in 2005 and only 1,505 in 2007. The cash income support was replaced by a reception allowance only in 2011.
MTV3 21.8.2005, Sunnuntaisuomalaisen haastatteluI see no obstacle to increasing the number received. Most immigration, though, takes place on other grounds, and it must be looked at within the common rules of the EU countries.
An interview in the centenary issue of the church weekly Kotimaa, asked whether Finland could take more refugees. Given weeks after the French suburb riots.
Kotimaa 2.12.2005, tasavallan presidentin kanslian arkisto (presidentti Halosen puheet ja haastattelut)Finland did not at the time apply a transitional period to services but does apply one to the movement of labour. This has led to work being disguised as services.
The labour market organisations and the state agreed the same day not to extend the transitional period for workers from the new EU countries. The restrictions ended on 1 May 2006. There were 17,599 Estonian citizens in Finland at the end of 2006 and 25,510 three years later.
Yle 10.2.2006On 19 October 2006 the government adopted its first immigration policy programme as a resolution. The programme set out that Finland should make its attractions better known, simplify the residence permit system for workers and increase the number of foreign students.
The programme was written in anticipation of a labour shortage. Three years later its successor was found partly premature because of the recession, and the residence permit reform was postponed.
Hallituksen maahanmuuttopoliittinen ohjelma 19.10.2006, siteerattuna työvoiman maahanmuuton toimenpideohjelmassa 2009Researchers at the Migration Institute pointed out that people coming temporarily for work do not enter the migration statistics at all. As an example they noted that 12,000 Estonian construction workers worked in Finland in 2006.
There were 17,599 Estonian citizens resident in Finland at the end of the same year. The gap shows how much labour mobility falls outside the statistics.
Heikkilä ja Pikkarainen, Väestön ja työvoiman kansainvälistyminen nyt ja tulevaisuudessa, Siirtolaisuusinstituutti 20081,300 asylum seekers vanished without trace from our reception centres in 2005 alone.
The programme demanded fast-track removal of unfounded applicants. The party took 4.1 per cent and five seats in the 2007 election.
Perussuomalaisten eduskuntavaaliohjelma 2007, PohtivaThe programme of Matti Vanhanen's second government of 19 April 2007 promised two things: "The Directorate of Immigration will be renamed the Finnish Immigration Service" and "Labour market testing will be phased out."
The agency was renamed on 1 January 2008. Labour market testing is still in force in 2026, so that promise has been open for almost two decades.
Pääministeri Matti Vanhasen II hallituksen ohjelma 19.4.2007, valtioneuvoston julkaisuarkistoThe Ministry of Labour's Työvoima 2025 report used an annual net migration of 7,500 in its calculations. The Ministry of Employment and the Economy's own report noted a year later that net migration in 2007 was almost 13,000.
The realized figure was 13,586. The report concluded that immigration can offset the fall in the labour force only if both net migration grows substantially and immigrants' labour force participation rises.
TEM analyyseja 2/2008, Kai Torvi, Maahanmuutto vastauksena työvoiman saatavuuteenFinland is slowly beginning to understand that immigration can be a good thing for Finnish society.
The programme's opening sentence in the year of the labour-shortage debate. That spring the country's first migration minister, Astrid Thors, told Yle that Finland needed at least 10,000 new workers a year from abroad.
Vihreä liitto: Maahanmuuttajat töissä Suomessa, tarvitsemme uutta maahanmuuttopolitiikkaa (2007), Pohtiva-arkistoIn immigration policy the Finns Party Youth support the principle "in the country, the country's way". We see the cultivation of multiculturalism at the expense of our own Finnish and Western culture as short-sighted.
The party paper's election issue. The author stood in the election and entered parliament in 2011. The party won 4.1 per cent and five seats in March 2007.
PerusSuomalainen 1/2007, Itsenäisesti ajattelevat: Perussuomalaiset Nuoret, s. 12The last wave of Jaakkola's series, and its permissive extreme on labour migration. Only one in four would now have admitted fewer foreign job-seekers, and more people would have admitted more than fewer. On refugees the change was smaller: 27 per cent would have admitted more.
Magdalena Jaakkola, Maahanmuuttajat suomalaisten näkökulmasta, Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus 1/2009The Directorate of Immigration was renamed the Finnish Immigration Service on 1 January 2008.
Leitzinger (toim.) 2010, Mansikkamaan vartijat, s. liite s. 186, lainaa: asetus 1104/2007In the October municipal elections the Finns Party increased its support more than any other party. Statistics Finland put its support at 5.4 per cent, 4.5 percentage points more than in the previous municipal elections, on 137,758 votes.
Three years later the party took 19.1 per cent in the parliamentary election. By then immigration had become an election theme for the first time.
Tilastokeskus, kunnallisvaalit 2008, vahvistettu tulosThe word maahanmuuttokriittinen, immigration-critical, became established in public language around 2008. It was introduced by the people it describes, and the media adopted it after the 2008 municipal elections.
In December 2017 some newsrooms briefly switched to the word anti-immigration and went back to the old one in 2018. Which word is chosen has itself been contested throughout.
Jarkko S. Tuusvuori, niin & näin 3/2018, Takapakkia maahanmuuttajavastaisuuden käsittelyssäSince the purpose of refuge is not economic migration and staying in Finland but returning to the country of origin, residence in a wholly foreign culture is apt to create frustration and various side effects that often cause insecurity for the native population.
Adopted by the party council in Järvenpää for the October 2008 municipal elections, in which the Finns Party rose to 5.4 per cent and Jussi Halla-aho was elected to Helsinki city council.
Perussuomalaisten kunnallisvaaliohjelma 2008, luku 10.4, Pohtiva-arkistoIntegration is a precondition for the growth of immigration. Learning the language has an important role in the integration process, but it cannot be made a binding obligation.
The informal meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers in Cannes, where France presented its immigration pact. The minister rejected a binding language requirement.
Yle Uutiset 7.7.2008: Thors korostaa maahanmuuttajien kotouttamisen tärkeyttäThere were 5,988 asylum seekers, the most up to then. Total reception costs were about 84 million euros, against about 33 million the year before.
The number fell the next year and stayed at a little over three thousand until 2014. In 2015 there were 32,476 applicants. How many applications lead to protection is under the need for protection and recognition rates.
Hallituksen esitys 266/2010 vp, FinlexOn 5 November 2009 the government adopted an action programme on labour immigration. It stated that "the supply of labour will start to contract rapidly early in the next decade, so a labour shortage lies ahead once the current recession has passed". It also noted that the number of foreign workers needed cannot be derived directly from forecasts.
After the recession unemployment did not fall durably, and the wide debate on a labour shortage began only in the 2020s. The programme set no annual target.
Työvoiman maahanmuuton toimenpideohjelma, valtioneuvoston periaatepäätös 5.11.2009On 8 September 2009 the Helsinki District Court fined MP Jussi Halla-aho 30 day-fines for breaching the sanctity of religion. The charge of ethnic agitation was dismissed. The court of appeal upheld the judgment in 2010.
The Supreme Court changed the outcome in 2012 and convicted him of ethnic agitation as well.
Yle 8.9.2009Magdalena Jaakkola's series of attitude studies was published as a whole. According to them, in 1993 six out of ten Finns would have admitted fewer foreign job-seekers than at the time. By 2007 only one in four thought so, and more people would have admitted more than fewer.
The series began in 1987 and asked the same questions five times. Opinion on refugees moved differently: those wanting to admit more stood at 41 per cent in 1987, 20 per cent in 1993 and 27 per cent in 2007.
Magdalena Jaakkola, Maahanmuuttajat suomalaisten näkökulmasta, Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus 1/2009Active support for work-based immigration could be invested in the same way as the promotion of Finnish exports of goods and services.
The report opened by noting that only a year earlier the talk had been of a labour shortage and now it was of unemployment. The proposed state recruitment organisation later took shape as the Talent Boost programme.
EVA, Jaakko Pehkonen, Pulaa työstä ja työvoimasta 9.6.2009A Coalition Party working group proposed in May 2009 that age testing be written into law, that family reunification be limited to the nuclear family and that unfounded applications be reduced.
Age testing entered the Aliens Act on 1 August 2010. The limitation of family reunification to the nuclear family was not carried out then.
Kokoomus, Realismia turvapaikkapolitiikkaan, resursseja kotoutumiseen, 15.5.2009All the old Finnish parties and the Greens support, without restraint, a sharp increase in immigration in the name of a so-called labour shortage. The Finns Party supports a nationally responsible immigration policy whose starting point is the principle "in the country, the country's way", a principle that also includes an active will to find work.
The programme for the June 2009 European election, in which Timo Soini won 130,432 votes after leaving Halla-aho off the list.
Perussuomalaisten EU-vaaliohjelma 2009, luku Maassa maan tavalla, Pohtiva-arkistoBad immigration is not a force of nature. It is a political choice.
The manifesto demanded among other things an end to cash income support in reception centres and a conditional citizenship. A reception allowance replaced income support in 2011 and the residence requirement for citizenship rose to eight years in 2024. The signatories later included the party's chair, a Speaker of Parliament and ministers.
Nuiva vaalimanifesti 2010, teksti kokonaisuudessaan Anssi Joutsenlahden blogissa 25.11.2010A joint forecast by Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa in March 2010 estimated that the foreign-language population of the Helsinki region would grow from 100,000 to 250,000, and its share to 15 per cent, by 2030. In Helsinki the share was then 9.6 per cent.
Three years later the same cities raised the 2030 estimate to nearly 300,000. The forecast was already too low before 2015.
Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus, Vieraskielisen väestön ennuste Helsingin seudulla 2010–2030An amendment to the Aliens Act took effect on 1 August 2010. Age assessment by forensic examination was written into law, and family reunification for a person granted international protection now required sufficient income if the family had been formed only after arrival in Finland.
More than 2,000 family-tie applications were lodged in 2011 and slightly under 600 a year in 2012 and 2013.
Hallituksen esitys 240/2009 vp, ja Maahanmuuton ja kotouttamisen suunta 2011–2014Yle's MOT programme The Price of Immigration reported in December 2010 that about 5,000 new family members were expected in Finland that year, mainly from Somalia and Iraq.
Family-tie applications from people granted protection collapsed after that year's amendment, from over two thousand to under six hundred a year.
Yle MOT, Maahanmuuton hinta, 2010But if the pull factor is that we have a fair processing system, then that is a factor I do not want to give up.
An interview on Yle's morning programme after the record asylum year of 2009 and threats against the minister. She called for broad condemnation of hate speech and described Finnish racism as refined.
Yle Uutiset 10.4.2010: Thors: Suomalainen rasismi muuttanut muotoaanThe programme of Jyrki Katainen's government of 22 June 2011 stated: "Immigrants are a permanent and welcome part of Finnish society." It set the aim of raising immigrants' employment rate and halving their unemployment.
The government's own review in January 2015 reported that foreigners' unemployment rate had varied between 25 and 30 per cent in 2008 to 2013 and stood at 28.6 per cent at the end of 2013. Unemployment was not halved.
Pääministeri Jyrki Kataisen hallituksen ohjelma 22.6.2011, ja Maahanmuuton ja kotouttamisen suunta 2011–2014In the parliamentary election the Finns Party took 19.1 per cent of the vote and 39 seats. Its support grew by 15.0 percentage points on 560,075 votes.
The party's support was 17.7 per cent in 2015, 17.5 per cent in 2019 and 20.1 per cent in 2023.
Tilastokeskus, eduskuntavaalit 2011, vahvistettu tulosIn the coming years we will need immigrants as labour, as our population ages and the number entering working life shrinks. Immigrants bring with them varied human, social and cultural capital, language skills included.
The programme, titled Work is the best integrator, was published six weeks before the election and opened under the heading Difference is richness. The party's chair Päivi Räsänen became interior minister after the election.
Kristillisdemokraattien maahanmuuttopoliittinen ohjelma 3.3.2011, Pohtiva-arkistoImmigration without work comes expensive for Finland.
The programme's chapter on immigration policy argued that most asylum seekers move for economic reasons. The party won 39 seats in the April election.
Perussuomalaisten eduskuntavaaliohjelma 2011, luku 9.2, Pohtiva-arkistoIn the spring of the Finns Party's election win, EVA's series was at its post-financial-crisis floor. Easing immigration for demographic reasons was supported by 25 per cent and rejected by 56, the sharpest rejection in the series since 1999. Ten years later the same figures were 48 and 34.
EVAn Arvopankki, osuus laskettu vastausjakauman lukumääristä. Arvopankki julkaisee painottamattomat vastausmäärät, joten osuus voi poiketa prosenttiyksikön tai kaksi EVAn omista painotetuista julkaisuluvuista · EVAn Arvo- ja asennetutkimus, kevät 2011, n = 1 912On 8 June 2012 the Supreme Court also convicted Jussi Halla-aho of ethnic agitation. Its reasoning held that the claims in the text "are apt to arouse intolerance, contempt and possibly even hatred towards the group they target". The fine rose from 30 to 50 day-fines.
The ruling is still the precedent on where the limit of political speech runs. The person convicted became his party's chair in 2017 and Speaker of Parliament in 2023.
Korkein oikeus KKO:2012:58, 8.6.2012, perustelut lainattuna Kansan Uutiset 12.6.2012Statistics Finland's population projection of 28 September 2012 stated: "Annual net migration has been assumed at 17,000 people in the projection." It put the population in 2060 at about 6.23 million.
That is the highest figure any Statistics Finland projection has given for 2060. Six years later the same office projected the population to start falling as early as 2035.
Tilastokeskus, väestöennuste 2012, tiedote 28.9.2012A Green municipality is open and welcomes people of all kinds. We make use of the opportunities of multiculturalism, support the integration of immigrants and take enthusiasm from subcultures.
The programme for the October 2012 municipal elections, chapter What a Green municipality is like.
Vihreän liiton kunnallisvaaliohjelma 2012, Pohtiva-arkistoSince some of Finland's Somalis who have been granted refugee status or subsidiary protection holiday in Somalia, they can no longer be considered to need the protection Finland offers
A written question demanding that Somalis' protection status be reassessed as Mogadishu calmed. Pekka Haavisto replied the same day that it was still too early to say whether peace had really been reached.
MTV Uutiset 22.8.2012: Halla-aho: Somalialaiset lomailevat entisessä kotimaassaan, pakolaisasema poisEVA's Values and Attitudes survey found the hardening of immigration attitudes had stopped. Because of an ageing population, 32 per cent would have made immigration easier, and 46 per cent thought immigration enriches the culture. One in two, 51 per cent, considered Finns' reserve towards foreigners wise.
EVA Analyysi Ovi raottuu – suomalaisten maahanmuuttoasenteet 2012, Ilkka Haavisto 8.5.2012On 13 June 2013 the government adopted the strategy Maahanmuuton tulevaisuus 2020. Its vision opened with the sentence "Immigration is anticipated and managed". The strategy's own chart estimated 345,300 foreign citizens in 2020 and 525,300 in 2030.
There were 278,917 foreign citizens at the end of 2020, about 66,000 fewer than estimated. At the end of 2025 there were 432,654. The year 2015 came two years after the strategy.
Valtioneuvoston periaatepäätös Maahanmuuton tulevaisuus 2020 -strategiasta 13.6.2013, ja Tilastokeskus, väestörakenneHelsinki, Espoo and Vantaa updated their forecast for the foreign-language population in February 2013. In Helsinki the number was projected to grow from 68,000 to 146,000 by 2030 and the share from just under 12 per cent to 21 per cent.
Three years earlier the same cities had estimated 250,000 for the whole region in 2030. Now the estimate was raised to nearly 300,000.
Yle 12.2.2013, Helsingin, Espoon ja Vantaan tilasto- ja tutkimusyksikötThe problem is that these people do not have the kind of capacities for entering the labour market that post-industrial countries like Finland, Sweden and the countries of Western Europe require
Halla-aho and Vesa-Matti Saarakkala opposed taking Syrian refugees to Finland. Petteri Orpo of the National Coalition called the stance complete indifference.
Verkkouutiset 23.9.2013: Orpo: Halla-aho ja Saarakkala täydellisen piittaamattomiaIt is in everyone's interest that each person finds their place in Finland. Immigrants' skills must be put to use, their particular needs must be met, and more and more must be invested in integration
A blog post on the Maahanmuutto 2020 strategy the government adopted the same day. The minister called immigration an opportunity Finland cannot leave unused.
Verkkouutiset 13.6.2013: Hautala: Maahanmuutto on mahdollisuus, jota emme voi jättää käyttämättäIn a poll TNS Gallup ran for Helsingin Sanomat (n = 1,002), 52 per cent thought immigration must be restricted for as long as Finland has unemployment. Two years earlier the share was 45. Those fully agreeing that anyone who wants to come should be allowed to were 17 per cent, against 26 in 2011. Taking more immigrants was opposed by 44 per cent, the same share as in 2011.
HS-gallup, TNS Gallup, uutisointi Yle 21.9.2013The Confederation of Finnish Industries reported in January 2014 that 32,000 foreign employees worked in its member companies at the end of 2013, a third more than in 2011. One member company in ten expected to increase their number.
This is the baseline against which the organisation's 2020s targets can be read. In 2023 it proposed 40,000 work-based residence permits a year and in 2026 at least a net 45,000 immigrants coming into work.
Elinkeinoelämän keskusliitto 24.1.2014Integration into society is a lofty aim into which hundreds of millions of euros are pumped through various channels without even asking whether they do any good. What is being maintained is a large official apparatus and the illusion that immigrants can be integrated into society as future taxpayers and labour
A demand to audit every form of immigration support after Pia Kauma of the National Coalition had raised the Espoo pram controversy.
Verkkouutiset 2.9.2014: Perussuomalaiset vaatii maahanmuuton eri tukimuotojen selvittämistäThe central aim of the action programme is to raise the employment rate of immigrants. Finland needs immigrants' labour, new innovations and international networks
The launch of the action programme of the government's Maahanmuuton tulevaisuus 2020 strategy.
Verkkouutiset 14.3.2014: Suomi tarvitsee maahanmuuttajien työpanostaThe programme of Juha Sipilä's government of 29 May 2015 promised: "An independent study will be prepared on the costs and effects of immigration in our society, enabling a fact-based debate and better integration policy and decision-making." It also promised tuition fees for students from outside the EU and EEA.
The study was made by the Ministry of Finance itself and was completed on 22 December 2017. Tuition fees took effect on 1 August 2017. The programme was written four months before the number of asylum seekers rose tenfold.
Ratkaisujen Suomi, pääministeri Juha Sipilän hallituksen strateginen ohjelma 29.5.2015On 29 January 2015 the business think tank EVA published the analysis Tulevaisuuden tekijät, which said Finland needs 34,000 net immigrants a year, up from a level of about 18,000, because the working-age population is shrinking.
Total net migration in 2015 was 12,441. The figure of 34,000 was first exceeded in 2022.
EVA-analyysi Tulevaisuuden tekijät 29.1.2015, Myrskylä ja PyykkönenAbout 32,500 asylum seekers arrived in Finland, almost 29,000 more than the year before. The Finnish Immigration Service's figure is 32,476, of whom 20,484 were Iraqi citizens.
Tilastokeskus, Tieto&trendit 26.1.2016 · Maahanmuuttovirasto, tilastopalveluSea rescue operations are a direct transfer of income to people smugglers.
In the same broadcast he estimated that two hundred thousand people a year come to Europe. The interview was three months before the number of asylum seekers in Finland rose tenfold.
Yle 21.5.2015, Halla-aho A-studiossaI hope this becomes some kind of popular movement that voluntarily bears the burden of housing asylum seekers.
Sipilä announced live that he would give his Kempele home to asylum seekers at the turn of the year. In the same interview: "I appeal: what is needed now is caring."
Yle 5.9.2015, Sipilä: Annan kotini turvapaikanhakijalleWell under half of the asylum seekers will be granted asylum.
Orpo said it was impossible to judge whether the figure was 30 or 40 per cent. According to the Ministry of Finance's report, about a fifth of the 2015 applications led to permission to stay at first instance. In October 2015 the ministry had cut its forecast for the year from 50,000 to between 30,000 and 35,000, and the final figure was 32,476.
Kaleva 11.11.2015, ja Yle 14.10.2015From the centres they will be returned efficiently to their home countries, either voluntarily or by force. This of course also requires return agreements, which are being negotiated intensively with Iraq among others.
No agreement with Iraq was reached. Iraq's migration ministry announced in January 2017 that it would not agree to any deal on involuntary returns.
Yle 3.12.2015, ja Yle 16.1.2017When the new people entering the labour market start to grow the economy, we will understand: a new Nokia was given to us as a gift from abroad. It is a lottery win to get more child-bearers to Finland.
The column appeared three weeks after the number of asylum seekers began to increase tenfold. About one in five of the 2015 applicants was allowed to stay.
Helsingin Sanomat 10.9.2015Finland's short-term objective is to cut off the uncontrolled flow of asylum seekers into our country, bring asylum costs under control and integrate effectively those granted asylum.
The programme's first sentence, three months after the Ykkösaamu interview. The programme removed humanitarian protection from the law, made family reunification harder and shortened appeal periods.
Valtioneuvosto, Hallituksen turvapaikkapoliittinen toimenpideohjelma 8.12.2015, s. 1In a poll Taloustutkimus ran for Yle (n = 1,001, October 2015), 51 per cent believed that most of the asylum seekers who stay would remain unemployed and live on benefits, while 31 per cent disagreed. In the same poll 65 per cent held that asylum seekers are not a threat to Finnish culture and identity. As a threat they were seen by 26 per cent.
Taloustutkimus Ylelle 6.10.2015, 1 001 haastateltuaNet migration is immigration minus emigration across all countries of birth, and it does not distinguish the grounds for entry.
The same scale in every year.
The offer stands. I have asked security experts to assess whether it is safe for a family with children to move there. Because of the great publicity, the assessment is that it is not sensible now.
No asylum seekers ever moved into the Kempele house. Sipilä sold it in March 2016. In 2019 he said the security authorities had judged that the family would face hostility in Finland.
Keskisuomalainen, tammikuu 2016 · Kaleva 27.1.2019In February 2016 the Finns Party estimated that if the approval rate stayed at the previous year's level, 17,500 Iraqis would receive a residence permit. Päivi Nerg, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior, replied that applications would lapse and that a large share of applicants would be returned as Dublin cases.
The Finnish Immigration Service made 28,200 asylum decisions in 2016, of which about 27 per cent were positive. For Iraqis the share was 18 per cent.
Yle 12.2.2016, ja Uusi Suomi 11.1.2017On 17 May 2016 the Finnish Immigration Service announced it would stop granting humanitarian protection and issued new country guidelines on Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. According to the agency, people could be returned to those countries regardless of which part of the country they came from.
Humanitarian protection had been removed from the Aliens Act by an amendment the same spring. It had been granted 119 times in 2015. The share of positive asylum decisions fell from about 60 per cent in the second half of 2015 to about 30 per cent in the second half of 2016.
Yle 18.5.2016, ja Politiikasta 4.12.2020The income requirement for family reunification was extended on 1 July 2016 to the family members of people granted international protection. During preparation it was reported that, for example, the parents of a family with two children would have to earn a combined 2,600 euros a month net.
In 2019 Rinne's government promised to stop applying the requirement to minors acting as sponsors. According to the Ministry of Finance's report there were then about a thousand positive family reunification decisions a year. Employment and income for those who came on family grounds are under grounds for entry.
Laki ulkomaalaislain muuttamisesta 505/2016, Finlex, ja Yle 2.12.2015You may come to Finland to work, but not to loaf. In this employment situation Finland needs no extra labour beyond highly educated people in the rarer fields.
A governing-party MP defending the bill that cut refugees' integration allowance by about a tenth, part of the post-2015 package to reduce Finland's pull factors.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 94/2016 vp, asiakohta 9, 4.10.2016The day before yesterday Barcelona, yesterday Turku. We are no longer an island.
Ten people were stabbed in Turku on 18 August 2017 and two of them died. The perpetrator had arrived as an asylum seeker in the spring of 2016 and had a negative decision under appeal. He was sentenced to life on 15 June 2018 in Finland's first conviction for a terrorist offence.
Verkkouutiset 19.8.2017, pääministerin ja sisäministerin tiedotustilaisuusOn 22 December 2017 the Ministry of Finance published a report on the costs of asylum seekers. Its conclusion was: "In an annual budget of over 55 billion euros, a phenomenon limited to hundreds of millions still has only a marginal effect."
The report was the independent assessment promised in the government programme, made by the ministry itself. It is still the official benchmark for cost figures put forward in public.
Valtiovarainministeriö, Turvapaikanhakijat, mitä tiedämme kustannuksista, 22.12.2017The countries are not willing to send the necessary documents very quickly.
Risikko said there were 11,000 people with negative decisions in reception centres and 1,400 refusing to leave. In 2017 the police escorted 154 people to Iraq. In June 2018 Baghdad police sent three escorted returnees back to Helsinki.
Yle 22.8.2017, ja Yle 18.6.2018So in 2003 dual citizenship was not in fact ”allowed”, since it had never before been completely forbidden either.
Dual citizenship became a national talking point at the turn of January and February 2017, when the question was whether a citizen of two countries could hold posts in the defence forces and the foreign service. According to Leitzinger the media and many politicians did not understand what the concept means. The debate led to act 564/2019, in force from 1 May 2019, under which citizenship can be lost for treason, high treason or a terrorist offence. There were 197,944 dual citizens at the end of 2025.
Antero Leitzinger, Kaksoiskansalaisuus, ikiaikainen suomalainen perinne, Siirtolaisuus–Migration 1/2017, s. 56–57, ja laki 564/2019, FinlexPromoting, even attracting, the immigration of skilled people will be very important for Finland in the coming years. The population structure is turning less favourable fast, and without immigration the labour force loses 300,000 people by 2030.
Made during the debate on a residence permit for start-up entrepreneurs, seven weeks after the Turku stabbings. The speaker drew a line between work-based and humanitarian migration.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 99/2017 vp, asiakohta 3, 5.10.2017Most of those on the move were there for economic reasons. Not because they were fleeing war or personal persecution.
Said on Yle's Ykkösaamu about the arrivals of 2015 and 2016. Yle checked the claim: EU countries made about two million asylum decisions in 2016 and 2017, of which more than a million were positive.
Yle 2.9.2018, Eero Mäntymaa, Analyysi: Pääministeri on väärässä, siteeraten Ylen Ykkösaamun haastatteluaThe government's immigration policy programme Töihin Suomeen of 4 January 2018 quoted a three-year-old EVA figure: "annual immigration should grow to 34,000 immigrants so that the labour force does not contract in the coming decades". The programme set no annual target of its own.
According to the programme's own figures, 5,436 work-based residence permits were granted in 2015, 5,770 in 2016 and 6,751 in 2017. Net migration in 2018 was 11,965, the lowest of the decade.
Töihin Suomeen, hallituksen maahanmuuttopoliittinen ohjelma 4.1.2018Statistics Finland's population projection of 16 November 2018 assumed net migration of 15,000 people a year. It projected the population to grow until 2035 and then decline.
The next year's projection moved the turning point forward to 2031. Six years later the assumption was raised to 40,000 and no decline was projected within the period at all.
Tilastokeskus, väestöennuste 2018, tiedote 16.11.2018Technology Industries of Finland reported on the basis of a member survey that companies in the sector need more than 53,000 new skilled people by 2021. Three in five of those needs concerned graduates.
The figure is part of a series. In 2021 the organisation put forward 130,000 skilled people over ten years and in 2022 raising net migration to 50,000 a year.
Teknologiateollisuuden jäsenkysely 2018, uutisointi ETNIn September 2018 the Finnish Immigration Service reported that the cases of a good two thousand of the 2015 asylum applicants were still pending. A few individual cases were still awaiting a first decision.
The 2015 government programme had promised that decisions and returns would be made without delay. Three years later some of the 2015 applications were still unresolved.
Yle 13.9.2018, Maahanmuuttoviraston luvutBut it is also a fact that Finland needs immigration, work-based immigration above all, and of course a very well functioning integration system.
A governing-party MP in the first reading of the new Integration Act. In the same speech he said people seeking only a better standard of living should not be admitted as asylum seekers, and closed by saying racism must be given no room.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 77/2018 vp, asiakohta 6, 4.9.2018Everyone who comes here must obey Finnish law and respect the bodily integrity of every person. Those who commit crimes will be held responsible under the principles of the rule of law. Serious crimes also weigh against the granting of a permanent residence permit. The asylum system cannot protect criminals.
The statement was given after the Oulu sexual offence investigations. On 15 January 2019 the parliamentary groups agreed to expedite three bills, and they were passed before the April election.
Yle 11.1.2019In March 2019 the Finns Party told a question hour that immigration costs as much as 3.2 billion euros a year. Yle's fact check rated the claim false: officials at the Ministry of Finance called the calculation overstated and shaky in its underlying assumptions.
The ministry's own report had arrived at hundreds of millions in 2017. In the April election the Finns Party took 17.5 per cent of the vote.
Perussuomalaiset 7.3.2019, ja Ylen tarkistus 29.3.2019The programme of Antti Rinne's government of 6 June 2019 promised: "The refugee quota will be raised to at least 850 in 2020." It also set a target of an average one-month processing time for work-based residence permits.
The quota was raised and stood at 1,050 in 2023. In June of that year the next government halved it to 500.
Pääministeri Antti Rinteen hallituksen ohjelma 6.6.2019, Osallistava ja osaava SuomiOn 14 November 2019 the European Court of Human Rights found that Finland had breached the Convention by returning an Iraqi man who was reported to have been killed after his return. The state was ordered to pay compensation.
The National Bureau of Investigation opened an inquiry in 2020, and according to the Iraqi authorities the death certificate was forged. The court annulled its own judgment entirely on 13 July 2021 and rejected the application as an abuse of the right of petition.
Yle 14.11.2019, ja Yle 13.7.2021Two surveys measured attitudes in the election year. According to the Foundation for Municipal Development 47 per cent of Finns viewed immigration positively and 41 per cent negatively. In a survey by Yle and Taloustutkimus 41 per cent wanted more labour migrants, 38 per cent found the pace right and 19 per cent would slow it.
The same survey separated the types of immigration sharply. A clear majority supported admitting foreign students and EU workers, while about half would have reduced the number of refugees and asylum seekers.
Yle 9.3.2019, Kunnallisalan kehittämissäätiö, ja Yle 4.11.2019, TaloustutkimusWe will also need work-based immigration here in the future. In practice that means that if the foundation of our welfare is to be kept, there have to be the makings of growth here, and those makings come through labour, which also comes from abroad.
Answering the National Coalition's interpellation on employment policy four months after the government took office.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 40/2019 vp, asiakohta 3, 1.10.2019In EVA's Values and Attitudes survey, 39 per cent held that an ageing population requires making immigration easier and 36 per cent disagreed. At the same time 52 per cent considered immigration at its current level too much. The data was collected both before and after the Oulu sexual-offence suspicions, which according to EVA's research director did not move general attitudes.
EVAn Arvo- ja asennetutkimus, EVA Analyysi Härmä sulaa, Ilkka Haavisto 18.3.2019We must help these people and above all the children. This is a humane decision and it shows that Finland respects human rights.
Finland decided to receive at most 175 especially vulnerable asylum seekers from Greece, Cyprus, Malta and Italy. Greece had asked for 150. In the autumn of the same year Finland took 11 minors from the burnt-out camp at Moria.
Yle 22.2.2020, Sisäministeriö vahvistaa: Suomi voi ottaa 175 turvapaikanhakijaa Välimeren pakolaisleireiltäOn 22 January 2020 the Finland Chamber of Commerce proposed that the target for work- and study-based residence permits granted could initially be about 25,000 a year. About 15,000 were granted in 2019.
The figure covers residence permits, not net migration. Total net migration in 2020 was 17,814.
Keskuskauppakamari, tiedote 22.1.2020Too large a share of immigration to Finland is harmful immigration. It need not be so. The situation is the result of the wrong kind of policy. Abusing the asylum system is easy and tempting.
Second reading of a bill raising the age limit of integration services for unaccompanied minors to 25, at the end of the first pandemic spring.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 98/2020 vp, asiakohta 4, 22.6.2020In EVA's measurement 40 per cent would make moving to Finland easier because of the ageing population and 35 per cent would not. Attitudes moved towards a more permissive position for the fourth consecutive wave. There were 2,060 respondents.
EVAn Arvo- ja asennetutkimus, EVA Analyysi Kansainvälisyyden kahtiajako, Ilkka Haavisto 29.7.2020The Chamber of Commerce's 25,000 means work- and study-based residence permits granted, not net migration. It is included because permit targets are quoted alongside net figures in public.
Net migration is immigration minus emigration across all countries of birth, and it does not distinguish the grounds for entry.
The same scale in every year.
Hybrid influencing as a practice is state-led illegal activity in which the victims are the people used as its instruments.
Said when thousands of migrants had gathered at the Belarus-Poland border. The same definition was Finland's position when the eastern border was closed in November 2023 and when the temporary act on instrumentalised entry was passed in 2024.
Yle 9.11.2021, Sisäministeri Maria Ohisalo: EU:n ei pidä taipua Valko-Venäjän painostukseenOn 9 September 2021 the Government published its roadmap for education- and work-based immigration to 2035. The aim was at least to double work-based immigration by 2030 so that the total increase of at least 50,000 work-based immigrants required by the sustainability roadmap is achieved, and after that an increase of at least 10,000 a year. The number of new foreign degree students was to be tripled to 15,000.
The total increase is a cumulative figure for 2021–2030, not an annual level, so it cannot be shown as a bar alongside the other figures. Total net migration in 2021 was 22,905.
Valtioneuvosto, Koulutus- ja työperusteisen maahanmuuton tiekartta 2035, 9.9.2021At its spending-limits session in April 2021 the government confirmed the aim of doubling work-based immigration by 2030. The goal was 10,000 work- or study-based immigrants a year.
There were 15,012 first work-based residence permit applications in 2021 and 20,960 in 2022. After that the number fell three years running: 16,999, then 15,024, then 11,324 in 2025.
Yle 29.4.2021, ja Maahanmuuttovirasto, maahanmuuton tilastotOn 19 April 2021 the Finland Chamber of Commerce proposed a target of 30,000 people moving to Finland for work or study as early as the following year, and doubling that by the end of the decade.
About 29,000 first work and study applications were filed in 2022, close to the target. In 2025 the figures were 11,324 and 13,565.
Keskuskauppakamari, tiedote 19.4.2021In October 2021 the Finns Party and Movement Now tabled an interpellation on immigration policy and the economy. It was the first interpellation on immigration in at least fifteen years. The government won the confidence vote by 89 to 68.
Between 2007 and 2018 no interpellation was tabled on immigration, even though the subject dominated election debates. The next one came in December 2022 and concerned street gang crime.
Eduskunta, äänestystulos VK 4/2021 vp, 21.10.2021Statistics Finland's population projection of 30 September 2021 stated: "The projection assumes that Finland gains 20,000 people through net migration this year and 15,000 a year after that."
In the following years realized net migration was 34,363, then 57,914, then 47,051. Three years later the assumption was raised to 40,000.
Tilastokeskus, väestöennuste 2021, tiedote 30.9.2021This much we do know: Finland unambiguously needs immigration. Humanitarian immigration rests on the fact that people are fleeing danger.
Replying to the same interpellation. The speaker added that a person who meets racism and hatred does not integrate, and that fixing the attitude costs nothing.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 121/2021 vp, asiakohta 3, 20.10.2021Most of the costs of immigration arise from social security spending and services. The direct costs, such as reception or integration, are a fraction of that.
The Finns Party and Movement Now interpellation on immigration policy and the economy. The speaker said the costs were still something of a taboo in political debate.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 121/2021 vp, asiakohta 3, 20.10.2021In EVA's measurement the share rose to 48 per cent, with 34 per cent disagreeing. According to EVA the attitude had moved 29 percentage points towards permitting immigration since 1998, meaning that at the start of the series about a fifth of respondents agreed.
EVAn Arvo- ja asennetutkimus, EVA Arvio Tervetuloa töihin, Sanna Kurronen 29.6.2021On 12 December 2022 Technology Industries of Finland set a target of raising Finland's net migration to 50,000 people a year by 2030, citing slowing population growth, ageing and a shrinking working-age population.
Total net migration in 2022 was 34,363. It passed the target in 2023, seven years early.
Teknologiateollisuus ry 12.12.2022More than four million people have already fled Ukraine. The current estimate is that as many as 40,000 to 80,000 refugees could come to Finland too.
The appropriation was based on an estimate of 60,000 applications in 2022. In the event 47,302 applications for temporary protection were filed, near the bottom of the range. In the following years the figures were 19,426, then 12,617, then 12,018.
Uusi Suomi 6.4.2022, ja Maahanmuuttovirasto, maahanmuuton tilastotIn December 2022 the Finns Party tabled an interpellation on tackling youth and street gang crime by immigration and criminal policy means. The government won the confidence vote by 100 to 70.
It was the third interpellation touching on immigration in little over a year, after none had been tabled for at least fifteen years.
Eduskunta, äänestystulos VK 6/2022 vp, 19.12.2022In work-based immigration idealism does not meet reality. Enormous numbers of new arrivals are wanted in the country, yet the problems only multiply.
Opposing a bill that widened the long-stay D visa to speed up work-based entry.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 127/2022 vp, asiakohta 6, 22.11.2022The importance of immigration to a greying Finland grows all the time. Finland needs immigrants so that we can secure the funding of the welfare state and so that employers find enough skilled people for open jobs.
The minister presenting the new Integration Act as the government pushed to raise work-based immigration.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 108/2022 vp, asiakohta 4, 12.10.2022The 2022–2024 peak is explained in large part by temporary protection for people fleeing Ukraine, which none of the people setting targets had in mind.
Net migration is immigration minus emigration across all countries of birth, and it does not distinguish the grounds for entry.
The same scale in every year.
Discrimination cannot be accepted. Racism is to be given no room in Finland.
The statement followed a summer in which Minister of Economic Affairs Vilhelm Junnila resigned after 11 days on 30 June 2023 and Finance Minister Riikka Purra's writings from 2008 became a public dispute. The leaders of the governing parties signed an anti-racism declaration on 11 July 2023, and the statement was given to parliament at the start of the autumn session.
Valtioneuvoston tiedonanto yhdenvertaisuuden, tasa-arvon ja syrjimättömyyden edistämisestä suomalaisessa yhteiskunnassa (VNT 2/2023 vp) 31.8.2023, teksti kokonaisuudessaan YlelläOn 3 February 2023 Etla calculated that permanently stabilising the size of the birth and working-age cohorts would, with the current age and sex structure, require net migration of as much as 44,000 a year, almost three times Statistics Finland's projection assumption of 15,000 at the time.
Etla, raportti 132 Maahanmuutto ja työvoiman riittävyys, tiedote 3.2.2023On 8 March 2023 the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK) proposed doubling work-based immigration to 40,000 a year by the end of the electoral term and tripling international students to 15,000.
The figure covers work-based residence permits, not net migration, so it is not comparable with the other targets.
Elinkeinoelämän keskusliitto 8.3.2023Net migration was 57,914, more than any target that had been put forward. The level demanded was reached and exceeded years before the earliest target year.
Tilastokeskus, muuttoliike, StatFin muutl/159q, nettomaahanmuutto, kaikki syntymämaatThe programme of Petteri Orpo's government of 20 June 2023 set out: "Finland's refugee quota is 500 people a year." On the residence requirement for citizenship it said: "The period of residence in Finland will be extended to eight years." On work-based permits: "A person must leave Finland if their employment ends and they have not entered a new employment relationship within three months."
The quota was 1,050 in 2023. The eight-year residence requirement took effect on 1 October 2024 and the three-month rule on 11 June 2025. The euro limits for family reunification income had still not been decided by September 2026.
Vahva ja välittävä Suomi, pääministeri Petteri Orpon hallituksen ohjelma 20.6.2023The government closed the entire eastern border from 30 November 2023. Minister of the Interior Mari Rantanen said a full closure was necessary in the name of national security, and Prime Minister Orpo said Russia had caused the situation and could also end it.
More than 1,300 applicants arrived across the eastern border in 2023. The border was still closed in September 2026. First asylum applications across the whole country numbered 2,405 in 2024 and 2,047 in 2025.
Yle 28.11.2023In EVA's values and attitudes survey 55 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that the ageing and threatened decline of the population require making immigration to Finland easier. Thirty per cent disagreed.
It was the first time in 25 years of measurement that a majority agreed with the statement. Agreement stood at 31 per cent in 2016, 39 per cent in 2019 and 48 per cent in 2021. In the same survey 85 per cent regarded asylum seekers and work-based immigration as two entirely different things.
EVA, arvo- ja asennetutkimus, julkaistu 26.4.2023If we think only of the costs that go into income transfers, I would point out that problematic immigration is a very large economic factor.
Debate on the Orpo government's programme a week after it took office. The speaker called the government's change of paradigm in immigration policy a significant economic measure as well.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 18/2023 vp, asiakohta 5, 27.6.2023The other figures from the same EVA measurement: 82 per cent would make it much easier for skilled and educated foreigners to move to Finland, 52 per cent held that too large a share of arrivals are refugees, and 39 per cent judged immigration to do the Finnish economy more harm than good. The same survey therefore backed labour migration and rejected humanitarian migration.
EVAn Arvo- ja asennetutkimus kevät 2023, EVA Analyysi Maahanmuuton leirit, Ilkka Haavisto 26.4.2023In spring 2023 EVA's oldest immigration question drew as much support as opposition for the first time. The claim that "the growing labour shortage can only be solved with foreign labour" was accepted by 42 per cent and rejected by 41. In 1990 the same figures were 14 and 68, a shift of 28 percentage points over thirty-three years.
EVAn Arvopankki, osuus laskettu vastausjakauman lukumääristä. Arvopankki julkaisee painottamattomat vastausmäärät, joten osuus voi poiketa prosenttiyksikön tai kaksi EVAn omista painotetuista julkaisuluvuista · EVAn Arvo- ja asennetutkimus, kevät 2023, n = 2 043EK's 40,000 is work-based residence permits, not net migration. It is included because it is quoted alongside net figures in public.
The 2022–2024 peak is explained in large part by temporary protection for people fleeing Ukraine, which none of the people setting targets had in mind.
Net migration is immigration minus emigration across all countries of birth, and it does not distinguish the grounds for entry.
The same scale in every year.
A state under the rule of law has the right to defend itself.
Said on the day parliament passed the temporary act on countering instrumentalised entry. The Greens and the Left Alliance voted against, as did six Social Democrats and Eva Biaudet of the Swedish People's Party.
Yle 12.7.2024, Eduskunta hyväksyi käännytyslain, pääministeri Orpo: viesti Venäjälle on vahvaOn 8 November 2024 Etla put forward an alternative to Statistics Finland's population projection. Statistics Finland had raised the projection's net migration assumption from 15,000 to 40,000 a year, and Etla argued the long-run level should be set at 24,000.
Etla, Vaihtoehto Tilastokeskuksen ennusteelle, 8.11.2024Net migration was 47,051.
Tilastokeskus, muuttoliike, StatFin muutl/159q, nettomaahanmuutto, kaikki syntymämaatOn 24 October 2024 Statistics Finland published a projection assuming net migration of 52,000 in the current year, 45,000 in 2025 and 40,000 a year after that. It projected the population to grow to 6.5 million by 2070.
The assumption was 2.7 times the one made three years earlier. Within two months the Ministry of Finance was calculating with 25,000, the Bank of Finland with 27,000 and Etla with 24,000. Realized net migration in 2025 was 31,233.
Tilastokeskus, väestöennuste 2024, julkaistu 24.10.2024The amendment to the Nationality Act took effect on 1 October 2024. The residence required for naturalisation rose from five to eight years, and only residence on a permit counts. In July parliament had passed, by 167 votes to 31, a temporary act on countering instrumentalised entry.
A third fewer citizenship applications were filed in 2025 than the year before. The temporary act had not been applied once by September 2026, and its validity was extended to the end of 2026. Naturalisation numbers and the make-up of the population are under demographic change.
Laki kansalaisuuslain muuttamisesta 474/2024, ja laki 482/2024, EdilexIn its alternative budget in November 2024 the Centre Party proposed halting the deterioration of the dependency ratio by raising net migration to 40,000 a year.
The party's deputy chair Antti Kaikkonen publicly withdrew the target in June 2026, saying there is no particular need for work-based immigration right now.
Keskustan vaihtoehto 26.11.2024A Ministry of the Interior memorandum estimated in February 2024 that without restrictions at least 10,000 to 20,000 asylum seekers a year would arrive across the eastern border.
The estimate cannot be tested because the border stayed closed. Across the whole country there were 2,405 first asylum applications in 2024 and 2,047 in 2025.
Yle 8.2.2024, sisäministeriön muistioFinland is a safe country, but Finland is unsafe especially for women and especially for immigrants. And Finland is unsafe for immigrants because racism occurs in Finland.
A debate on equality and non-discrimination after the racially motivated stabbing of a child in Oulu, a year into the racism controversy around the government.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 71/2024 vp, asiakohta 7, 24.6.2024Statistics Finland's 40,000 is a calculation assumption of the population projection, not a target. It is included because Etla's proposal was an alternative to exactly that.
The 2022–2024 peak is explained in large part by temporary protection for people fleeing Ukraine, which none of the people setting targets had in mind.
Net migration is immigration minus emigration across all countries of birth, and it does not distinguish the grounds for entry.
The same scale in every year.
Finland is not as attractive a country for work-based immigration as it used to be.
In the same article the Director General of the Finnish Immigration Service, Ilkka Haahtela, said the reducing effect of the current government's measures cannot yet be read from the statistics. There were 15,024 first work-based residence permit applications in 2024 and 11,324 in 2025.
Yle 13.5.2025, Maahanmuutto hidastuu, mutta se ei johdu vain hallituksen toimistaNet migration was 31,233, 46 per cent below the 2023 peak.
The 2022–2024 peak is explained in large part by temporary protection for people fleeing Ukraine. The preliminary figure for 2025 was about 35,000, and the figures put forward in spring 2026 were still compared with that.
Tilastokeskus, muuttoliike, StatFin muutl/159q, nettomaahanmuutto, kaikki syntymämaatThe government programme's commitments took effect in three stages. The duration of international protection permits was shortened on 2 January 2025, the three-month rule for holders of work-based permits began on 11 June 2025 and new conditions for family reunification on 16 June 2025.
Asylum is now granted for three years instead of four. A person who loses their job has three months to find new work, specialists six. About 2,800 removal decisions were issued to permit holders in 2025, 41 per cent more than the year before.
Maahanmuuttovirasto, tiedotteet lakimuutoksista 2025If you want growth, you had better understand the realities. We need immigration, we do not need the belittling of people who come here from elsewhere.
Debate on the fiscal plan the day after finance minister Purra wrote on X that 38 per cent of mothers giving birth in Vantaa and Kerava were non-Finnish, and called it worrying.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 46/2025 vp, asiakohta 6, 7.5.2025Immigration is also, to the greatest degree, a security question. We have heard that from Sweden too. Immigration, poor integration and crime go together, and that should be recognised and admitted here as well.
The minister presenting the report on internal security and replying to the opposition's claim that Finland needs immigration.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 91/2025 vp, asiakohta 4, 7.10.2025On 23 March 2026 the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK) published its targets for the 2027–2031 electoral term: the target for immigration leading to work is set at a net 45,000 immigrants a year at least, and EK wants the target written into the next government programme.
Three years earlier EK's target was 40,000 work-based residence permits. The new figure is a net figure, so it is more demanding than the earlier one. What arrivals on different grounds cost the public finances and bring to them is under the economy.
EK, Työhön johtava maahanmuutto vaalikaudella 2027–2031, EK:n tavoitteet 23.3.2026On 23 March 2026 Etla's report 176 estimated that securing a sufficient workforce for public finances would require net migration of about 44,000 a year. Research director Antti Kauhanen called the target very challenging.
Yle first wrote that net migration should be tripled and corrected it the same day: the need would be a good quarter more than the preliminary 2025 figure of about 35,000.
Etla, raportti 176 Maahanmuuton taloudelliset vaikutukset, 23.3.2026, ja Yle 23.3.2026Annual net migration of about 25,000 would keep the number of the elderly relative to the working-age population roughly stable for the next 20 years.
In the same week EK demanded 45,000 and Etla calculated 44,000. The figures answer different questions: Toikka's stabilises the dependency ratio, Etla's the public finances.
Sitra, kasvuatlas-artikkeli 25.3.2026On 30 January 2026 the Finnish Immigration Service published the 2025 statistics. There were 11,324 first work-based residence permit applications, a quarter fewer than the year before, and 13,565 study-based ones. Director General Elina Hirvelä said the fall in work-based immigration is primarily due to the weak development of the Finnish economy in recent years.
The targets put forward the same spring were 44,000 and 45,000. The agency's own estimate for 2026 was 11,000 to 13,000 work-based applications.
Maahanmuuttovirasto, maahanmuuton tilastot 2025, tiedote 30.1.2026In March 2026 the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions replied to EK's target of 45,000 that it does not take account of high unemployment. The Coalition Party's platform adopted in June set no figure but promised to process specialists' residence permits in under a week and to abolish labour market testing.
Abolishing labour market testing was already promised in a government programme in 2007. It was still in force in September 2026.
SAK 23.3.2026, ja Kokoomuksen tavoiteohjelma 7.6.2026In June 2026 the Centre Party's deputy chair Antti Kaikkonen withdrew his party's target of 40,000 net immigrants. He said there is no particular need for work-based immigration right now, although there are needs in the longer term.
The target had been put forward in the party's alternative budget a year and a half earlier. It is so far the only one of the figures put forward that its proponent has publicly withdrawn.
Antti Kaikkonen SuomiAreenassa 25.6.2026, uutisointi Suomen UutisetOur growing immigration has also caused us internal security problems, which show in our prisons as well.
Debate on the prime minister's announcement of government policy for 2026. The minister added that, on the forecasts, more than half of prisoners might be foreigners within a few years.
Eduskunnan täysistunnon pöytäkirja PTK 13/2026 vp, asiakohta 3, 25.2.2026That is why the situation changes. Immigration must be limited to 10,000 people a year. Other countries are going to do the same. We have to take this decision now.
The first number on the timeline that is a ceiling rather than a floor. All sixteen earlier ones concern how much immigration would be needed at a minimum: nine are targets, three are calculations of the need, one criticises a target and one withdraws one. Harkimo's limit would cover humanitarian immigration too. For scale: Statistics Finland recorded about 51,000 arrivals last year and just under 190,000 in 2023–2025 together, and the Confederation of Finnish Industries wants at least 45,000 work-based net immigrants a year. Harkimo argues from unemployment and artificial intelligence: "We have 400,000 unemployed and AI is taking jobs. We have no work to offer them."
Harry Harkimo Ilta-Sanomien haastattelussa 12.9.2026, toimittaja Hanna VesalaMinister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio (Finns Party) proposed capping immigration from outside the EU and EEA by law at 0.1 per cent of the population a year, which he put at ”in the order of about 5,600 people a year”. He argued for ”a new social contract that recognises Finland's carrying capacity as limited”.
The second ceiling in four days, and drawn around a different group than Harkimo's. Harkimo's 10,000 covers all immigration, Tavio's limit only arrivals from outside the EU and EEA, so movement by EU citizens would fall outside it. The figure is tied to the population, so the ceiling moves with the head count. For scale: Statistics Finland recorded 51,121 immigrations to Finland in 2025 and the Finnish Immigration Service granted 49,785 first residence permits the same year. A first residence permit goes to people from outside the EU and EEA, which is exactly the group the ceiling would cover, so the ceiling would be about a ninth of last year's level. The two figures still do not measure the same thing, because a permit is a decision rather than a move.
Ville Tavion tiedote, uutisointi Iltalehti 15.9.2026, toimittajat Miia Sirén ja Teppo OvaskainenEK's 45,000 is immigration leading to work, in net terms, so only one part of total net migration. Family members, students and people granted protection come on top of it.
Etla calculated its figure from the point of view of public finances and VATT from that of the dependency ratio. A different question yields a different number, though both are net migration.
Net migration is immigration minus emigration across all countries of birth, and it does not distinguish the grounds for entry.
The same scale in every year.