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Director General Jaana Vuorio: I have learned my lesson from the complaint of the Chancellor of Justice

Migri
Publication date 3.2.2017 13.33
Press release

The Office of the Chancellor of Justice has issued a complaint to the Finnish Immigration Service about the processing of asylum applications at the beginning of 2016. The agency takes serious notice of the matters expressed by the Chancellor of Justice.

“I have learned my lesson from the complaint,” says Director General Jaana Vuorio.

The transitional provision and backlog were behind the decision to freeze the processing

The category of humanitarian protection was removed from the Aliens Act on 16 May 2016. Even before that, it was known that the act would be applied right away, so regardless of when the asylum seeker had come to Finland, the new act would apply to him or her at the decision stage.

At the same time, there was a backlog in the processing of asylum applications and the applications could not be processed for practical reasons in the order they arrived, as was the usual practice. For example, there were problems in getting interpreters, remote access for interpreters and counsels for the asylum interviews.

“In that situation I found that humanitarian protection would not be granted because granting it would have happened at random. The few asylum seekers that were eligible to be granted humanitarian protection and whose applications would have happened to be processed in the first place would have been in a different position that those who had come to Finland much earlier but whose applications had not yet been processed. The situation would have been like a lottery,” says Director General Jaana Vuorio.

During the previous months, humanitarian protection had been granted to less than three per cent of the asylum seekers. Humanitarian protection was granted due to difficult circumstances in the home country of an asylum seeker. Asylum or subsidiary protection was granted on the same grounds as before.

Vuorio proposes that in the future amendments be made so that they would apply to applications that become pending after the amendment comes into force not to applications that already are pending. The Chancellor of Justice agrees with the Director General that the current transition provision is problematic.

Further information for the media:

Director General Jaana Vuorio, tel. +358 295 430 431, e-mail: firstname.lastname@migri.fi

Press release