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Positive decision

When the Finnish Immigration Service has made a decision on your asylum application, you will be informed about it by the Finnish Immigration Service or the police. The decision will be served to you in your mother tongue or another language that you understand. If necessary, we will use an interpreter or a translator when we serve the decision to you.

Together with the decision, you will receive instructions for clients. The instructions can also be found on the page ‘Positive decision for an asylum seeker’.

If you are an asylum seeker and apply for some other residence permit at the same time, your applications are processed separately at the Finnish Immigration Service. When you receive a decision on one of your applications, the processing of your other application will continue normally at the Finnish Immigration Service.

If we make a positive decision on your application, you will get one of the following:

  • asylum, or refugee status
  • subsidiary protection
  • a residence permit on other grounds

Check the decision to see on what grounds your permit has been granted.  If you have been granted refugee status or subsidiary protection status in Finland, this will be stated in the decision. 

You will receive a separate residence permit card together with the decision. Read more about residence permit cards on the page Residence permit card.

Instructions on family reunification can be found on the page Family reunification.

When can the Finnish Immigration Service refuse asylum or subsidiary protection?

The Finnish Immigration Service will not grant you asylum if exclusion must be applied to you. Exclusion means that:

  • the Finnish Immigration Service has reasonable grounds to suspect that you have committed one of the acts listed below, or

  • you have induced or otherwise participated in one of the following acts:

    • a crime against peace, war crime or crime against humanity

    • a serious non-political crime before entering Finland

    • an act contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Further, the Finnish Immigration Service will not grant you asylum if:

  • there are reasonable grounds to believe that you pose a threat to national security, or

  • you are a danger to the community because you have been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime.

The Finnish Immigration Service will not grant you subsidiary protection if exclusion must be applied to you. Exclusion means that:

  • the Finnish Immigration Service has reasonable grounds to suspect that you have committed one of the acts listed below, or

  • you have induced or otherwise participated in one of the following acts:

    • a crime against peace, war crime or crime against humanity

    • an act contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations

    • a serious crime, either in Finland or before entering Finland.

Further, the Finnish Immigration Service will not grant you subsidiary protection if exclusion must be applied to you for the following reasons:

  • before coming to Finland, you have committed one or more crimes other than the ones listed above, your crimes would be punishable by imprisonment under the Criminal Code of Finland, and you have left your country of origin solely to avoid sanctions resulting from those crimes, or

  • you are a danger to the community or to national security.

Non-refoulement

If you cannot be returned to your home country because of the principle of non-refoulement, you may be granted a temporary residence permit for up to one year at a time. The principle of non-refoulement means that it is not legal to remove a person from the country when he or she could be subject to the death penalty, torture, persecution or other treatment violating human dignity.

Watch a video about positive decisions.