As of 15 June 2015, the Finnish Immigration Service will no longer provide personal advice at the customer service point in Helsinki. Our telephone service continues to give advice and information as before.
In order to work as efficiently as possible, the personnel of the customer service point will concentrate on decision-making and we will give advice only over the telephone for the following reasons:
- There have often been long queues at our customer service point, and we have received feedback about this from our customers. However, we have not been able to increase our personnel at the service point, because the same employees who give advice at the service point issue decisions on residence permit, citizenship and asylum applications. Since the number of applications is increasing, as many employees as possible need to focus on decision-making.
- We have noticed that the majority of the customers who visit the service point have questions about the processing stage of their application or bring documents to us personally.
- Information about our processing times is provided on our website and over the telephone as well as in our e-service if you have submitted your application via the e-service.
- You can send documents to us via the e-service and by post. If you wish, you can still bring documents to our office in Helsinki.
Same service over the telephone, a busy summer is expected
Our telephone service will continue to give advice as before. The telephone service has access to the same system and can give you the same information about your application and its processing stage as the customer service point.
The number of new applications is particularly high in the summer. At the same time, we have fewer employees present due to the holiday season. Unfortunately, it will be more difficult to contact us during the summer, because we need to ensure and prioritise fast decision-making.
