E-services have accelerated decision-making in Finnish Immigration Service

The e-services for foreigners’ permit affairs has made decision-making in residence permit matters faster. The e-services were opened at the beginning of 2012 for those applying for their first student residence permit. By the end of the year, nearly 2,000 students had submitted their permit applications online. Towards the end of the year, the proportion of those who applied electronically was already 40 per cent.

At the fastest, students have received a decision on their electronic applications on the same day they have visited a Finnish embassy to confirm their identity. The average processing time for students’ electronic applications in 2012 was approximately a week, while the average processing time for all student residence permit applications was 21 days.

The acceleration of processing is gradually becoming apparent also in employment-based residence permits and in citizenship applications, which were included within the sphere of e-services in October 2012. The aim is that when the backlog of older citizenship applications submitted in 2011 has been cleared in autumn 2013, decisions on e-citizenship applications will be made much faster than those submitted on paper.

At the beginning of June 2013, citizenship declarations will also be included in the service. It is expected that declarations, especially those made by former Finnish citizens living abroad, will be submitted online. In the future, it will be possible to apply electronically for a residence permit on the basis of family ties as well.

Time-saving in many respects

The speed of e-services is ensured primarily by the fact that all information is transferred via the internet. Residence permit applications submitted abroad have traditionally been sent by courier to Finland, which has taken weeks, even months. This is a significant time saving, although customers still have to visit a Finnish embassy or the police to verify their identity and show their original documents.

As the e-services also guide customers in filling out forms and do not enable them to leave obligatory fields blank, applications are more complete when submitted to the authorities. This, in turn, reduces the need for requests to supplement applications, which lengthen the processing time often by several weeks. The information filled in by the customer and the supplements are automatically transferred to the processing system.

Customers monitor the progress of their application and can, if necessary, voluntarily supplement it while processing is ongoing, in which case the information immediately becomes available to the processing authority. The decision is also notified in the service.

Majority of permits sought at beginning of year employment-based

In the period between January and April 2013, a total of 667 customers used the e-services. The most common motivations for residence permit applications were various work-related ones, on the basis of which 267 individuals applied for a residence permit. A total of 180 citizenship applications and 168 student residence permit applications were submitted online.

With the approach of summer, student applications for extended permits have increased in particular because students who began their studies in Finland last autumn are now applying for an extension to their student resident permits.

The number of student applications will increase even more during the summer when foreign students apply for their first residence permits for the period of their studies starting in the autumn. At that time, especially, it is in everyone’s interest to use the e-services, as students are in a hurry to obtain their residence permits before the start of their studies and the Finnish Immigration Service is faced with one of the year’s busiest times.

Further information for the media

Vesa Hagström, Director of Information Management, Finnish Immigration Service,
tel. +358 (0)71 873 0431, e-mail: firstname.lastname@migri.fi