Asylum decision-making is made more effective – the backlog is cleared as soon as possible

The Ministry of the Interior estimates that 30,000 to 35,000 people will seek asylum in Finland by the end of this year. In previous years, the number of applicants has been between 3,000 and 5,000.

The Finnish Immigration Service will employ more staff and make its decision-making more effective in cooperation with the police and other authorities that take part in the asylum process in order to clear the backlog of applications as quickly as possible. In this way it is ensured that the waiting times for asylum decisions do not become unreasonably long.

A more effective decision-making process is also economically profitable, since each euro invested in decision-making reduces reception costs by seven euros.

Extra staff helps to clear the backlog

The processing times for asylum applications will become temporarily longer before the additional staff and the measures to make the decision-making process more effective will start to produce results. This year, the average processing time has been under five months. The processing times will now become temporarily longer, but once the new employees get started with their work after job orientation, the processing times will become shorter again.

Decisions will be made faster if the decision is clearly positive or negative. The processing time will become longer mainly in such cases that require more investigation.

The number of employees will increase from 75 to 500

Previously, 75 employees have examined asylum applications and made decisions on 4,000 applications yearly.

At the beginning of September, 30 new temporary employees started processing asylum applications. At the end of the year, the Finnish Immigration Service will employ additional staff and the number of employees who process asylum applications will be 500 at the beginning of 2016.

The operations will become even more decentralised when a new section is established in Rovaniemi, where the number of reception centres has increased.

Clear cases are sorted out quickly

In order to increase the effectiveness, the Finnish Immigration Service is also revising its procedures. For example, the electronic case management system UMA and automation will be utilised where applicable. Asylum applications will be sorted as early as possible into those that can be decided quickly and those that require more investigation.

Our cooperation with the police, which takes part in the initial and final stages of the asylum process, will be enhanced. It is very important that the transitions between authorities are as swift and smooth as possible. Senior advisers from the Finnish Immigration Service will continue to work at police stations in Turku and Helsinki and, occasionally, also elsewhere.

Further information for the media

Esko Repo, Director of Asylum Unit, tel. 0295 430 431, firstname.lastname@migri.fi