The Finnish Immigration Service will make its procedure for booking asylum interviews for asylum seekers more effective. The reform will come into force on 1 April 2015. According to the new procedure, an asylum interview can be booked immediately after the application has become pending.
“In the future, applicants can know the time of their interview already in the early stage of the application process,” says Head of Section Riitta Koskela. “It will no longer be necessary to wait for the police to conclude its investigation or for all further clarifications to arrive,” she continues.
Reception centres will give advice
The reception centres are to inform the applicants of the new procedure. An applicant is supposed to choose a counsel only after he or she has received an invitation to the asylum interview. When the time of the interview is known, the applicant can choose a counsel who can attend the appointment.
An applicant may also attend the interview without a counsel and supplement the transcript drawn up of the interview later with his or her counsel.
Scheduling has been a challenge
In order to inform the applicants of their interviews as quickly as possible, the interview appointment will be booked without inquiring about the schedules of potential counsels. Up to now, there have been difficulties with scheduling.
“We can now arrange an interview even at short notice and make use of all available appointments more efficiently,” Koskela says.
According to Koskela, the queue will be cleared from both ends at the same time. Appointments are booked both for applicants who are waiting in the queue as well as for applicants who have submitted their application just recently. At the same time, attention is paid to prevent unreasonably long waiting times for those applicants whose applications have become pending earlier.
From the applicant’s point of view, the reform will speed up the processing of his or her application in the administrative organisation. The reform will also facilitate scheduling in the reception centres.
For further information, please contact:
Riitta Koskela, Head of Section, tel. +358 295 430 431, firstname.lastname@migri.fi
