Work search visa

The Ministry of the Interior has apparently decided that there is a need for a work search visa.

I don't think it's a bad idea on general principle. There are some people who want to come and work here, there are some jobs for them, and matching a potential employee to a job is usually kind of hard without an interview. Hence, people need visas to go to the job interviews.

The whole different question is whether or not they will fuck up the implementation.

1. These people won't be eligible for any social security, apart from the emergency medical help, right? Right? Inquiring taxpayers often want to know, and a lot of Finnish people tend to assume everybody who steps on Finnish land is. This is not always the case, but I wouldn't assume anything either way until I hear it from the people involved in that project. And what I want to hear is that they will only be eligible for the emergency medical help until they find a job, and after that have the same perks as any other foreign workers.

2. Will they be required to prove they can afford their stay here, and a ticket back if they don't find a job? (I can see arguments for and against.)

3. Once they are here, what is gonna prevent them from, say, going to Sweden and applying for the asylum there? OK, Sweden's problem, but still...

4. Is 6 months really necessary? We are hopefully talking about more or less skilled workers, such as send their CVs to employers, get or don't get invited to interviews and need to come to Finland to go to those interviews. IMO, and I am speaking from experince, this is done by reserving a ticket about a month and a half ahead, sending a lot of CVs to different companies at the same time, informing them all of the time you are gonna be in the country and hoping some of them would interview you. Doesn't take 6 months. On the other hand: my experience is very much influenced by my own field, in other fields things might be different, and as long as they want to be here for 6 months on their own money, there isn't any problem.

5. What's with the country list? (Ukraine, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia.) I know that I have said many times that one should carefully select the countries one takes large groups of immigrants from; I really did not mean that we should specifically select the ones where the religion of peace is practiced. Why not, say, Ukraine, Armenia, India and China?

Turkey's educated classes are not much into the religion of peace and there is in fact some skilled labor there. As for importing their unskilled labor, one should probably study Germany's experiences first.

6. In general if they feel a need to test the system on small numbers (which is a good idea IMO): why the particular countries, rather than the particular fields that need labor the most?

7. What's the point of the quotas later on, unless they are per-country quotas? We are talking about the numbers of people who come here for the interviews, not the number of people who come here to work.

8. What would be the criteria for giving or refusing the visas? Would there be something like filtering by profession?

9. Would some kind of a point system be worth considering? People would get some points for their education, some for being in the right field, some for being from a country whose citizens tend to integrate well, some for language skills, etc.