What the hell are we doing?

The conversation about asylum seekers is getting more and more emotional on both sides, as the bodies are piling up. I am not much of a psychologist, but I suspect that part of what is making people scream so loudly is that it's getting quite clear that the old "nobody there is in real need of help anyway" and, on the other side, "we gotta help everyone who needs help" are not working anymore: there are obviously lots of people really in need of help, and we just as obviously cannot help them all. All that can be discussed at this point is numbers, which kind of takes all fun away from an ideological debate, and pisses off both sides.

But yes, lots of people are trying to get to the EU and apply for asylum. And no, for the most part we cannot help them where they are. In the places overrun by ISIS, for example, "helping them where they are" would, I am afraid, involve a summary execution of all the members of ISIS, which is rather expensive, and likely to produce a lot of innocent victims if done by carpet bombing.

I am looking at all this, and I am wondering: what the fuck are we doing? I don't even mean that we are taking too many, or too few: how are we going about it, and who gets selected?

Seriously, this makes no sense at all: we (Europe) build fences and do everything we can in order not to let asylum seekers into the EU. Then after some of them do get into the EU, we have to take the applications from all of those, and in the first country they arrive to (I can see how Italy and Greece might be a bit pissed off by this system, and we would be too if the eastern neighbor suddenly started producing refugees). Then the applications are considered, hopefully to the best of the officials' ability, and their ability is not all that good: it's hard to say who is a criminal, it's hard to say who is a terrorist, it's sometimes even hard to say who is who and who is from where. But then, after an application has been approved, we are not gonna kick the person out no matter what kind of criminal he or she has turned out to be.

What is the sense of all of this? We are actively selecting the people who can get to Europe in something that doesn't deserve to be called a boat, and can afford to pay the smugglers. I totally think that both young men, and people who have money can be just as worthy of asylum as for example poor old women, but is there any point in actively selecting them, and in the process encouraging lots of people to a) risk their lives while crossing the seas on god-knows-what, and b) give their money to the people who provide that unseaworthy transportation?

Can't we, like, decide on how many we can take, handle the applications elsewhere, and then let the winners of that lottery arrive on a proper ferry with proper papers, while turning the users of Oh-Shit-The-Raft-Is-Leaking Sea Transportation away on arrival? People are not dumb (well, most aren't), and if rafting over the Mediterranean is not occasionally rewarded with a residence permit they are likely to stop doing it.

And please, can we send the seriously criminal ones back? On the Oh-Shit-The-Raft-Is-Leaking Sea Transportation, if needed. Yeah, the transportation might take a downward direction, quite literally. Yeah, they might be subjected to inhumane treatment there. They will probably have to take a number and stand in line for that along with half of the population, many of whom we have turned away to begin with, but anyway... Tough shit. They could've thought about it before robbing or raping somebody. No matter how many or how few refugees we decide to take, all the refugee places should be reserved for regular people trying to resettle and live a normal life, not for somebody wanted for terrorism in Iraq or armed robbery in Finland.

We can fight about the numbers later, but can we put some sense in the procedure first, and fast?

A felon refugee camp?

One of the problems with the refugee admission systems in Europe is that if a refugee or even an asylum seeker turns out to be a serious criminal, you can't send them back like any other foreigner: either they might be in danger in their country of origin, or the return is for some reason technically impossible.

I think that the solution for this problem can and should be provided by the UN, in the same spirit of cooperation in which the countries accept refugees from the UN refugee camps.

The UN can establish a separate camp for the refugees whom their host countries have chosen to deport for being convicted felons. It should be separate from the normal refugee camps, and preferably far away from any local populations.

This should not be a punishment or prison camp. The idea is to provide convicted felons who have already served their time with a reasonably safe place to live if their country of citizenship is too dangerous to go to, and their habitual country of residence has kicked them out for being too much of a criminal. The standard of living should be about average for a UN refugee camp that's not in war zone. The residents should of course be free to leave at any time if they decide that their country of citizenship is not that dangerous after all, or if some new idiots decide to take them in.

I am sure this would greatly improve the goodwill of citizens towards the refugees.

To Michael Halila, part 4

Michael's latest answer is here.

"Unfortunately this conversation is threatening to become disingenuous to the point of sophistry."

Disingineous? I think you are quite sincere, and I know I am.

" Unless, of course, you are intending to correct those factors. Are you?

Yes. That is the entire point of my objection. Did you miss it?"

I don't think "our integration policies don't work right and we should correct them so that refugees are integrated better" is the same point as "we can and will correct everything that makes them unemployed and/or criminal in disproportionate numbers".

For example: the integration system can be corrected in such a way that all or almost all people who had some proper (as in "usable in Finland") profession in Somalia would find jobs like everyone else. It would be much harder to change the integration system in such a way that people who came as illiterate adults would find jobs. Any efficient "correction" for that factor would in all probability mean keeping the illiterate out. I don't, however, think that this is what you meant.

"To sum up, there are problems with the integration of refugees into Finnish society. The way I see it, there are two possible approaches to resolving these problems:

1) stop or limit the immigration of refugees because they cause problems. Crudely speaking, blame the refugees and stop them from coming to Finland.

2) try to fix the political and socioeconomic causes of the problems. Crudely speaking, blame Finnish society and the state, and try to fix them.

I don't know when you missed that I've been constantly trying to argue for option 2, or if you're just trying to score rhetorical points."

I haven't missed that. I am just trying to point out that there are also combinations of the two options, just as first fix the problems and then raise the quota, which is what I have been arguing for.

My original point, however, was that a need for some kind of a quota is inherent in the whole process of refugee admissions, and that there is no point in pretending otherwise. If or when the problems really are fixed this quota can well be much higher than the current numbers.

"In my opinion, the problems associated with refugees are not a "refugee problem" as such but one manifestation of wider problems in Finnish society and politics."

In my opinion they are both. A refugee who really wants to integrate can do it quite well with the current system, and on the other hand a system that really pressures refugees to integrate can integrate even those who are not particularly interested. It's when refugees are not interested in integrating (or, in some cases, are not integrable) *and* the system in not really trying to integrate them that we get 60% unemployment rates.

To Michael Halila, part 3

Michael's answer is here.

"What difference does it make? All the difference in the world. It's totally dishonest to compare the entire Iraqi or Somali population to the entire Finnish population, when the Iraqi and Somali populations in Finland are made up of a totally different mix of social classes, ages and income classes than the Finnish population. I don't mean to be rude, but if you don't understand that, then I'm going to have a hard time believing you're qualified to be commenting in any way on statistics either."

It would make a difference if I were writing a sociological essay on the criminal proclivities of the populations of Finland, Somalia and Iraq.

The subject under discussion, however, is the cost that the Finnish society pays for accepting refugees, and the feasibility of accepting them in large numbers. For the purpose of this discussion it makes no difference whatsoever whether they do it because they have a lot of young men, because they are of a lower socioeconomic class, or because of any other factor.

Unless, of course, you are intending to correct those factors. Are you?

"In one sense, I'm presenting my argument badly, and I apologize for that. I want to point out a matter of principle here, and jumping from facts and statistics to principle like this is bad form."

The whole point of my original post that you were responding to is that refugee admissions should not be treated as a matter of principle.

"Nevertheless, the problem with arguing for accepting less refugees because previous refugees have committed crimes is, to me, totally unethical as it constitutes punishing future refugees for the crimes of other people."

The problem with this idea is the assumption that the future refugees are entitled to the exact same treatment as the current ones. They are not, and you know it. (At least, that's what I deduce from your earlier remark, saying that if there will be a lot of applicants the authorities will just tighten the criteria. Is it fair to punish refugees for the simple fact that there are too many other refugees?)

The way I see it, refugee admission is a charitable practice that is, by its very nature, a lottery with a limited budget: Finland has N euros in its budget to spend on refugees, and for that money it can help M refugees, out of a much larger pool. The money can stretch, but not too much. In effect, Finland is already punishing new potential refugees for the fact that the old ones don't find jobs fast enough. (If much less money were spent per refugee, it would be possible to admit a lot more.)

Social peace is a resource as much as money is. So is the population's goodwill.

There is of course a way to reduce refugee crime without punishing anyone except the guilty, but you have already said that you find it monstrous.

"If the problem is Finnish policies, not refugees, why on earth are you agitating against refugees, instead of for political change in Finland?"

"Agitating against refugees"?

The explicit and implicit suggestions of my original post were:

- admit that we can only take a limited number per year, and institute a quota,
- try to favor the refugees who are more likely to fit in,
- avoid admitting people who are likely to be trouble, such as people persecuted for Islamic extremism, or sentenced to death for real crimes,
- deport serious violent criminals regardless of the conditions in the home country,
- encourage integration by limiting social security.

Which of the above are "agitating against refugees", and opposed to "trying to change social policy"?

To Michael Halila, part two

Michael's answer to part 1 is here.

"First of all, I mistakenly assumed the number the Finnish immigration office gives on their page for admitted refugees is, in fact, the total number of refugees admitted to Finland. Apparently it isn't, so my bad."

Yes, they are a bit difficult to interpret. They keep separate statistics for quota refugees, asylum seekers and other immigrants. Of the asylum seekers who are allowed to stay, some get the refugee status, some "international protection", some "humanitarian reasons" and some "family". The "humanitarian reasons" are also in the regular immigrant statistics under "other reasons".

"As you can see, 2007 was a record low in applications in the 2000's, while the 4035 applications of last year are only 200 more than in 2004. Looking at the numbers, there is so far no clear rising trend. So your potential future situation is a possible future situation."

This is a good point, and 2007 indeed was a record low, but now we are over the record high. It could be just a peak year after which the applications will go down, but the Director-General of the Finnish Immigration Service thinks otherwise.

"Also, how is slightly less than 2000 refugee admissions in a year "a lot for a country like Finland"? That's, what, 0.0004 percent of our population of five million?"

0.04%.

"Each year there are some 60 000 Finnish people born; admitting 2 000 refugees in addition to them doesn't exactly unbalance our population structure dramatically."

It makes them about 3.3% of the new population growth, not counting their children who are born here. With time, it makes for a sizeable minority. Which, again, would not be a problem, except that its two biggest groups, Iraqis and Somalis, are grossy overrepresented in violent crime and unemployment statistics.

"To me it's totally monstrous to suggest that if a person makes one mistake, they're deported from Finland forever."

Depends on the size of the mistake, but how many mistakes of what size do you think would be enough?

"It's the height of naïvete to assume, like you do, that a population can be divided into criminals and non-criminals, and we should expel all the criminals. "

A population can be divided into criminals and non-criminals, that's what criminal law and courts are for, and of course the division is not perfect. And I have said twice, quite explicitly, that I don't want to expel all the criminals, or even all the foreign criminals.

"If a policy like that had a positive effect on crime rates, there would be no crime in Britain because they expelled everyone who committe a "single serious violent crime" to Australia."

I think they have stopped that a while ago. 1868, AFAIK. New generations of criminals have been born since - and imported, too.

Where do you get "there is still crime"="a particular policy has no positive effect"? There is still crime everywhere - do you think no anti-crime policy has any positive effect?

"However, I feel the constitutional issue is more important, and you're actually quoting the wrong part of the Constitution:

Perusoikeudet
6 §
Yhdenvertaisuus

Ihmiset ovat yhdenvertaisia lain edessä."

I am actually quoting from the same paragraph as you, right after what you quoted.

"And yes, it doesn't say "citizens". Human rights in general apply to humans, not just humans who are citizens of your particular polity. There are very good reasons for this."

There certainly are, but staying in a country that you are not a citizen of is not a human right as such.

"This is a disingenuous argument, for a simple reason. The juridical difference between a refugee and a foreign national is very simple. Most foreign nationals can be deported to their country of citizenship, but refugees are considered to be fleeing from persecution by that country, which is why deporting them is an entirely different matter from deporting, say, a British national."

So British nationals are less equal after all? :)

"Equality before the law doesn't mean everyone who lives in the country has to be allowed to vote or to be paid Social Security, it means they have to be treated the same before a court. "

Including a court deciding on immigration or voting or social security issues?

"And if a Finnish citizen is sentenced to four months for robbery, but a Somali refugee is sentenced to four months plus deportation to a war zone for the same robbery, then they're rather obviously not being treated equally before the law."

If you choose to define equality before the law as equality before criminal law, I find it a bit strange, but in this case we have no problem. Deportation is a proceeding defined in immigration law.

" He uses rape as his example, but the same basic logic applies to all violent crime statistics. When we adjust for overrepresentation in the age groups that commit the most crime, the per capita violent crime committed by refugees is not markedly larger than that of the general population."

Let's see. In 2007 Somalis and Iraqis, put together, constituted 0.14% of Finnish population. ((4852+3036)*100/5300484). Among the men aged 15 to 29 Somalis and Iraqis constituted 0.316%. This means that among 15-29-year-old men they were overrepresented by a factor of 2.1.

Among the suspects in cases of various forms of manslaughter, various forms of rape, aggravated battery and robbery Iraqis and Somalis were overrepresented by a factor of 14.8 and 20, respectively. The previous year they were overrepresented by a factor of 20.7 and 14.

I would count that as "markedly large".

All those numbers are available on Tilastokeskus page. Here are my calculations for crime rates, you can recheck them just to be sure.

As for the socioeconomic factors - you are right, they do affect it. What difference does it make, though? Crime is still crime, we obviously don't know how to fix the socioeconomic factors, either, and "let's import some more unemployed and unemployable young men" does not sound like a good idea.

"But despite what Halla-aho and his like are peddling, Finland is a long way from having ethnic ghettos like those of Paris."

We certainly are, and it would be nice to remain that way.

"What we need to learn from the situation in other European countries is how to stop it from happening here. In my opinion this means a stronger policy of integrating refugees and other immigrants into society, not demonizing them as criminals and trying to erect barriers of entry to stop them from coming here."

How about learning and instituting the relevant policies first, and taking more refugees later?

"In short, the reason refugees aren't finding jobs fast enough is, in my opinion, social democracy, not the refugees themselves. And as for violent crime, as I said, taking all factors into account refugees commit violent crime at approximately the same frequency as the Finnish population."

About the violent crime you are wrong. About the social security policy you are most likely right, and as soon as the social security policy changes we can try admitting more refugees than now.

I am quite a fan of the American refugee policies, too, and have written about it a few times before. They did manage to integrate their refugees, and there is no massive unemployment among the refugee population. Or, as far as I know, a massive crime rate (it is less documented than unemployment). The Office of Refugee resettlement report to the Congress is most educational (the latest one is here).

First or all, they do have a quota, which for 2006 was 70000. (The actual arrivals were 57979.) The quota is divided by regions. The largest group was from Cuba (19787). There were 10453 from Somalia.

Second, they do deport refugees or crimes, at least to the extent that this is physically possible. Even for the crimes that I would consider too minor for a deportation.

Third, their social security really doesn't last forever. Most refugees are expected to be self-supporting 4 months after arrival, and most are. If they aren't, they have some more time on state assistance, and after that they run out of money, unless they are elderly or handicapped.

I promise, as soon as Finland changes its policies in such a way that half of working-age refugees are self-supporting after 4 months of being here, I'll say "hurrah, let's get more refugees!" right here in this blog. In fact, if you can find any statistics of any refugee group doing so now, I can say "hurrah, let's get more of those!" now.

To Michael Halila

Responding here to Michael's comment to my previous post:

"We're not "admitting everyone". Finland admits less than 1,000 refugees a year, including in 2008 when the number of applications mushroomed."

In 2008 Finland has admitted 702 quota refugees, 89 asylum seekers who got a refugee status, 484 people on international protection status, 149 people for humanitarian reasons, and 38 asylum seekers on temporary residence permits, which will no doubt become continuous in 2 years. In addition to that 563 Somalis were admitted as family members. Of these at least 450 must have been family members of another refugee and therefore entitled to the same benefits. That's 1874 persons right here, and this number does not include the people with temporary residence permits and the family members of refugees other than Somalis.

It may not seem like a lot, but it's a lot for a country Finland's size. My "admitting everyone" in any case referred to a potential future situation where the number of applicants has risen sharply. Which is not all that potential anymore, now that their number has in fact risen sharply.

As for including the 2008 when the number of admissions mushroomed: we haven't seen it yet. The average time in which a normal (not Dublin, etc.) application is reviewed was 176 days in 2008 and 204 days in January 2009. The latests decision statistics are for January, and the mushrooming started in May last year. Just for comparison: in January 498 applications were filed, but only 178 decisions of any kind were made.

"And the idea of deporting everyone who is found guilty of a single crime is, to me, simply monstrous."

I did not say "for a single crime", but "for a single serious violent crime". I was not suggesting that we deport people for shoplifting, chewing khat or even having a minor fight or cheating sossu out of a bit of money. Shit happens. When shit start happening to the extent of aggravated robbery with assault and battery, it's time to shovel it out. To me it's monstrous to let them stay.

"The Finnish constitution says people (not citizens, people) are equal before the law. You want to change that to make "foreigners" less equal? I don't like the sound of that."

Let's see:

"Ketään ei saa ilman hyväksyttävää perustetta asettaa eri asemaan sukupuolen, iän, alkuperän, kielen, uskonnon, vakaumuksen, mielipiteen, terveydentilan, vammaisuuden tai muun henkilöön liittyvän syyn perusteella." (No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age, origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person.)

Weird, I don't see "citizenship" there. I do see "acceptable reason" instead.

Foreigners are less equal. They can't vote, and they usually need residence permits to stay in Finland. Foreigners can be deported for a single crime, and sometimes are. A person who has come here to work is denied a residence permit renewal if he or she loses the job just before the renewal and doesn't immediately find a new one. People who come here to work don't get the same social security as Finns until they get a permanent residence permit, and if their contract is short enough, they don't get any social security at all. I am not even talking about the status of students.

Refugees, on the other hand, are holy cows who are sometimes impossible to deport even after a series of convictions for aggravated assaults, batteries and robberies.

"Finland is admitting less than one thousand asylum seekers per year, and this number is not going to change dramatically despite the fearmongering going on."

Would you like to define "dramatically", and the timescale?

"But the idea that "something's gotta give" is just exaggerating the nature of the problem so much that it's hard to understand where you're coming from. I don't understand this Finnish "refugee hysteria" at all."

That's simple. First of all, people have noticed that the refugees are very much overrepresented in violent crime statistics and underrepresented in the employment statistics. Second, we have the unfortunate example of other European countries in front of our eyes. And third, the number of applicants is up.

I really wouldn't worry about refugees if they found jobs fast and committed crimes with approximately the same frequency as Finns. This is, unfortunately, not the case.

Refugees: something's gotta give

I have a really strong feeling that I am just repeating what I've said before, but here goes:

The current refugee admission system in Europe is not working and cannot work much longer without a lot of trouble. The trouble has already started. Finland is behind most of the Western Europe, as far as the trouble goes, but is catching up fast.

Large-scale population movements have happened before. Some countries have managed to assimilate huge amounts of refugees and immigrants, quite often to the mutual benefit. It's just that in the early 21-century Europe that is not happening, and is not about to magically happen.

The reasons for this are many:

1. First of all, the increasing diversity. (I have written about it before, here.) All the successful refugee movements that I can think of have essentially served to decrease diversity in some way or another. I am not talking about racial or linguistic diversity, but the diversity of way of life. It is quite logical: people are persecuted for being different and move somewhere where they fit in better. Problem is, now there are a lot of people coming to Europe who don't in fact fit in better. Or if this is their "better", I shudder to think what "worse" looks like.

2. Second, the system doesn't select well enough. I am not even talking about the selection of cultures and countries - even the selection of individuals doesn't work properly.

3. Third, the current system gives very little opportunity to roll back the transaction if a wrong person is let through.

4. Fourth, eternal social security serves to attract the wrong kind of people. There are enough persecuted people in the world as it is. Obviously, the people who want to improve their standard of living by moving to a Western country and working there also want to try their luck. The social security that keeps coming forever means that everyone who moves to Europe from poor countries is garanteed a higher standard of living. And that's a hell of a lot of people.

5. Fifth, the multiculturalism, in the sense of unwillingness to admit that the refugees are coming from a worse country to a better one. Also failure to enforce the majority rules in situations where this enforcement really matters.

I really believe that admitting refugees is a good thing if the admitting country is not overstretching its resources and the people who arrive are not total schmucks. Problem is, with lavish social security for new arrivals the countries are overstretching their resources even with a small number of refugees, and schmucks are, well, disproportionally represented.

Refugee admission is a really strange game. First of all, there are refugees and potential refugees in need of resettlement. Second, there are places for them in the countries that are willing to admit them. Everyone with more than two brain cells can figure out that the former are a lot more numerous than the latter and that the whole admission thing is by its very nature a lottery and cannot be anything else.

Wouldn't the simplest thing be to admit that fact and act accordingly? Say "we can take N refugees this year" and do it, and say "sorry" to the rest of them?

This is, in fact, what is done with quota refugees. But there are also asylum seekers - the people who first come to Finland and then apply for the refugee status. Their numbers are not limited in any way, and they are given a residence permit, either as a refugee or as a person in need of protection if they are in fact deemed to be in need of protection.

This means that their number is only limited by the officials' hope that not too many will decide to come and apply. This is all very nice, but what if quite a lot of them arrive? And to all the people saying "why would anyone want to come to this cold, dark and unfriendly country?" I can only say that if only a few will come, then the quota should not be a problem, right?

I also think that Europe should rethink what are the appropriate grounds for refugee admission. Not to reduce the number of potential applicants, but because some of them mean trouble, pure and simple. Helping persecuted people is a good thing, but some people are persecuted for a very good reason. It's very nice to help somebody who is persecuted for homosexuality in Iran, for pro-democracy activism in China, for being an albino in Tansania, etc. If a person is being persecuted for Islamic extremism in Saudi Arabia, let's leave him/her right there to be persecuted.

Same with the death penalty: it's good we don't have it, but if we define it as a human right violation that makes a person condemned to it undeportable, we'll end up with a bunch of refugees who are condemned to death somewhere. And guess what: not all of them are condemned for a homosexual act or failing to praise the fearless leader loudly enough.

Now for the ones already here: is it too much to ask that they behave themselves like human beings? Considering that they are in fact human beings and most of them manage to act like that, too. For starters, how about kicking out the ones who engage in serious violent crime? After the first time, not the tenth? Even if the country of origin is not safe for the poor dear?

The whole thing is based on a lot of pretense: we pretend that we can admit everyone who needs a new home, then we pretend that the people we didn't admit didn't really need it, and then we pretend that the people whom we did admit need it so much that they cannot be sent back under any circumstances. It's time to say "we can take N refugees per year, and no criminals, please". Shouldn't be so damn hard.

Refugees and diversity

A number of blogs have been talking about immigration and refugees lately, especially on Uusi Suomi's list of election blogs.

In such discussions feelings run high, both sides sometimes use the kind of arguments that makes one feel ashamed for them, and most people seem to be a bit unclear on the concept of refugee.

Yesterday, however, I ran into one that made me inhale my tea. I don't remember which one of those conversation threads it was, but it went along the line of "how does taking refugees help the countries that they are coming from?"

I did a double-take. Say what? Why on Earth would you want to help them? Unless, of course, you are either the kind of person who defines "help" as "carpet bombing", or the kind of person who thinks that all the violent criminals just need help.

The current concept of refugee was created by 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and defines a refugee as a person who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country". Why a country generating such people should get any help, as opposed to a very hard kick in the nuts, is beyond my understanding.

I know that every time Holocaust or Nazis are mentioned in any political discourse, God (or is it Godwin) kills a kitten somewhere. Considering the date of the convention, however, a prototypical refugee they were thinking of was most probably a Jew trying to escape from Nazi Germany. Can you really imagine Americans, Russians, Swiss, Swedes, or any kind of furry little creatures from Alpha Centauri say "how does helping Jewish refugees help Germany?" No? Didn't think so.

Anyway, the whole idea was to take some minority groups or persons from where they are being persecuted by the majority or the powers that be, and move them to the places where they would fit in better.

Tens of millions of refugees were successfully resettled during the last century. Usually the successful resettlement involved people moving from a place where people were less like themselves to a place where people were more like themselves, either in ethnicity, religion, way of life or political opinions, or at least to a place where the locals were more accustomed to people like themselves. Jews and political dissidents from German-occupied Europe fled to pretty much anywhere that would take them, Germans who disagreed with Communism fled from East Germany to West Germany, Poles fled from the Ukraine to Poland, Finns fled from the Carelian Isthmus to the rest of Finland, Hindus and Sikhs fled from Pakistan to India and Muslims fled from India to Pakistan, Hindus fled from Bangladesh to India, Jews fled from Muslim and Communist countries to Israel and the US, people who disagreed with Communists fled from Communist counties to the West, people who disagreed with radical Shia Islam fled from Iran to the West, and pretty much everyone who could fled from the Khmer Rouge Cambodia to anywhere.

The whole idea of refugee resettlement is to reduce diversity in the world. If it's increasing the diversity, you are doing something wrong. And when I say "diversity", I don't mean the skin color, but the way of life.

This is not to say that countries should never take refugees that are different from the locals - the Bahai, for example, don't have a Bahai country to go to, and have successfully integrated, well, everywhere where they are not considered to be Islamic apostates.

In 1967 people fleeing wars were added to the definition of a refugee. This did have a point: after all bombs don't care whether you are a member of a majority or a minority and whether you have a good government or a bad one. But it also did create quite a lot of refugees, and, more problematically, quite a lot of refugees who are not looking forward to settling down in a country that's more appropriate for them, but want to stay somewhere until the war ends, without any wish to properly integrate in the new country. Some of the countries who accept them also sort of expect them to go home after the war, and support them for years without making any integration demands on them. Of course many of those wars turn out to be forever, and people who have lived for years on welfare usually have no intention to go back or to find a job. To complicate matters further, sometimes those wars really do end fast and the war refugees really do go home.

The problem, of course, is that while with the persecuted minorities you usually do know that they need a permanent new home, the war might last 2 months or 20 years. I don't think there is an easy solution to that.

I do however think that refugees should only be taken to places where they will more or less fit in. By that I mean people who prefer to live under the Western system to the West, people who prefer living under Sharia to the countries that have Sharia, people who prefer to live under Communism to Cuba and North Korea, etc.

Unfortunately there are always more refugees than resettlement places for them, and somebody always has to be left behind. For example, the people who would like to live under Sharia and simultaneously receive European-style social benefits can stay where they are and wait for such a country to appear. With Britain permitting Sharia courts nowadays they might even have a chance.

Refugee admissions, Finland and the USA

Checked out Finland's state budget for the 2009, or at least the refugee part of it. It has numbers for the previous years; I think I'd better talk about 2007, because it has already happened and the numbers are real, not estimated.

In 2007 Finland has admitted 1793 refugees: 657 quota refugees, 373 family members of previously arrived refugees, and 763 asylum seekers who actually got the residence permit.

Finland has also received 1505 asylum seekers. (Those 763 are part of that number, but in fact it's sort of complicated, because some of them have surely arrived the previous year.) The cost of the asylum seeker admission was 30 816 087€, about 20476€ per person. More specifically, 15 168€ per person living in a refugee reception center (1209 people), 42 692€ per lone child (96 people), 58 586€ per locked-up person (36 people) and 5 970 per person living somewhere privately (774 people).

Refugee admission cost 40 111 000€. It's about 22 371€ per person if we count the asylum seekers, and 38 943€ if we don't. In general, the input was 65 256 545 euros and the output was 1793 refugees plus, I assume, 742 unsuccessful asylum seekers. That's 36395 euros per refugee.

It's hard to find any up-to-date data on refugee unemployment, but the only one I found talks about the refugees that moved to Finland in 1991-1994 and their unemployment rates in 1995-2000. The unemployment rate went down steadily, and in 2000 varied between about 40% for Bosnians and Vietnamese and about 60% for Iraqis.

The US keeps a lot more detailed statistics in the Office of Refugee Resettlement's reports to Congress

The latest one is from 2005. In fiscal year 2005 the US admitted 53 937 refugees, plus 15 061 Cuban and 8 Haitian entrants, for a total of 69 006 arrivals. It has received $484.7 million to resettle the whole bunch. That's $7024 per person, and that's the total money the federal government used on refugees.

Refugee unemployment rate, as calculated for the refugees who've been in the US for less than 5 years, was 6.8%. That in spite of the fact that 60% spoke no English on arrival.

I recommend that people who are really interested in refugee admissions problems read these statistics by themselves, but here are a few tidbits:

- In the US refugees are currently eligible for federal assistance for 8 months. States and private organizations may provide more, or not. The aged and disabled are naturally supported forever.

- The support for unaccompanied alien children cost $53 771 000. There were 627 of those, $85759 per child.

- ORR used quite a lot of partnerships with private agencies. There are so-called Matching Grant programs, where ORR provides 2/3 of the money, a private agency provides 1/3, and some goal is set for how big a percentage of the refugees should be self-sufficient in 120 days after arrival.

For example the HIAS Grant Matching Program, whose services we have used when we arrived to the US, has received $2 208 000 in 2005 to serve 1104 clients. It ultimately served 1136, and under the Grant Matching Program had to add $1 104 000 of its own private contribution. That's $2915 per person, with 57% of refugees being self-sufficient within 120 days of arrival. (Damn, I feel cheap now.)

- Unemployment rate for all refugees was 6.8% in 2005, in comparison with 5.1% for all the US population. For the ones who arrived in 2005 the unemployment rate in 2005 was 20%. Employment rate was 58% for refugees, 62.7% for the US population.

- Out of the refugees not looking for work, the most common reason (41%) was school. Only a couple percent believed they have no chance to find work. Of the people who have worked at all, 17% found a job in the first month, 42% within the first 3 months, 63% within six months, 81% within a year.

- 20.9% of refugees who came to the US in 2005 had never been to any school. 11.5% had a university degree. 26.2% had attended a university. 59.8% spoke no English. 13.3% were fluent in English.

- Of the total sample (all refugees who arrived in the previous 5 years). 20.2% owned a home, 78.4% rented a home, 68.5% lived on earnings, 9.0% lived on public assistance, and 17.9% lived on both. I have no idea what the remaining 4.6% lived on.

There are a lot of reasons for the price tag differences in the Finnish and the US refugee programs, most notably the fact that the Finnish program continues to support the refugees for the next three years, and also the fact that smaller programs tend to use more per person than bigger ones. Still, isn't it time to send some Finnish refugee officials to learn something from their US colleagues?

Something wrong in the refugee policies

The conversation about evil communities who don't want to take poor little refugees, I mean hardworking young refugees, continues in Aamulehti.

Very often, when I start writing about my own time as a refugee, I start sounding like a grumpy old lady who is talking about how she used to go to school very day, 50 km in the snow, uphill both ways. I don't mean to, I really don't. The thing is, even though our treatment as refugees was certainly not up to the Finnish standards, we did have it much easier. One can talk all one wants about the evils of not having an official integration program of one's own, and the horrors of not having the taxpayers support the refugees forever, but nine months after coming to the US as refugees my parents bought their very own townhouse. Those people who are waiting for years in Finland in refugees centers for a municipal apartment in some community that doesn't want them, what have they got?

I know that the USA tends to select refugees more carefully than Finland, and that they send back the really antisocial element, but I don't believe that the quality of the refugee material is all there is to it.

The pervasive attitude here, both among the people who are for taking refugees, people who are against taking refugees, and everyone in between, is that refugees shouldn't be expected to work. People tend to view them as temporary visitors despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and as entitled to support rather than responsible to support themselves. (Let's leave the senior citizens outside the scope of this posting.)

Imagine that you are twenty, maybe without any useful skills. Imagine that you have left the war behind in Iraq, come to a rich foreign country and gotten the residence permit. Yeah, the people there are weird and speak a weird language, yeah, most prospective employers want you to speak it too, yeah, everyone is a bit suspicious of you. Still, nobody is shooting at you, nobody is kicking you out of the country, and there is free education if you want to learn something useful and make yourself more employable. Would you like to a) have a real job and a place of your own, or b) study something and have a room in the student housing, or c) do nothing at all and live with several other guys in a room in a refugee center, waiting for a municipal apartment that might or might not come? There certainly are people who would answer 'c' all by themselves, but I strongly suspect that behind at least 3/4 of them there is a social worker who says "don't worry about anything, we'll take care of you".

When we came to the US, we saw a social worker once. She gave us a booklet about life in Boston, told us where to apply for the benefits for the elderly and health insurance, told us that the rest of us would be fed for 4 months by the refugee organization, in which time it would be nice to find a job, and for 18 months more by the state, in which time it would be necessary to find a job, gave us the address of the college that arranges free English courses, told us where the jobs are advertised, and wished us a nice life and welcome to America. Yes, the people who write about the plight of refugees for Turun Sanomat would have a heart attack and all flowers would fall off their hats (now that I think of it I should have warned them in the beginning of this entry), but the jobs were promptly found. And they were reasonably good jobs, too. And it was a recession at the time.

And no, we were not the coolest refugees ever. Everybody found jobs: engineers, manicurists, teachers, gas station attendants, doctors, an Afghani woman working in a kosher bakery, you name it. The flower-hat aunts might have a heart attack upon hearing about the harsh fate of refugees in the US, but the numbers talk for themselves: the refugees who came to Finland in the early nineties had the unemployment rates from 40% to 60% in 2000, but in the US refugees had an unemployment rate of 3.4% in 2000. The unemployment rate (in 2000) was 5.4% among those refugees who arrived in 2000.

Who is a refugee?

All the debate about Naze Aghai, the Iranian Kurd who applied for asylum in Finland but did not get it, was quite interesting in the way it revealed the Finnish assumptions about refugees.

The assumptions seem to be that a) real refugees usually flee war, b) their life is always in danger, and c) everyone who life is in danger is a real refugee.

What a real refugee should be is a subject for a separate and rather long discussion. What a real refugee actually is, however, is defined by the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees: "A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.."

Note that there is nothing on war, or danger of death. It's about persecution, and the well-founded fear of being persecuted. (War was eventually added as an afterthought, but war is definitely not necessary to make a refugee.) Note also that there is a list of what a refugee can be persecuted for: "race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion". Note that membership in a paramilitary organization is not on the list.

I don't have any particular opinion of my own on whether Naze Aghai should be allowed to remain in the country. I trust UVI to make the decision, and it's fine with me, and if they change their mind it's fine too. They know the case better than me or anyone else who is talking about it. There might be some other reasons to let her stay: for example that she was persecuted as a Kurd, or that Finland signed some EU-document somewhere saying that you should admit everyone who might otherwise get death penalty somewhere.

All I am saying is that the reason that is cited in her story as described in Helsingin Sanomat - her membership in the guerrilla forces known as Peshmerga - is not a proper reason for the refugee status.

The whole idea of the concept of refugees is that they are people who are unjustly persecuted, which means persecuted for things that civilized countries don't usually persecute people for: race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Paramilitary groups, on the other hand, tend to be justly persecuted. I am not saying that the Peshmerga are any worse than the Iranian government, just that being persecuted as a member of some guerrillas cannot be an automatic qualification for the refugee status.

We can of course make it so if we want, but do we really want the full membership of Sendero Luminoso at our doorstep, followed by the Balochistan Liberation Army?