The rosy reports from the government’s office about how Finland is succeeding where others have failed concerning integration of its immigrants, have the consistency of helium. We’re repeating other countries’ mistakes and lying to ourselves about it.
H/T: Riikka Purra:
“The integration machine expands but the results are pathetic. Finland has the chance in these the last moments to change direction. Otherwise, there is the reality of Sweden – and I don’t mean the number one spot on the list of the most successful countries.
Analysis: Integration of immigrants is particularly weak and expensive
Immigration has created an ever-expanding scope for both public administration and the private sector. Integration policy is a descriptive example. The more immigration, the more integration. The more integration, the more bureaucracy and multiculturalism linked to immigration. And once the problem is already here, it would be rightly difficult to support not dealing with it, writes Riikka Purra, the policy adviser for the Finns party.
There’s been a lot of hope placed on integration. It is still due to the trick, in which both immigration and multiculturalism is ascribed as wealth. The phrase – “As long as integration is successful” has replaced the absolute optimism of the past years.
Last year, Parliament launched a study on the success of integration of immigrants. The study wants to “identify viable and worthwhile integration measures, especially from the point of view of the employment of immigrants, and to produce suggestions for action.” The study should also “identify the costs of integration and the adequacy and cost-effectiveness of the measures”.
The expanding integration machine
Traditionally, integration includes all activities that are targeted specifically for immigrants. The group includes all kinds of employment services and education in culture, language and literacy for sports and sex education and general motivation. The drafting of an integration plan has in itself been considered an integration process.
Since integration services are so diverse and strongly interlinked (between the state, the private sector and organizations), the official assessment of integration is also difficult – and in a word, it is not usually done. Also, the lack of comparable groups makes it difficult to evaluate.
On the other hand, the starting point is pompous for another reason: usually the groups that need to be integrated, are difficult to integrate. And vice versa: those who do not need to be integrated, are usually employed easily and are “wanted” work-based immigrants.
The problem of integration is thus the problem of immigration. These things can not and should not be separated.
The role of organizations in Finland and the integration of projects that are used in Finland further complicate the problems – practitioners will in practice decide how the integration (that is, their project) is successful. In general, it is about participation, non-discrimination and equality. It is clear that this can not be objective and not beneficial to the whole.
Moreover, public money has an effect that seldom do recipients of interest have an interest in making themselves unnecessary. Integration does not have an official end – at some stage, integration policy only becomes a different kind of minority, diversity or multicultural policy.
The machine has come to stay and there is no precise information about its size.
Integration and participation in the labor market
The simplest integration indicator is, of course, employment. Material and figures are very much available.
In 2016, five percent of graduates of integration schooling had moved on to the labor market three months after the end of integration training. One third of unemployed job seekers expected to move to the next service and just over half had already moved to the next step. Most often, after completion of integration training, immigrants have been trained in vocational education and training, after which the aim is to participate in vocational training and a professional qualification suitable for the Finnish labor market. (HE Homeland, 2017)
Based on the employment figures of immigrants, the conclusion is unambiguous: integration has seriously failed. This – like the relatively high dependence of immigrants on income transfers – is very simply verifiable. More difficult is to accept the obvious fact.
On the other hand, as we know, the employment pattern gives a too rosy a picture, as a large part of the immigrant’s jobs are so called: “Immigrant jobs” that would not exist without immigration. Even though employment for the individual is always good, the phenomenon is otherwise unhealthy. For the sake of the global economy or the overall welfare of society, the ever-expanding cost of interpreters can not be a positive thing, though they offer work to numerous immigrants.
It should also be noted that these different immigrant jobs are the ones that can be seen to be more difficult to integrate. Why study Finnish if you can always use an interpreter.
In addition to employment and language skills, civic participation and cultural integration could serve as good indicators of integration. However, measuring these is much more difficult and the interpretation more ambiguous.
Lots of noise about nothing
However, it is difficult to believe that these indicators would suffice for a state research project. As we all know, all aspects of immigration, immigration and integration are always more complex – perhaps precisely because the facts that are simply verifiable are too transparent when it comes to failing.
It is therefore easy to assume that future state research will not be sufficiently simple, quantitative or economical. Also, its proposals for action will not be sufficiently concrete.
Instead, the study will again repeat the facts we know, with great embellishment, and offer slippery improvement proposals and new concepts, whose real-world link remains in the dark, but which give and life content to an ever increasing number of officials, researchers, consultants, professionals, social experts, welfare Society professionals and other elements of the immigration machine. For taxpayers’ money.
The study also states that it is important to emphasize non-discrimination and inclusion and promote employment. This is said in all declarations of official state immigration, such as in migration and integration strategies.
Enhance statistics for the benefit of immigration ideology
The problem with many immigrants to find employment or migration impacts is that immigrants are not divided into different categories. This makes it possible to clearly embellish the figures, as, for example, the studies of the Finnish Foundation have shown that the differences between people from different countries are enormous. By combining the rate of employment from Africa or the Middle East with the employment rate from Germany, we get a much more “integrated” overall.
Those arriving in the field of humanitarian migration (international protection, family reunification, non-returning, and other intermediate forms) are clearly more problematic than others in terms of their employment rate and overall financial net impact.
The worst-placed countries of origin from one year to the next are Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq – most likely the countries where Finland receives most humanitarian immigrants.
According to a new European comparative study, in addition to Belgium and Sweden in particular, Finland has an alarming proportion of non-European migrants from 19 to 59 years of age, totalling 31.2%. This proportion of “very low labour-intensity migrants” would still be much higher if the review were to be excluded from, for example, immigrants from the United States, China or the Philippines.
In addition, it must be remembered that immigrants who have already acquired citizenship tend to drop out of “immigrant statistics”. Many studies have shown that second-generation employment is even lower than for the first generation. Similarly, social problems have increased, and dependence on support is excessive.
On the other hand, studies have strongly found that cultural backgrounds are relevant to the success of integration. Those immigrants whose group identities – for example, culture, religion or language – are particularly strong, are being integrated and employed less often than those who do not.
The observation should act as a strong critique of a policy of integration and differentiation that emphasizes multiculturalism, such as for example in Finland and Sweden.
Unfortunately, it seems that Finland is responding to the problem year after year by further aggravating it. Immigration builds not only socioeconomic subgroups, but culturally and socially isolated islands, and this has a major impact on Finland’s future.
Bad integration is good integration
As indicated above, the policy of integration is a sad example of the kind of acrobatics that a liberal Western country is prepared to do in order to keep up with its positive ideas of immigration.
Therefore, it may not come as a big surprise that the very countries – Sweden, Finland and Belgium – where the integration is the most unsuccessful, ie, on the basis of all the relevant results, are at the forefront of the most important Migration Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). That is, countries with the lowest employment rates for immigrants are the most successful immigrants!
Of course, the same thing is explained by the same contradiction that exists in our national immigration policy. MIPEX measures the things that are mainly input into the system rather than the results – how much money is spent on various integration and tolerance projects, how much different social workers are hired and how easy an immigrant is to rejoin with their family. If a new integration coordinator has been created, this must be ok or at least in the right direction.
MIPEX, like most other indexes of integration, do not say anything about the right integration of immigrants – they only tell how massive immigrant and multicultural machinery is in the country and how its immigration policy is looming.
And Finland is really at the very top of it.
Basic issues
We do not need more state studies to say that we are still not tolerant enough. We do not need more consulting services to operate with more and more complex integration principles.
Similarly, we do not need more resources for different immigrant activation activities (“service packages”) or new players (“integration experts”).
Neither do we need the “results” of integration for the co-operation between the players or the creation of a new electronic tool, a data bank or a network.
Primarily, we need a sensible and controlled – that is, tough – immigration policy.
Secondly, we need a policy of integrating migrants in the country, which is as simple as possible, effective and in line with certain standards. Integration must be based on the motivation of the entrants, it must be much quicker and the goal must always be in the learning of the language and employment. Multiculturalism or minority politics should not be confused with integration and the state should not be patronizing people outside the system.
Finland has the chance in these last moments to change direction. Otherwise, there is the reality of Sweden – and I do not mean the number one spot on the list of the most successful countries.
RIIKKA PURRA Suomenuuttiset.fi
