People can register their residency at Jyväskylä Registry Office on Väinönkatu 10. An immigrant, who is planning to stay in Finland for more than one year, must inform the registry in a same way as Finnish citizens do. Some of the information that is needed for the registry is, for example, name, date of birth, nationality, marital status and an address. A place of residence will be registered to an immigrant when they are planning to stay in Finland permanently or if they have a residence permit for a minimum of one year.
City of Jyväskylä Immigrant Services will give guidance on registering to all returning immigrants from the areas of previous Soviet Union and to all other refugees. All official documents (personal identification and marriage certificates) must be translated into Finnish language. People emigrating especially from Russia, must also remember to get Apostil-stamps on their certificates, or else they cannot register their residency.
Foreigners who travel to Finland as tourists or for, for example, business and are staying for less than three months, need a visa if they come from a country from which it is obligatory. Schengen-agreement is applied on visas in Finland. In the agreement, it is decided which nationalities can enter the countries without the visa under the Schengen-agreement and which nationalities would need to have a visa to enter. Depending on the individual needs, the visa could be a single visa, recurring visa, returning visa, passage through country or airport visa. If the destination country within Schengen-area is Finland, the visa must be applied for from the Finnish mission or consulate abroad
Foreigner who is planning to work for living in Finland usually needs an employee’s residence permit. For practising a trade, a foreigner needs a separate entrepreneur’s residence permit. Nationalities of countries belonging to European Union or nationalities considered similar to those, do not need an employee’s residence permit.
When a foreigner has been accepted as a student to a Finnish education establishment, they must apply for a residence permit too. If the studies and stay lasts for less than three months, the residence permit is not needed. Instead, the foreigner can carry out the studies by applying for a visa, if their nationality requires it. Nationalities of countries belonging to European Union and those considered similar to that, must register their right for residency in Finland when their stay lasts for longer than three months. The students must also prove that they have a sufficient income while in Finland, to be able to receive a residence permit.
The strength and the closeness of the person’s Finnish family ties affect the ability of getting a residence permit. If the Finnish roots are passed on from over several generations, this is not good enough reason for receiving a residence permit. Those being able to receive a residence permit because of Finnish family ties can be divided into three groups: former Finnish nationalities, people from the area of old Soviet Union and others with some king of Finnish roots.
Within its refugee quota, Finland receives people that are accepted as refugees by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) or other foreigners for relocation that are in a need of international protection. Finland’s refugee quota is confirmed each year in the budget proposals. For 2004, the quota was 750 people. According to the agreement City of Jyväskylä has with the state, City of Jyväskylä receives each year 50 refugees from the quota or asylum seekers who have been granted permission for a residence permit. The grounds for getting a residence permit for those who are within the refugee quota are that:
A family member of a foreigner living in Finland may be able to get a residence permit on certain conditions. Spouse, partner in the registered relationship, common-law spouse or under 18-year-old unmarried child whose guardian is living in Finland are considered to be a family member. If a child under the age of 18 is living in Finland, his/her guardian is a family member.
Finnish nationality can be granted on application if
Finnish nationality granted on application is discretionary.
Finnish nationality can be granted on application to a person who has lived in Finland continuously for a minimum of six years at the handling time of the application. The nationality can also be granted when the period of residency is totalling up to 8 years. The nationality can be granted after 4-years of residency in Finland when the immigrant is a refugee or has a Finnish spouse.
The first residence permit is usually granted by the Finnish Immigration Service. The residence permit can be granted to a family member of a Finnish citizen living in Finland by the local Police Department. They can also renew a residence permit for a fixed period or grant a permanent one to a foreigner living in the country.
After having fixed period residence permits for four years, the permanent residence permit can be granted as long as the grounds for granting it are still valid. It is possible to get the permanent residence permit already after a two year stay, if the residence permit that is continuous by nature has been granted before the new law came into force (1.5.2004).
Additional information is available from the local Police or from the Finnish Immigration Service at the following address:
Finnish Immigration Service (Maahanmuuttovirasto)
PL 18, 00581 Helsinki
Address for personal visits: Lautatarhankatu 10
Tel. 09 – 476 5500
Links:
www.migri.fi
www.poliisi.fi
Immigrant Services carry out consulting work. Refugees and a large part of Ingrian returning immigrants coming to Jyväskylä are the clients of Immigrant Services. The Immigrant Services help their clients to integrate into Finnish society and support them in preserving their own cultural identities. Other immigrants and people interested in foreign affairs are also given guidance and advice.
The Immigrant Services are responsible of the social work that the refugees and returning immigrants need during their first few years in Finland. Other immigrants’ need for social work is assessed and dealt with individually. The supervisors at Immigrant Services give guidance on different practical things. The Immigrant Services could give advice on, for example, reuniting the family of the refugees.
The Finnish Immigration Service’s psychologist helps immigrants and their families that visit the Immigrant Services’ social workers. They can get help with psychological problems and mental difficulties that come up at the beginning of moving into the country.
The Finnish Immigration Service works in cooperation with other authorities to organise immigrant integration services. One of their jobs is to promote the development of multicultural and the more accepting society. Thus, their staff do a lot of consulting, training and publicity work.
The information desk at the Immigrant Services offer guidance and advice without an appointment on matters that come up within the new society. The information desk is open from Monday to Friday 8.00am – 4.00pm. Their telephone number is 014 – 626 675. Appointments to see other people in the office can also be made at the information desk. The address for the Immigrant Services is Puistokatu 2C, 8th level.
The refugees and the returning immigrants are the main customers at the Immigrant Services. Other immigrants do not have similar organised reception-activities. They must use the usual services of the area they live in.
All those immigrants that have a permanent residence permit in Finland and are looking for work will have to register at the job centre immediately after entering the country. The address for Jyväskylä Job Centre is Vapaudenkatu 55 and their telephone number is 010 60 40149. The immigrant’s language courses must also be applied for at the job centre.
A foreign person has the right to drive a vehicle with their foreign driving licence in Finland for up to one year after entering the country. After this time the right to drive in Finland ends unless the driving licence is changed to a Finnish one. A Finnish driving licence can be obtained either by directly exchanging the foreign licence to a Finnish one without additional driving test or by going to a Finnish driving test. It is possible to change the driving licence without having to go to the driving test if the original licence has been granted in the country that belongs to the Geneva or Vienna Convention. The application to change the driving licence must be made within 6-18 months of arriving to Finland. After this period the exchange is no longer possible without the additional driving test. The driver must be able to prove that he/she has driven a car in Finland when changing the driving licence to a Finnish one.
Additional information: www.poliisi.fi/poliisi/home.nsf/pages/EB82BCA685998242C2256C370029B57D.
A person, who has not got a driving licence, can go to a driving school after which the driving test must be completed. It is a good idea to compare the prices of different driving schools.
One of the first things to do after arriving to Finland is to open a bank account. Wages, different benefits paid by Kela to an immigrant looking for work and other possible social benefits or grants are only paid into immigrant’s personal bank account. In Finland, a customer is entitled to open a bank account in the back of his/her choice. In cases when an immigrant does not have Finnish personal identity number or a certificate of his/her identity, the following will be required when opening a bank account:
Consideration could be used when applying the bank regulations if the person opening an account in the back and the account-holder are known by the bank or the above criteria can be affirmed by other trusting methods. The bank is not obligated to open an account if the information on a person is not adequate. The bank can refuse to open an account other times too, but they must have good reasons for it.
The person opening an account can give the necessary documentation to the bank in Finnish, Swedish or English. The documents must be translated to Finnish, Swedish or English by a certified translator before given to the bank when the original language used in the documentation is some other than one of the above languages. (Source of information: Guidelines of the Finnish Bankers’ Association 25.3.1998, updated in February 2002.)
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