Finland: Adult migrants posing as asylum minors

Finnish migration authorities have been carrying out tests to determine an applicant’s age, in case of doubt. Last year, medical tests to determine the biological age of migrants applying for asylum, have increased fourfold from the previous year, according to Finnish national broadcaster Yle.

Some 630 such tests were conducted in 2016, and in two thirds of the probes conclusive evidence found that the applicant was in fact an adult. According to preliminary data from the Finnish Migration Board (Migri) more than 400 applicants posing as teenagers were in fact adults.

Thus migrants who are misrepresenting their age, are on the rise. Applications by minors are usually processed as urgent, but the Finnish Migration Board in addressing around 3 500 applications from juveniles, now takes 10 months to reach a decision.

According to news reports Migri is currently proccessing around 400 children and adolescents who arrived in Finland without their parents.

The majority of adolescents who were granted asylum in Finland in 2016 were from Afghanistan (74 percent), Iraq (11 percent) and Somalia (6 percent).

Deportations from Finland also doubled last year compared to the previous year.

Demographic trends have changed considerably, with the number of births plunging below the number of deaths for the first time in 76 years, reaching its lowest point in the country’s history as an independent state. Since 1900, such adverse demographic trends have only been observed during the Finnish Civil War (1917-1918) and the Winter War (1939-1940).

Finland’s population however, keeps rising due to immigration. “Our traitor politicians are doing nothing in front of this Islamic invasion. We cannot accept this. Finland has been, is, and will also in the future be the motherland of Finns,” Eero Tillanen, told Finland Today.

The Finnish government sent dozens of police, border guards, customs and military to step up border controls in 2015, to hotspots where it had been possible to pass freely between Sweden and Finland since the 1960s, after angry Finnish demonstrators turned migrants away.

“If you look at the pictures of refugees that have arrived in Finland, you can see that most of them are men in under their 30s,” one Finnish demonstrator in the border town of Tornio said, “they have an athletic look, they are in good health. They look like they are taking a holiday from the special forces. It must be a conspiracy of some terrorist organisation and soon they start killing Finns.”

In a video, posted on a popular Facebook page also in 2015, Iraqi refugees warn their fellow countrymen against moving to Europe, Finnish television reported in the same year, but new arrivals have continued.

“You can tell the world I hate Finland. It’s too cold, there’s no tea, no restaurants, no bars, nobody on the streets, only cars,” 22-year-old Muhammed from Iraq told AFP in Tornio.

He had already travelled from Tornio to the capital Helsinki almost 750 kilometres south, and then returned again to Sweden. Migrants without proper travel documents are unable to take the ferries that run between Helsinki and Stockholm.

But in posing as children, the migrants have easier access to state disbursements.