Applying for Citizenship 2024

[wb26]

or you are from not underrepresented country (i.e. country citizens of which do not apply for many applications in Finland)

Hi! Can you clarify what you mean here? Are you saying people believe if you are from a country that doesn’t have many applicants, then you have a higher chance of being processed quickly?

Or does this mean that if you are from a country with few applicants you might wait longer?

[karhu86]

I just want to join the discussion of why some people are taking longer than others. I guess if you didn't come here to Finland as an asylum seeker, nor your country is on the list, then it is pure luck! My application is supposed to be straight forward, that what i thought. Been here 10 years in Finland, did my phd here, i work as an assistant professor in Aalto, never used Kela, and i don't even have a car . Today i am celebrating 15 month of waiting, i applied on October 2022. I applied with two friends, whom have the same situation like me, and they got it in 5 month

[millenialpain]

I just want to join the discussion of why some people are taking longer than others. I guess if you didn't come here to Finland as an asylum seeker, nor your country is on the list, then it is pure luck! My application is supposed to be straight forward, that what i thought. Been here 10 years in Finland, did my phd here, i work as an assistant professor in Aalto, never used Kela, and i don't even have a car . Today i am celebrating 15 month of waiting, i applied on October 2022. I applied with two friends, whom have the same situation like me, and they got it in 5 month

Could someone please explain this list of countries that causes applications to take longer? Is there a list published by migri? I cannot find it on the internet.

[TUserFin]

or you are from not underrepresented country (i.e. country citizens of which do not apply for many applications in Finland)

Hi! Can you clarify what you mean here? Are you saying people believe if you are from a country that doesn’t have many applicants, then you have a higher chance of being processed quickly?

Or does this mean that if you are from a country with few applicants you might wait longer?

yes, I mean this part
"Are you saying people believe if you are from a country that doesn’t have many applicants, then you have a higher chance of being processed quickly?"
but this is a myth.... like many others.... the process is random completely. Just let me remind many people from mercantile countries that Finland is still a social country with social law, even the current government is trying to change that. They don't look how much money you make etc etc etc.... The only reason they ask you for citizenship about your income is just to make sure that you were not financed by terrorists etc. ... i.e. just to understand where you get money from: KELA, work, etc. If they were prioritizing people with money or with some passports (apart from Nordic/EU agreements), this would not be nice Finland we know.... - but actually, it looks like where is country is going right now (unfortunately) with the all the stuff in politics, but we are not there yet.

[wb26]

or you are from not underrepresented country (i.e. country citizens of which do not apply for many applications in Finland)

Hi! Can you clarify what you mean here? Are you saying people believe if you are from a country that doesn’t have many applicants, then you have a higher chance of being processed quickly?

Or does this mean that if you are from a country with few applicants you might wait longer?

yes, I mean this part
"Are you saying people believe if you are from a country that doesn’t have many applicants, then you have a higher chance of being processed quickly?"
but this is a myth.... like many others.... the process is random completely. Just let me remind many people from mercantile countries that Finland is still a social country with social law, even the current government is trying to change that. They don't look how much money you make etc etc etc.... The only reason they ask you for citizenship about your income is just to make sure that you were not financed by terrorists etc. ... i.e. just to understand where you get money from: KELA, work, etc. If they were prioritizing people with money or with some passports (apart from Nordic/EU agreements), this would not be nice Finland we know.... - but actually, it looks like where is country is going right now (unfortunately) with the all the stuff in politics, but we are not there yet.

Yes this makes sense! And I agree that sounds like a complete myth to me. Thanks for clarifying.

[just_passing_by]

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[Guess.who]

This week's data:

Thanks for the graph and insights!

Questions:

How long have you been following and making this data interpretation?

Have you seen Migri increase the processing zone like this before? We've been witnessing this trend recently. (I went through the forum's last two years of posts, and Migri was relatively stable with a processing zone of 4k-5k. Since November 2023, it has started moving upwards.)

Any estimate processed number of application between 4k-5k this week?

According to my calculations, we can expect longer processing times, possibly exceeding 22 months (we might see an update on the Migri website soon, possibly reaching 25 months). This is due to the increased number of applications (the highest in Migri's history), and the trend is expected to continue this year. What are your thoughts based on this data?

Last but not least, what's your status with the personal application?

P.S. Migri is understaffed, as always, and they will likely use this as an excuse in their newsletter due to the high number of applications causing backlogs.

[oct.2023.RU.IT]

What is the “real_seq_first” number means? I wonder what is the logic behind that, so a lot of applications between 4000 and 5000 are proceed with the same “real_seq_first” value

[m02b06]

This week's data:
All numbers are approximated and may be different from the real values

Total processed: 150
Total processed with queue number > 4000: 103
Mostly processed applications are between 9600-9899/310/2023 diary numbers


I am also attaching a graph showing that Migri goes up in diary numbers (it shows average diary number among all processed applications with queue > 4000).
Field names are internal and I did not bother making those pretty, but hope that it is enough.
diary_id_first is just a diary_id (for application 1234/310/2023 diary_id is 1234)

Hi! Thank you very much for all the insights! Could you please explain what real_seq_first means?

[just_passing_by]

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[just_passing_by]

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[TUserFin]

Personally, I would sit and patiently wait for my application to be processed if I would know that the new upcoming law will not affect already created applications and my application would be processed according to the old rules.
But since we don't know how the new law will be applied to our applications this creates a lot of stress.

What kind of law changes do you think my impact you? I don't think they will impact people in the process unless communists take power.

[just_passing_by]

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[TUserFin]

What kind of law changes do you think my impact you?

Mostly I worry about changes in the residence from 5 years to 8.
I do not live in Finland 8 years yet.

The citizenship test (or whatever it is called) is also not a pleasant part, but as far as I remember it is planned to be considered at a later stage.

I don't think they will impact people in the process unless communists take power.

No one knows for sure, but I think that this can be viewed from two points of view:
1. Positive: Migri specialist already accepted our applications and confirmed that they suit some base criteria for citizenship.
Also, it would be stupid for Migri to reject many applications, because the rules changed. Then I would assume that they will have to return money which we paid for the processing of an application, since we applied based on one set of laws, but Migri processed an application based on a different set of laws.

2. Negative: Migri only put our applications in the processing queue. And the actual processing is considered to be done when an application enters stage 2. Meaning that only then it is checked agains current laws/rules.
If at that point the laws are new then they consider that application to not suit existing laws and they reject it.

Of course, I hope that everything will go according to the positive scenario.

Even though I have the same feelings as you, I am mostly concerned about dual citizenship, I can tell you that the Pessimistic case you describe here has never been seen in the modern legal history of Finland. And yes, they had some changes here before, including YKI test changes. As for the citizenship test, this will be reviewed in parliament after February 2025 and will be a law probably around summer 2025 or later. But... in autumn 2024 they will propose a new YKI test or a change to existed YKI test... still I see this should not affect people in the process. This will be like 3rd country legal system, to be honest: for some people approve citizenship in 5 months, but torture others with a longer waiting period, and tell them to do a new YKI test/citizenship test. If this is the case, I will probably migrate out of here very quickly.

[karhu86]

i want to share my ideas regarding some points discussed lately here:
1) i am sure this 21 months processing period will be extended and it will become 24 months easily. btw it was like that few years ago. many applications are reaching the 21 months limit, and it seems nothing is done about them, and migri is processing higher queues as shown in the graph

2) i have been here for 11 years and i can assure you since then the parliament had been trying to change the citizenship law. remember all of these are still proposals, and they will be voted on. so things can easily change. when proposed by the perussuomalainen, they had an alliance with the keskusta party, but now things are not going well between them, so the new law can easily fail to pass

3) someone mentioned that migri are under staffed. btw i was checking some jobs on valtiolle in december, and noticed that migri had an opening for at least 80 positions. so hopefully those people got their training and will join soon.