temporary residence visa for mother

[nepse]

Has any body successfully applied for residence visa for dependent mother ?

I have a friend whose whole family are permanent resident of Finland but has dependent mother living in the home country ( NON EU). They are desparate to bring her in Finland but looks like there are no such provision in Finnish law.

[Hank W.]

Well, if you read the "family" section at http://www.uvi.fi there is a section on dependancy... but it indeed is a bit restricted. So unless they are refugees someone needs to become a citizen...

[sy]

I had a post a year ago in some other forum about this situation. I think the basic rules are still true.

First of all, if your mother wants to apply for the residence permit,
she can't apply for it based on family member or family ties.
Otherwise it's a rejection automatically. Because according to the
Aliens Act, she is NOT one of your family members. Your family members
only include your spouse and your underage children. (However, if
you're a citizen of other EU countries, i.e., excluding Finland, the
family member concept is wider.)

It seems that the only ground for granting a residence permit to your
mother would be Section 45, Paragraph 1, sub-paragraph 4:

Section 45 – Issuing temporary residence permits to persons residing abroad

(1) Temporary residence permits are issued to persons residing abroad for:
1) working on a temporary basis;
2) pursuing a trade on a temporary basis;
3) studying; or
4) other special reasons.


That is to say, UVI can either grant or reject the residence permit
citing exactly the same clause. When you apply, you can give as much
info as you can to try to prove that your case has some special
reasons, but then it's up to UVI to decide whether your case has met
the special reasons or not.

Last summer the mother of one of my friends applied for a residence
permit for only 9 months, and was rejected. The reason cited was that
she is not a family member of my friend. They appealed the case to
the Administrative Court, based on that UVI used the irrelevant
section and Section 45 was not considered at all.

The administrative court at the end turned down the appeal, regarding their arguments for Section 45 as "new requests" coming only in the appeal phase, not in the application phase. Thus UVI's original decision was "correct". Anyway, in my opinion the whole case was messed up in the very beginning. However it gives some good lessons for applicants:

1. The mother need to file the application by herself to the Finnish embassy abroad. In family reunion cases, application can be filed directly to the local police in Finland by the family member who is living in Finland. Since this is not the family reunion case, the mother need to file the application by herself.

2. The ground for the permit should be specified as "other special reasons", for example, to visit the family of the child, to see or help to take care of the grandchildren. etc. I guess, it should help also to show the return flight ticket, etc to prove that the stay in Finland is really temporary.


The other way is to apply for a visa, then go to the local police to extend the visa. But I don't know how sure the local police will extend the visa.

On the other hand, if you want to bring the mother to live in Finland on permanent basis, I heard that the conditions are like: all the children of the aged parents are living in Finland; and the aged parents are dependent on the children financially (for example, pension is not enough and the children have to send money to the aged parents regularly). I just heard this from someone else, so I don't how accurately this works.

[maria_rn]

http://www.uvi.fi/netcomm/content.asp?path=8,2472,2491