Foreigners in Finland

[Adrian42]

Researchers and IT specialists mostly.

No kidding, I would venture out to guess that among foreign nationals living in Helsinki Metropolitan area proportion of researchers and IT specialists is not much if at all bigger than amongst native Finns, and natives sure as hell are not mostly researchers or IT specialists.

Your statement might be correct, but completely misleading.
Among foreign nationals living in Helsinki Metropolitan area there is e.g. a huge percentage of Estonians with excellent Finnish skills working mostly not as researchers or IT specialists.
But that's irrelevant here.

Among people who do not speak Finnish and have a job in the Helsinki Metropolitan area anything other than researchers or IT specialists is rare.

[Adrian42]

With most IT there is normally some team in India or some other cheap country doing a lot of the work anyway, so I doubt any IT company in Finland actually uses finnish.

What you are doing is guessing based on stereotypes since you don't know the Finnish IT sector well.

Many Finnish IT companies actually do use Finnish as their company language, or their Finnish customers prefer when the developers speak Finnish. And many job offers in the IT area therefore require speaking Finnish fluently.

As an example, I work for a small Finnish IT company whose less than 100 employees worldwide are in 4 countries (none of them is India, in all countries mostly software developers are employed) on 3 continents. But our current job offers for software developers in Helsinki require fluent Finnish skills.

[gfunho]

I cannot talk about the Metropolitan area, but among the foreigners that CAN NOT speak finnish in Oulu area, I would say the majority are researchers and/or IT specialists.

There are some other foreigners, but they tend to be fluent in finnish.

[Liam1]

How about people who have transferred to a firm's regional head office? I'm one of these who now works at our head office and I have a number of foreign colleagues in a similar boat. Everything from Commercial, strategy, Finance ....a number of my foreign friends are similar.

[Oho]

Among people who do not speak Finnish and have a job in the Helsinki Metropolitan area anything other than researchers or IT specialists is rare.

That simply is not true, even with the added condition of employment. It may be true for professional immigrants primarily from other western EU countries, who are not that well tracked because they can come and go pretty much as they please as no RP is required, but really not true for any other groups of significant size. As much becomes pretty evident from statistics published by "Migri", and no Estonians as a rule are not particularly good Finnish speakers and quite a few of them are not actually immigrants, they simply work in Finland.

[Peoloom]

Im the head of marketing at a start-up and I speak no Finnish. I believe a requisition for my position was open for a very long time before I was recruited.

[SuomenKenraali]

Very interesting. I do IT work here in the States. Good to know that is a quite common field for foreigners
I'm labeled as a Computer Analysis but for the most part I work the help desk. I wonder how I would do there compared to US..

[Keravalainen]

Hi!
In Finland at helpdesk you would do as well or as bad as a person knowing only Finnish in an US helpdesk.
- You would do well here, if you'd speak Finnish and preferably also Swedish. Of course you would currently need to fight for your job with a myriad of native Finnish speaking IT professionals who just lost their job in the cutbacks in IT companies. These applicants are usually also fluent in English, and many of the them also in some other languages as Swedish, German or French.
- If you are a programmer, you wouldn't always need to speak Finnish. But in that case you would be very easy to replace with some talented programmer sitting in India doing the work with a fraction of the Finnish salary.

Naturally there are some other IT jobs that require special skills, and don't always require knowledge of local language (because the locals have taken the trouble of learning your language).
- That's mainly physical installation of servers and workstations, setting up and maintaining domains and also some networking jobs.

[Adrian42]

Among people who do not speak Finnish and have a job in the Helsinki Metropolitan area anything other than researchers or IT specialists is rare.

That simply is not true, even with the added condition of employment. It may be true for professional immigrants primarily from other western EU countries, who are not that well tracked because they can come and go pretty much as they please as no RP is required, but really not true for any other groups of significant size. As much becomes pretty evident from statistics published by "Migri", and no Estonians as a rule are not particularly good Finnish speakers and quite a few of them are not actually immigrants, they simply work in Finland.

An Estonian who lives and works in Finland is an immigrant.

Which groups of significant size do have jobs outside of researchers or IT specialists without speaking Finnish at least at a B1 level (that's the level you need for Finnish citizenship)?

[Flossy1978]

There are plenty of foreigners who can't speak Finnish doing jobs other than just researcher and IT.

In my work place there are many foreigners who are westerners who know squat Finnish, working fulltime. No, it's not a cleaning job.

[Sleepstream]

There are plenty of foreigners who can't speak Finnish doing jobs other than just researcher and IT.

In my work place there are many foreigners who are westerners who know squat Finnish, working fulltime. No, it's not a cleaning job.

cooking job

[Flossy1978]

No, not cooking.

I am an auditor/inspector. I write my reports in Finnish, but the Finnish is specific terms for just the job I do (pretty much made up Finnish), so I've learned it over the years. I can't really speak in joka päiväinen Finnish. The Finnish I've learnt has nothing to do with anything but my job. I have no co workers, so I never have to speak it with anyone really. The rest of the foreigners at work don't use any Finnish at all, but also don't do the same job as I do.

[Oho]

An Estonian who lives and works in Finland is an immigrant.

Which groups of significant size do have jobs outside of researchers or IT specialists without speaking Finnish at least at a B1 level (that's the level you need for Finnish citizenship)?

Probably bus drivers, certainly construction and cleaning/building maintenance. You think all the Russian and African office cleaners speak relatively good Finnish when it seems rather common they see no point in learning it at all. Hell even practicing M.D's that hardly speak any Finnish have been found.

Only one who has permanent residence can be an immigrant. There is ton of Estonians who effectively commute, they may stay in Finland for working days and some of the weekends but have permanent address in Estonia. They are sent labor employed in Estonia not immigrants.

Of the nearly 18000 or residence permits granted in 2011 less than 2000 were given for scientific research or specialist professional jobs combined. Fact of the matter is that emigrants from Finland tend to have much higher education than immigrants to Finland.

[Adrian42]

An Estonian who lives and works in Finland is an immigrant.

Which groups of significant size do have jobs outside of researchers or IT specialists without speaking Finnish at least at a B1 level (that's the level you need for Finnish citizenship)?

Probably bus drivers,

A bus driver who doesn't speak Finnish at a B1 level? I'm not talking about C2 level, just the basic B1 level you need to officially become a real Finn.

Only one who has permanent residence can be an immigrant. There is ton of Estonians who effectively commute, they may stay in Finland for working days and some of the weekends but have permanent address in Estonia. They are sent labor employed in Estonia not immigrants.

I wrote "lives and works in Finland".

Of the nearly 18000 or residence permits granted in 2011 less than 2000 were given for scientific research or specialist professional jobs combined.

Residence permits are only for non-EU citizens, who are a minority of the foreigners living here (and these numbers anyway don't tell how many of them speak Finnish).

Fact of the matter is that emigrants from Finland tend to have much higher education than immigrants to Finland.

You have any data to prove that statement?

[Oho]

Nope in top ten countries of origin for foreign nationals residing in Finland only three EU countries are listed Estonia 17,3 + 5,1 + 2,2 ~ 25%. Non EU countries on the list make up about 35% so under no circumstances is vast majority of foreigners living in Finland EU nationals.

http://www.stat.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_vaesto_en.html

http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/artikkeli/Aivo ... 5239318315

"Suomesta muuttaa ulkomaille enemmän korkeasti koulutettuja suomalaisia kuin heitä muuttaa sieltä takaisin. Sen sijaan aivovuoto ei näyttäisi enää kasvaneen viime vuosina, toteaa Elinkeinoelämän tutkimuslaitos.

Kaiken kaikkiaan Suomeen muuttaa enemmän ihmisiä kuin täältä muuttaa pois. Meille muuttavien koulutustaso on kuitenkin keskimäärin huomattavasti alhaisempi kuin täältä pois muuttavien."

I don't think I want to dig into statistics over an internet spat. I just don't buy into the Finland needs a lot of immigrants to make up for the aging work force, !"#¤% which it is.