getting deported

[biscayne]

To the OP:

I'm sorry for your family problems, and I hope it was a "one off thing" and that your boy can rehabilitate himself etc., as I know you never stop loving your children, even when they do wrong. I'm from Ireland, and I also was going to suggest an english speaking EU country to you for him. I was thinking more UK, there is a huge population there, I belive England alone has about 56 million as opposed to Finland's 5 mil. He would "blend in" so much more easily there, he would be just another "yank" living in the UK, in Finland, I can almost guarantee that he would be "outed" somehow, sooner or later. The UK is also rather good at "continuing education" and college programmes which can be studied at night, so he could in theory get a job and study for a career in the evenings. There is also more "casual work" available in the UK. What I am thinking is that, unless he is very intellectual or good at languages, Finnish might prove frustrating for him to learn, and on top of all the other things he would be dealing with, he might get so frustrated that he would fall into the wrong ways again. If he is not having to deal with the language, he could perhaps concentrate on other things better. I know that as a Finnish citizen he would be entitled to social welfare and eventually housing, re-integration etc., whereas in the UK he just has the right to seek work as an EU citizen and is not necessarily entitled to welfare etc., but I still reckon it might be the better option.

It's of no real interest to you I am sure, but things can always be worse. In the course of working in the US, I had a young Cambodian patient who had moved to the US illegally when he was an infant (not alone obviously) he committed a minor crime when he was 25 and was to be deported after he recovered. He spoke little of the language, wrote and read none, and was not very familiar with the culture, so was terrified. Then it go worse. Cambodia does not accept citizens who have left illegally as returnees. Plus, there was difficulty with documentation. So, as the US didn't want him and Cambodia wouldn't take him, he was sent to a detention center one of the midwest states - for the rest of his life.

[jessie30]

What an awful story about the Cambodian boy. There's a saying; there's always somebody who has it worse than you do. I'm going to send this story to my son. Thanks Biscayne.

[biscayne]

There was an interesting case of a man from Portland, Oregon, USA, called William Mackie, who was deported from the USA to Finland in the 1960s because he was accused of having joined a "subersive organisation" in the 1930s when the depression was on. He was arrested during the McCarthy era "retroactive laws" and deported. He had been born in Finland but had emigrated to the USA with his parents when he was 8 months old and spoke only a few words of Finnish and had never been there since he left and knew nobody, seemingly he had no relatives there. The painters union met him at the airport and he ended up as a caretaker for the Jehovahs Witnesses. He was in Finland for 15 years, but eventually got back to the States due to the intervention of a US Senator. Does anyone know anything else about him, I wonder what his life in Finland was like? Wow, but the States was weird then, I mean they are always going on about freedom of speech, but they deported this man to a country he had no memory of for being in a Painters Union during the depression?????????????????????

[Rob A.]

....

[biscayne]

Yeah, the timeline was weird, that's the whole point. He joined a painters union in the 30s during the depression, but was deported in the 60's due to a retrospective enaction of the law. In other words, noone thought anything of him in the 30s - probably during the depression there was a lot of workers rights stuff going on, but in the late 50's-60's somebody dug this up on him and he was deported. I was just wondering if any social history buffs out there would remember hearing anything about him. He stayed in Finland for 15 years, but eventually got back to the States, 15 years is quite a lot of time, and I was wondering how he made out in Finland for those years. There are often people on FF who know all kinds of things!!! This sort of thing happened during that era, but looking at it today, it seems bizarre beyond belief.

[Karhunkoski]

It is not normally possible to get onto one of these if you are Finnish

I have to ask...Apart from Interlukin's partner, do you know (or have heard of) anyone in this situation (an incoming Finn who needed language training), who has been refused entry onto an integration programme?

[jessie30]

I wonder how one should go about getting into this integration program? Does anybody know if they have a web site?

[tuulen]

I wonder how one should go about getting into this integration program? Does anybody know if they have a web site?

Hei, jessie30,

I have been following this thread, and let me congratulate you for being a great Mom! You are doing so well for your son.

Now, have a look at what MissK had to say.

...My understanding is that the integration program is open to both citizens and immigrants who do not speak fluent Finnish, with other qualifying factors ie Finland is your residence of domicile and you have the relevant residence permits/visas.

So, it looks like the first thing to do is to get your son's citizenship papers in order. After that, an integration program could happen.

Hang in there!

[kay30]

For some reason, I think the integration plan is one you develop with the Employment Office on. Check out http://www.mol.fi and kela.fi.

"Every municipality in Finland compiles an integration program in cooperation with the employment office, Kela, immigrants and other citizen organizations. The program entails everything that can be done to integrate the immigrants into their new environment.

Every immigrant, who has lived in Finland less than three years and who is registered as a job-seeker and/or has the right to receive a subsistence allowance, draws up an individual integration plan with a representative from the municipality and from the employment office. For immigrants of working age, the employment office is mainly responsible for integration plan."

So you have to figure out first where he will be living and then contact that employment office. Warning: this process to sort this out will take lots of time so start early, if you can. Plus, the living allowance they give you is next to nothing and not really enough to live on unless he can stay with relatives.

And it it's at all possible, try to speak to an immigration lawyer in the US before all this happens. The judge might not be totally impartial and might not give you all the information that is in your best interest. In the US, always always always get a second opinion, if you can.

Best of luck. Moving to Finland, even with Finnish ancestry will be HARD and even more so if your son is recently out of prison.

[jessie30]

Thanks MissK. Wow! looks like my kid has to go thru' quite a few procedures in order to get settled in Finland, but I believe it's probably same way in many other countries. I went thru' a lot of B S when applying for "green card" here in the U S.

[daryl]

That was an astonishing tour de force from MissK » Sun Jan 03, 2010 8:14 pm.

I would point out only that this returnee should already have an identity number, and this should be easy enough to find in the population register based on the date and place of his birth and the identity details of his Finnish mother.

Access to social welfare benefits may be limited at first owing to the domicile principle, so it may be worth stressing at various points that this is a permanent change of address and that there is no way for the applicant to return to the USA. To the extent that the permanence of a move is a matter of official discretion, you can expect that discretion to favour a person in this situation. This is not a case of medical tourism.

The question of freedom to move around in Europe is not as straightforward as some have suggested in this case. The key question is whether the sustained criminality that justified expulsion from the USA in this case also exceeds the threshold for losing the right of free mobility with the European Community. Member States are not obliged to admit a Union citizen who can be fairly deemed to constitute a present and serious threat to public safety, so the option of moving to the UK or Eire will not necessarily be easy to exercise.

Obviously moving to Finland could be a fresh start, but there are always varying degrees of baggage left over from earlier experiences. Any intelligent, highly motivated and patient adult immigrant can overcome the problems of settlement nowadays, but if there are underlying problems of immaturity, mental health or substance abuse, then it is all-too-easy for patterns of self-destructive behaviour to re-emerge. The US authorities will inevitably advise the Finnish police about this particular deportee, and it is more than likely that the Finnish police will want to keep tabs on him, at least for a while. The extent of this can be checked after a few months by requesting an extract from the criminal records office and from local police datafiles.

Please keep us informed about your son's progress, either publicly or in private messages.

[Rosamunda]

The question of freedom to move around in Europe is not as straightforward as some have suggested in this case. The key question is whether the sustained criminality that justified expulsion from the USA in this case also exceeds the threshold for losing the right of free mobility with the European Community. Member States are not obliged to admit a Union citizen who can be fairly deemed to constitute a present and serious threat to public safety, so the option of moving to the UK or Eire will not necessarily be easy to exercise.

Interesting. Didn't know of this. Any ideas how it works in practice daryl? Which authorities are responsible for the checks and how does the process work? Given the floods of immigrants into the UK from central and eastern Europe I would be surprised if the UK could actually process all this in/out information. At what point does "admittance" take place in the UK? When the person requests a NI number?

[Pursuivant]

Unless theres an APB in interpol out theres very little they are able to check though?

[daryl]

The question of freedom to move around in Europe is not as straightforward as some have suggested in this case. The key question is whether the sustained criminality that justified expulsion from the USA in this case also exceeds the threshold for losing the right of free mobility with the European Community. Member States are not obliged to admit a Union citizen who can be fairly deemed to constitute a present and serious threat to public safety, so the option of moving to the UK or Eire will not necessarily be easy to exercise.

Interesting. Didn't know of this. Any ideas how it works in practice daryl? Which authorities are responsible for the checks and how does the process work? Given the floods of immigrants into the UK from central and eastern Europe I would be surprised if the UK could actually process all this in/out information. At what point does "admittance" take place in the UK? When the person requests a NI number?

For the Schengen countries, this screening generally occurs at the point of registering the exercise of the right to move. This is essential as long as expulsion of Schengen country citizens remains possible. When a Schengen country citizen is deported from Finland an entry is made in the Schengen Information System, effectively ensuring that the deportee can no longer establish residence in any Schengen State other that his own. Such a person is subject to summary removal from the other Schengen countries.

The UK and Eire are not Schengen countries, and so the normal point of screening is at ports of entry. Deportees arriving at sleepy cargo ports may not be confronted by border guards, but there is no way for them to register exercise of the right to reside.

The threshold for this undesirability is very high. Essentially there must be objective grounds for concluding that the person concerned constitutes a substantial and ongoing danger to public safety. A criminal record alone does not suffice to show this. There must be supporting evidence that the person concerned can reasonably be expected to continue his antisocial behaviour. A string of convictions for trafficking in dangerous narcotics does the trick, but matricide does not.

The relevant rules have recently been gathered together in a single instrument, directive 2004/38/EC which you can find here:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/Lex ... 123:EN:PDF

Search this document for the expression "public security" and you will find that there are various relevant references in the preamble and an entire chapter devoted to this subject (chapter VI).

I called attention to this because the grounds for expelling someone from the USA under these circumstances may come close to the threshold for losing the right of mobility within the EU/Schengen territory. Behind all the rhetoric, however, the USA is not an especially human rights-friendly nation, so it may be that a lesser degree of undesirability justifies expelling someone who has effectively known no other home than the USA. This lesser degree of undesirability may fall short of the threshold for preventing the entry of an EU national into the UK/Eire. The devil here is in the detail.

What this amounts to is that if the UK/Eire could have expelled this young man on account of his criminal conduct and character, then these countries cannot be required to admit him under Community law. It does not really matter that the conduct occurred in the USA, but there must be reasonable grounds for believing that this conduct is likely to continue.

[Rosamunda]

I just wondered at what point he would be "flagged" up in the UK. Assuming he leaves Finland of his own free will (FInland cannot deport him since he is Finnish) and he arrives in the UK (eg: Heathrow) and then finds a job in a bar or on a building site somewhere, at what stage will he be sent packing? Since he (the OP's son) is being deported from the USA and not from an EU country presumably he will not appear in the Schengen database you refer to.

Would he be stopped at Heathrow? Or refused a NI number / tax code when he gets a job?

I understand the nuances about being a threat to public security (or not) but I don't understand the practicalities of "registering exercise of the right to reside" in the UK.

If someone (eg the OP's son) is in any doubt, is it possible to find out easily whether or not they are eligible for the right to reside in another EU state? How?