An open letter to the Finnish Immigration Service. The backlog in citizenship applications.

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asderaqw
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Joined: Sun Sep 11, 2022 7:45 pm

An open letter to the Finnish Immigration Service. The backlog in citizenship applications.

Post by asderaqw » Wed Oct 12, 2022 10:17 pm

An open letter to the Finnish Immigration Service.

First of all, thank you for the given possibility to send messages to the Finnish Immigration Service. The Finnish Immigration Service, apparently, has done a good job and improved its residence permit services, which can be seen in a great raise of the statistics.

But there is another problem - as it is mentioned on the website of the Finnish Immigration Service, there is a problem with the increasing number of citizenship applications(the backlog) that arose back in 2020.

Even though, there are statements that the Finnish Immigration Service works on this problem, unfortunately, it seems that the efforts, the Finnish Immigration Service has made to resolve this problem, have not been sufficient yet.

The number of employees, the Finnish Immigration Service hired, is totally not enough and the current number of employees, even with continuing training, will not help about 19000 citizenship applicants who still have been waiting for decisions.


It is a phenomenal number and a critical situation caused not by applicants' individual situation, but by unpreparedness to receive more applications than anticipated or even incompetence and dilatoriness of the Finnish Immigration Service. This number has been increasing since 2020 and no significant actions had been performed to reduce it.

The automatized system taken in use lately, did not speed up processes, moreover, since it has been taken in use, the number of applicants, waiting for their decisions (the backlog), has been increasing. According to the site of the Finnish Immigration Service, if in 2020 the number of applicants was less than 10000, in 2021 it was already about 15000 and, finally, in 2022, the number is about 19000 applicants. Will we see in 2023 the number of 25000 applicants? Possibly yes, unless sufficient efforts are taken to resolve the situation.

According to the statistics, after hiring new employees, during 8 months of 2022 the number of citizenship applications, waiting for processing (the backlog), increased by about 2000.
This shows that the steps the Finnish Immigration Service has made in the beginning of 2022 to resolve this problem have not been sufficient, moreover, the backlog continues to rise and there is no hope for its decrease. That will inevitably lead to an even more critical situation than the current one if the Finnish Immigration Service will not take real steps, preferring mainly to give promises or to perform some insufficient, spectacular actions as it did before.

The situation with the increasing number of applications(the backlog) was caused not by applicants' individual situations, and they shouldn't be taken into account. If the system of the Finnish Immigration Service works with delays, giving promises more than decisions, it indicates that internal system of the Finnish Immigration Service is not well-organized and should be reformed. The cause of repetitive backlogs in all the Finnish Immigration Service's areas (not only in citizenship applications) should be found and eliminated.

The cause, probably, is in budget cuttings and reduction in the number of employees, which is incomprehensible, because the number of applicants as mush as the fees of the Finnish Immigration Service have not decreased. The high possibility of backlogs as the result should have been predicted.

The current backlog always continues to rise, as there are always new applications, more or around 1000 per month, and the old applications have been processed incredibly slowly, usually less than the number of the new ones.

The Finnish Immigration Service, apparently, did not use sufficient amount of the resources, it received from the government in 2021, for dealing with the backlog and all the resources were used for improving the residence permits' decision system only.

The Finnish Immigration Service did not notify of any additionally requested resources from the government nor any other way was found to deal with the problem which indicates the lack of intention to improve the situation actually, despite the promises to do it.

Long waiting is traumatic, and there shouldn't be a place for it in the organizations of democratic and developed countries.


If the Finnish Immigration Service wants to answer to this letter, it can do it publicly, but sufficient and continuing efforts to resolve the problem with the large increasing number of citizenship applications(the backlog) are more appreciated than only an answer.

With the hope,

Waiting Applicants



An open letter to the Finnish Immigration Service. The backlog in citizenship applications.

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