HELSINKI, Finland - One year after Finland’s general elections which led to a coalition government with strict anti-immigration policies, an increasing number of Kurds have left the country for other European destinations. There are an estimated 10,000 Kurds living in Finland, many of whom migrated to the Nordic country in mid-1990s, particularly from Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. “There are roughly 3,000 Kurdish children born in Finland who speak both languages as their mother tongues,” says Hoshmand Rahim a Kurdish activist helping newcomers in the country. He says that a growing number of Kurds has been well-integrated into the Finnish society over the past decade and found better positions in the labor market. “They no longer work only in low paid and low status jobs. Many of them in fact have positions in sensitive places like the airport and other government offices,” Rahim says. But despite the positive development, Kurdish candidates did not win any seats in the country’s parliamentary elections last April, which resulted in an anti-immigrant coalition cabinet. The far-right populist Finns Party (PS) was included in the government for the first time last year after Centre Party leader Juha Sipilä failed to form a majority cabinet. Finland has been reluctant to receive immigrants over the past years despite EU pressure due to its repeated fiscal deficits since early 2012, as Nokia and other key companies struggled to remain in the market, officials have said. “I graduated nursing school two years ago, but I have not found a job since,” says Lana Salih, 28, who now lives in neighboring Sweden after receiving a job offer. “Many of my own friends have a similar situation and would leave Finland if they found a job elsewhere,” Lana says. Muhammad Amin, who ran for the parliament in 2015 but could not secure a seat, says the new government’s exclusionist policies would push many other migrants away from the country. “Some of the cabinet members are publicly anti-immigrants and sometimes even racists, which has given Finland an uninviting image,” Amin says.
