Minister of Migration and European Affairs, Astrid Thors.

According to Minister of Migration and European Affairs, Astrid Thors, Finland has toughened its family reunification regulations. The changes came into force in the beginning of August. "Foster children are to have been in an actual relationship of dependency to the family reunifier before his or her coming to Finland. This is to ensure that these foster children are in fact in the position of a family member," the minister says.

The conditions for granting a residence permit to an underage person on the basis of a family relationship were also changed in the same legal reform. Now the granting is normally only possible when the child is underage at the time when the decision on the permit application is reached.

A government proposal for biometric residence permit cards was given in June. "This is an attempt to prevent abuses, when the holder of the residence permit can be more easily linked to the residence permit," Minister Thors emphasises.

The minister is well aware of the situation of the Somali family reunification applications which have been brought up in public debate. "For the part of the Somalis one has to note that in 2009, 43 per cent of the residence permit applications by Somalis were rejected," the minister says. Foster children are included in nearly every family reunification application, 70 per cent of whom are 13-17-year-old girls. This has raised suspicions of the possibility of human trafficking.

Somalia's interim government issues e-passports containing biometric identifiers to its citizens. The Ministry of the Interior intends to propose to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs that this e-passport would be accepted in Finland as an immigration document. The e-passport would be used in the future to verify the identities of Somalis in the context of residence permit applications.

Minister Thors understands the Immigration Service's concern on the sufficiency of resources. "In preliminary negotiations The Immigration Service has been assured that temporary employment contracts to relieve the application backlog can be extended. As for family reunification, there will be an attempt to make the procedure more efficient through co-operation with other authorities, to keep processing times from drawing out. A fastidious process takes time, but prevents abuses," Minister Thors says.

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