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rfmcdonaldSami Sillanpää's article in the English-language version of Helsingin Sanomat explores new efforts in Finland to recruit guest workers from the Philippines, starting out in the Western Visayas' Iloilo City.
Arno Tanner's essay at Migration Information explains that in the recent decades migrants to Finland have consisted mainly of citizens of other Nordic countries, migrants from the former Soviet Union including ethnic Finns, and refugees from across the world. As Sillanpää notes, guest worker programs on this scale are unprecedented in Finnish history.
On the outskirts of Iloilo, sheds have been cobbled together out of sheet metal and cardboard. In the centre of this city of half a million people, there are a couple of department stores and a number of pawn shops.
Along Iznart Street there is a bright, orange office building, which is guarded, in the local fashion, by two men carrying shotguns.
The office on the sixth floor offers a way to get to Finland.
The tables in the ample office of Filscandia Manpower Recruitment Services are decorated with Finnish flags. Filscandia operates together with the Finnish Opteam.
The business of Opteam is to arrange employment abroad. It has brought hundreds of metal workers from Poland and Slovakia to Finland. The welders and lathe operators that it recruited are building Finland's sixth nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto.
"Finland's own labour resources are not sufficient to fill all of the open jobs. Statistics show this. In many fields there is already an acute shortage of labour", says Mika Eskola, deputy CEO of Opteam.
This is a business for Opteam, but Eskola likes to say that he is "saving Finland", in the ten years to come, more than 700,000 Finns are retiring. According to Eskola, the promotion of "work-based immigration" is the only way to keep the country working.
Recruitment of labour from Iloilo began about three months ago. Now the aim is to bring about 100 practical nurses to work with Esperi Care, which offers elderly care services.
Opteam is also recruiting cleaners, welders, and restaurant workers. "The goal is to build a significant network in the Philippines, which Finnish businesses can benefit from. By 2015 the aim is to bring tens of thousands of educated people to Finland."
Arno Tanner's essay at Migration Information explains that in the recent decades migrants to Finland have consisted mainly of citizens of other Nordic countries, migrants from the former Soviet Union including ethnic Finns, and refugees from across the world. As Sillanpää notes, guest worker programs on this scale are unprecedented in Finnish history.
