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Report
Finish firms lower language requirements to attract foreign workers
DW (English)
Follow
8/30/2024
Finland's economy needs immigration to fill thousands of vacancies, especially in the services sector. Language requirements are proving a major hurdle, but the country's largest retailer is going different ways.
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00:00
At this Helsinki restaurant, good burgers and fries, and goodwill, are more important
00:09
than fluent Finnish.
00:12
The parent company of this restaurant, S Group, Finland's largest retailer, wants to make
00:17
this country more attractive to job seekers, and does not require them to speak Finnish,
00:22
one of the world's most difficult languages.
00:25
But elsewhere, this is part of a divisive question in Finland.
00:28
This economy needs an estimated 44,000 immigrant workers every year.
00:33
But are they welcome?
00:34
The experience of Francisco Morita-Garcia, a former lawyer from Mexico, shows how the
00:39
situation is evolving.
00:41
When he moved here with his Finnish wife ten years ago, he couldn't speak the language
00:45
and had zero career options.
00:47
It was hard.
00:48
I would say that I applied like a hundred.
00:54
I applied a hundred times.
00:55
I didn't even have any single interview.
00:58
Morita-Garcia learned Finnish and changed careers, starting at the bottom in the fast
01:02
food industry.
01:03
Now he's a manager, and S Group's decision to drop the language requirement allows him
01:08
to hire people whose situations he understands.
01:12
S Group's human resources chief, Hanna Lettovuori, is fully behind this policy, and the decision
01:18
to feature foreign workers, including Morita-Garcia, on the cover of the company magazine, praising
01:24
them as valuable assets and urging customers to be more tolerant of newcomers.
01:30
We know in the future there will not be enough people to work in service sectors, in care,
01:37
and so we definitely need to improve and learn how to bring people from different countries
01:45
to work in Finland.
01:47
But the Finnish government is not on that same page.
01:50
It's currently considering a law that would force most foreign workers to leave the country
01:54
within three months if they lose their job.
01:57
Pasi Sjaukonen is a migration expert with the city of Helsinki.
02:01
He laments that the current government, pressured by the right-wing Finns party, supports positions
02:06
like the three-month rule, which confuse policies of immigrant workers with asylum seekers.
02:12
The Finns party is actually, it's very strongly against refugee migration, but as a part of
02:23
that antipathy towards that form of migration, very much, much harm is being done to our
02:34
immigration policy in general.
02:37
This drop-in Finnish class is aimed at helping foreigners, both with language and with confidence.
02:42
Accountant Lucia Indrin, originally from Indonesia, is unemployed for the first time in two decades,
02:48
and says every application still requires fluent Finnish.
02:52
The situation is not easy, but then I cannot just give up.
02:58
So I don't mind to work in restaurant or cleaning or anything.
03:05
With birth rates continuing to fall, Finns need to get real about how they're going to
03:09
maintain their economy and social system.
03:12
In the meantime, though, the country's image as an attractive place to live and work is
03:17
suffering.
03:18
On a global survey of 12,000 expats, Finland has plunged from No. 16 last year to 51 now.
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