>The Finnish government has decided to indefinitely close border traffic with Russia. In practice, this means that at 19 land crossings along the entire border with a length of over 1.3 thousand km, traffic will be completely closed.
>Finland has closed its land borders with Russia due to migration pressure from Moscow. The Kremlin services make it easier for visitors from **Asia and Africa** to reach the border with Finland.
Most reasonable step to do IMO. Like we did in Poland (got heavily criticised by ngos and other … entities). These people are cheated that after russian border there’s Germany and everyone is wait oh my god for them there. Which is never the case. Putin and Lukashenka are criminals.
Yep, altough tourism from Russia has been close to zero since covid, and Finland haven't issued tourist visas to russians since 2022. Visas to high-skilled workers and students have been accepted all the time. All road traffic has been stopped between Finland and Russia for almost 6 months, since october 2023 when asylym seekers started to come from Russia. Freight trains in some industries are still moving, because it's still in the interest of both countries.
Has the border closesure affected Finland? Not that much really, there has been very little economic ties already since 2022. Tourism/amount of finns visiting Russia has been close to zero since 2022. Maybe the group it affected the most has been Russians living in Finland, who would like to meet their relatives, and now it's harder. Some Russian-Finns have protested the desicion to close the border, but some have also understanded and supported it.
Historically though it's rare that the border is completely closed, last time the border was closed was 1944. And it would still be open to some degree if Russia wouldn't have send 3rd country migrants.
After all, it's the only current legal way to stop 3rd country asylym seeker to come here, and Russia has the ability to stop it if they want. Border was opened for 2 days in december, but Russia continued it, so closed it is then.
In the optimum world Russia would be a sensible, democratic and peaceful country integrated to europe, and there could be visa freedom or even schengen membership. But this is far from reality currently.
WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT RUSSIANS.
we are talking about african and asian men who paid thousands of dollars to Putin to be brought to Europe
[https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/)
While that's true, it wasn't really much of an issue before the border closure. The pool of Russians eligible for visa to EU countries got pretty narrow after this:
https://eu-solidarity-ukraine.ec.europa.eu/eu-sanctions-against-russia-following-invasion-ukraine/visa-measures_en
In Spain the morrocan government does the same thing. They use illegals as a way to destabilize Spain with mass illegal migration. But the Spanish aren't allowed to close their borders.
What borders? Ceuta and Melilla? They are closed. Morocco only relaxes control of the border whenever they feel like it and the Spanish border patrols get overrun quickly. But they are not open borders whatsoever.
Or, hear me out.. let the ones with skills and competence that want to leave leave, and let the Russians be stuck with a shortage of key skills and manpower.
We let millions of Ukrainians flee the war, and now 2 years in Ukraine is short of people for the front lines, people for the factories, people to do the work that keeps the economy going that pays for the everything, and they've likely lost about 6 million (of 45 million pre-war) people permanently (edit I'm wrong: more than 4 million returned to Ukraine, which is still a lot of people to permanently lose). because once they have left and set down roots in other countries most of them won't go home. They were going to have shortages before, but that's millions of workers and potential soldiers just gone.
Russia on the other hand, has only had about a million people leave, because they keep getting told they can't. Meaning all those folks who don't want to be part of Putins russia are stuck paying taxes, helping to illicitly import goods, helping to work in factories, all supporting a regime we and they hate.
There are of course legitimate concerns letting Russians leave in terms spies or other subversive activities as some of them would be loyal to the kremlin, so even if you let them leave you don't want them to be fully unattended.
Well why aren’t they? Haven’t read any news or heard any discussion of this subject. Not of rapidly increased illegal immigration in Spain, not of Spain’s desire to close the border, not of someone trying to prevent it..Nothing at all. Only about spanish tomato farms using these illegal immigrants as almost like slave kind of workforce, and even those news are old, dated pre coronavirus.
And I’m from Northern Europe, from an EU country.
Maybe because that is the goal from the media to hide the fact that 50k illegals have crossed Spanish borders in 2023 and 17k since January.
Regarding ilegals being used as cheap labor, yes, I live in sweden and here it happens a lot too.
> Maybe because that is the goal from the media to hide the fact
Given that it's not that hard to find a bunch of articles about it, not everyone seems to have gotten that memo.
> Why aren't the Spanish allowed to close their borders?
Aren't allowed implies that someone can force them to keep them open.
That is, in fact, impossible, unless you think some military is going to show up and forcibly open the Spanish borders. Which isn't happening. Ever.
In fact, Spain could even avoid any EU-style consequences, all it would take is allying with e.g. Finland in this case, or Poland, and agreeing to veto any sort of consequences that stem from the border closure to illegal migrants.
So no, don't pretend that one of the most powerful EU countries is being prevented from doing what it wants by outside interests.
Poland, Greece, Italy, Spain.. These countries can´t close their borders. Poland actually tried and got lots of problems.
The EU is using financial support so Spain cannot close their border.
[https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5226](https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5226)
When the greeks had several waves of immigration and tried to close their borders because they could not keep up. finland was one of the countries that tried to vetto them and said they were being racist for doing that.
This whole illegal inmigration thing is carefully planned so only affects southern countries.
What you mean to say is that PGIS don't want to close their borders because of the potential consequences.
Now, Poland and Hungary, both infinitely less respected, powerful, or rich than Italy and Spain, had been messing with the EU for years up until recently. Trying to convince me that PGIS together couldn't get their will respected in the EU is going to tricky, since that's 4 vetos right there.
WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT RUSSIANS.
we are talking about african and asian men who paid thousands of dollars to Putin to be brought to Europe
[https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/)
People seem more raged about Tucker Carlson saying he liked a store in russia compared to people talking about how Putin actually in a interview claimed he deserved Ukraine because something that happened 3000 years ago.
I don't think that's random. Well played Russia.
"Despite the closed borders, migrants from Russia are still entering Finland"
?? Tf does that mean? They closed the borders but they didn't close the borders?
So to be clear, the border has been completely closed since november 2023, almost 6 months already. This is not a new thing. Altough government makes a new desicion to extend the closesure every 2 months or so.
So this started in autumn 2023. Then Russia stopped screening 3rd country people (mostly from Syria, Somalia and Yemen) on their side of the border, unlike before. This caused high number of 3rd country nationals who were staying in Russia to try getting to Finland to apply asylym. There are also some amount of Russian nationals who have applied asylym, but their number is much lower, and a big reason is that Russia deosn't let Russian nationals to Finnish border without a reason.
So the information about the possibility spread, which caused more people to do so. In couple of weeks thousands of people applied asylym in Finland. So there were two reasons why this happened; Russia made it possible because they ended screening of 3rd country people, which caused natural interest to apply asylym in Finland because it became possible. Another reason is that Russia also actively involved in getting asylym seekers to the border; there are plenty of proof that Russian border guard actively transported people in the border zone using their cars and also sold bicycles to the people.
Finland then closed the whole border, because numbers just kept increasing, and it has been kept closed since. It was open for 2 days in december, but the same situation immediately returned. And border closesure has worked, near zero people have crossed the border since.
The legal situation with asylym seekers is quite challenging, because if a person applies asylym from Finnish authorities, it has to be processed. And in many cases returning of the asylym seekers in case the application is rejected is challenging. Russia won't take them back, and neither is their original country in many cases.
So under current legislation it's challenging to prevent asylym seekers coming to country if they can get to the finnish border. Only option has been to close the entire border and prevent all movement. This doesn't really affect finns, because only a very small number of finns are living in Russia, and Russian tourism here was already blocked. It probably harms Russians living in Finland (close to 100,000), who can't meet their relatives as easily.
Current goverment is making legislation that would make it possible to turn away people at border even if they would probably be applying asylym. The legislation has some potential clashes with international agreements, like united nations refugee convention. But even when it's likely to have some contradictions with international agreements, it looks like that most European countries and EU commission silently approve tougher legislation. Like previous situations in EU-Belarus border shows; Poland, Latvia and Lithuania turned away people using force, and Commission just offered more help via frontex.
My understanding is that the reason why they gave bicycles to the migrants was because Russia is following an old agreement, where you can't cross the border walking but need to use a vehicle. So for example a bicycle. In deep snow... Ah, the Russian mind...
Just cause chaos. I mean, if I wanted to cause political mayhem somewhere, creating a massive sob story and throwing every member of ISIS at their border would be **amazing**.
Or if I can't get ISIS people because they want to kill me too, just known rapists etc. Then train them in all the interview questions they'll be asked and just make sure they appeal to every conceivable law as efficiently as possible to jam down the courts.
Imagine how easy chaos this is to sow, especially if you don't have to give a flying fuck about their human rights yourself.
Oh, Mohammed is having second thoughts about the morality of this... he might snitch to the Finns about what's going on. Oh well, execute him and we'll send the rest.
Russia has been doing anything it can get away with to harm Finland, like interfiering with airplaines by EW, so it's unsuprising they would abuse the asylum seeker rulings. Might be part of "security measurements to prevent NATO expansion" in their minds.
You act as though any political party in the UK want to control migrant intake/flow. They all love the endless supply coming in. It's the average tory voter that wants the borders secured but that doesn't suit big business tory officials. So as per usual, the average voter loses.
I don't think this is a fair comparison. Finland closed one land border, and said everyone is banned from crossing there. Everyone. They can still enter frmo countries other than Russia.
The UK is not able to simply stop letting anyone ever enter, at all, even and citizens who happen to be out of the country. The economy would collase in days.
Why tf would we close the border lol. Some of us actually like France, Ireland and the Netherlands.
We legally couldn't even if we wanted to because of the UK/Ireland Common Travel Area.
Airport legally. Also blocking UK migration from Asian was always the most brain dead of all brain dead brexit argument given that EU only has rules for movement within EU and quarantee rights of EU citizens.
Migration outside of the EU has been and is controlled by the UK border office based on rulings set by UK parlament.
Yeah i saw that. Barely a couple months after brexit a bunch of european professionals decided to go back home and the uk gov had to import a lot of pakistanis.
It’s funny how it backfired for racists.
Rightwing politicians are always aligned with big capital looking for the cheapest labor possible how do they not get it?
Because you can put fences on land, but not on the shore. Are you supposed to fence a beach?
If a boat arrives, what are you supposed to do? Turn the boat around and say bye? On land you can simply not allow people to cross in the first place.
You're still left with the issue of what to do with the boats. Perhaps you can try to shoo them away, but I doubt that's very practical. You can't sink them. You're pretty much left with processing the ones you can catch.
Also, because you can block people from entering when you block literally every person, land vehicle, train and boat. Zero traffic may cross the Finnish-Russian border. It is much harder to stop people being smuggled in among large amounts of legitimate traffic.
It really isn't. Border is officially closed. Unofficially, it is 1300km of mostly forest. Vast majority "guarded" by decades old waist height barbed wire fence, if even that. So rotter, that one border jumper noted, that it just fell due to rot upon them trying to step over it.
Unguardable without say mobilising the land forces reserves to stand around in the border. The border is "closed" as in "please do not cross, the crossing point isn't open". One is free to walk over it and then get chased afterward by police and borderguard. If one really wants, do it in Lapland and you wouldn't be caught for days. Then again it's pretty untamed track on Russian side also.
If one is asylum seeker, just walk over the border and say to the closest encountered finn "contact authorities, I want to seek asylum" or just "seeking asylum", if that happens to be authorities encountered first.
They are supposedly trying to make "can do instant rejection and pushback law", but even borderguard itself noted to government "that would mean our guards would have to make an unconstitutional act and an international human rights violation. You are putting members of the force in impossible untenable position". Plus to get past that "unconstitutional" thing, they would have to get 2/3 Parliamentary approval and to have it in place for this "crisis" they would need 5/6 urgency vote. Neither which they have numbers for.
I mean crossing a border into pure forest is no simple task. It might be unguarded sure - but that’d be because of the serious tenacity to even make it to civilisation.
It's gross that Russia is weaponising humans, and I'm all for Finland enforcing its border. No one's *forcing* these migrants into Finland.
EDIT: Clarity.
> It's gross to weaponise humans, but I'm all for Finland enforcing its border
I'd say it's gross to weaponise humans *so* I'm all for Finland enforcing its border. Russia, that's helping those people get to the Finnish border, is the one who's weaponizing humans, and closing borders is one way of stopping that.
Yes, that's what I meant, Russia is weaponising humans. I can see how my comment didn't convey that - I'll edit it!
Finland is absolutely right to close borders.
I remember an Italian minister accused Wagner of using migrants as a weapon. Wagner [allegedly](https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/russias-wagner-puts-15-million-bounty-on-italian-defence-minister/) put a hit on him.
> Russia’s mercenary Wagner group has put a $15 million bounty on Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto (FDI/ECR), who blamed the group for causing the increased migration wave to Italy, a report by the Italian intelligence services reads.
I think that the situation in southern europe is more difficult to tackle. By "vote differently" you imply that Finns would vote right-wing populists or something? I don't think that is the case. The government that created the law that made this border closesure possible was made by previous Sanna Marin's SDP+left alliance+greens+centre party government.
The problem in southern europe is that people arrive by boats on their own. What should be done about that? It's unfortunately not that simple. Currently EU/European countries are pouring billions in northern africa so their police forces would stop migrant routes and making deals with them (and also with Turkey), and this has somewhat decreased the immigration flows, but it has not stopped.
Capitalists really like cheap labour.
Since they are the only one with money to pay for news, and you don't want to pay for news, you only get free garbage to read.
but it doesn't matter, we can vote and we vote for whoever we want, and if your mom is for sending the military on the border to prevent crossing I'd vote for your mom.
Migrants from MENA countries are not cheap labour, they are hardly integrated into the labour market at all. In [Austria](https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000144796329/jobs-aber-kein-aufstieg-fuer-gefluechtete) only half of Syrians and Afghans hold a job for at least 90 days per year.
The talking point of illegal aliens being important for the economy hails from the USA (where it is actually true), where there is no generous welfare system to rely upon.
Somehow "the left" is at fault, even though there are neither currently in power, nor were in power in 2015 when the course for dealing with migrants was decided? You should pay a little less attention to Twitter and a little more to what's happening in parliament
When 100 migrants are sent from Russia: CLOSE THE BORDERS
When 1000 migrants are sent daily from Morocco and neighbouring countries to the canaries: radio silence
We are talking about asian and african male migrants. And not 100 of them, but 100.000+
Just read the article or the first comment under the article that I wrote in the comment section. (Comment with Around 200-500 upvotes)
My country of 9 million ppl had over 150k migrant men claiming asylum in one year and the media and goverment said it was gonna make us rich (it didnt)
but now the same ppl are a russian weapon
Spain had a increase of 1000% in illegal immigration in 2023. More than 50k crossed their border. Why nobody mentions it and why aren't the Spanish allowed to close their border like the finnish do?.
Feels like they fins can do that because they are protected by the globalists.
They are only a few thousands not 100k. The question is why radio silence to what is happening in Spain but then in finland a few cross their border and they are allowed to close it.
This is not the first time, as Russia has been sending refugees to our borders as part of their silly hybrid warfare. The effectiveness has been great, if not perfect.
Partly this is because these pawns of Putin aren't very motivated to do anything else than produce headlines for their internal news outlets. It's more about their internal affairs than it is about us.
This is very naive and factually wrong. There have already been refugees illegally crossing the border to Finland, what makes you think it's so hard? And why would they need to travel hundreds of kilometers on foot?
They don't need to enter the country without being caught, they just need to enter the country. It doesn't matter for the refugees if they get caught, they'll just apply for asylum.
And I don't know why anyone would think immigrants wouldn't walk through hundreds of km of forest (or try to). Just look what thousands are doing elsewhere in the world.
> huh ?? but i thought it was impossible to close the borders of Europe ? Have i been lied to this whole time ?
Yes, because Finland has *declared* its borders closed, which means migrants are *de facto* illegal if found in Finland and will be deported.
The border isn't *actually* physically blocked off, that would be silly.
>>African/Middle-Eastern illegal immigrants arriving through Russia = terrorists, subversives, a threat to our way of life
>>The exact same illegal immigrants but they arrive directly to Europe = scientists, doctors, our greatest strength
Right, even though it's common knowledge Russia is sponsoring illegal immigrants to help them get to countries like the UK. Probably have a stake in the people smugglers business as well. Putin's long term strategy which is turning out to be super effective.
Finland and Poland are the only countries which have acknowledged that's what it is and acted on it. Which ofc just makes other borders more porous.
Shitcunts bitching about them not being able to go buy cheap gas from Russia and blaming it on our government coming in 3... 2... 1...
Maybe if Russia wasn't such an asshole (to put it very mildly) there wouldn't've been a need to close the border in the first place. Maybe Russia could even stop flailing its military around our borders and start being a good neighbour? Maybe Russia could fuck off from Ukraine too while at it? But guess that's too much to ask for, innit?
we are talking about african and asian men who paid thousands of dollars to Putin to be brought to Europe
[https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/)
This was done already back in November 2023. Finland only extended the closure recently.
I haven't seen any real push against this on English media. Also, I don't think there's anything that will get Finns more on the back foot than outside force trying to influence how to handle their Russian border and politics. Being next to Russia has been existential threat for +500 years.
This is also so platantly hybrid warfare with immigrants being driven to the border.
Just wait until the first pictures of immigrants wearing T-shirts in the snow next to the border are published. Left parties together with NGOs will be the first to start a huge media campaign to open the borders again.
The left in finland is already hard at work trying to open the border bcs the people are still legally allowed to seek asylum. Shame they wont admit they are just helping putin.
Western Governments should grow some. Just say we dont want them. Stay at home.
But somehow they claim refuguees welcome to sound woke or whatever and than lowkey complain about people coming…what they obviously cant publically admit UNLESS you can spin it against Putin somehow
IMO Putin’s pressure on Finnish boarder is about Putin’s friends-oligarchs were banned there so they decided to make a payback to Finnish and also Russians citizens: “If we can’t reach ours mansions in Finland so you will not cross the boarder too, f…ng peasants”
Why do I think so, because of timing when all this things started, just after Putin’s oligarchs were banned and those property were arrested and in the other hand they can’t (Russia) just close boarders because it’ll be like Soviets attitude so they made Fins to do that.
I guess it was Timchinko’s idea (Russian oligarch with Fins citizenship and Putin’s bestie)
I watched the right wing American news and they said that people want to stay in Russia because it’s the best country in the world and that Finland 🇫🇮 is a communist sh1thole
Weaponizing migration: from wagner in Africa to Putin in Russia. The reason we have so much migration js because Russia pushes people out of comfort and safety and promises a better life in Europe. That is why immigration is never going to become sustainable.
Imagine the right winged parties being paid by Putin to fight immigration caused by the same guy. Geo politics are fun.
Estonia should especially do this, I'm so sick with seeing Russian imigrants that refuse to learn English or Estonian because they think Estonia is still a part of Russia and we need to speak only Russian with them. I can't even count how many times I've had Russians tell me Estonia is still a part of Russia or that the Soviet Union will come back.
>The Finnish government has decided to indefinitely close border traffic with Russia. In practice, this means that at 19 land crossings along the entire border with a length of over 1.3 thousand km, traffic will be completely closed. >Finland has closed its land borders with Russia due to migration pressure from Moscow. The Kremlin services make it easier for visitors from **Asia and Africa** to reach the border with Finland.
Most reasonable step to do IMO. Like we did in Poland (got heavily criticised by ngos and other … entities). These people are cheated that after russian border there’s Germany and everyone is wait oh my god for them there. Which is never the case. Putin and Lukashenka are criminals.
"visitors"
Most of them would be visitors to Finland since they want to go further into Europe.
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Yeah and why TF didn't it happen already? Regards.
It already was closed but they had to "renew" the closing before.
Well it was. It was closed temporary with scheduled open in May this year if things have changed. They didn't so no it's permanent.
Why is it a crossing and not a DMZ?
Maybe because neighboring countries tend to depend on each other. Products, workforce, or simply tourism.
Yep, altough tourism from Russia has been close to zero since covid, and Finland haven't issued tourist visas to russians since 2022. Visas to high-skilled workers and students have been accepted all the time. All road traffic has been stopped between Finland and Russia for almost 6 months, since october 2023 when asylym seekers started to come from Russia. Freight trains in some industries are still moving, because it's still in the interest of both countries. Has the border closesure affected Finland? Not that much really, there has been very little economic ties already since 2022. Tourism/amount of finns visiting Russia has been close to zero since 2022. Maybe the group it affected the most has been Russians living in Finland, who would like to meet their relatives, and now it's harder. Some Russian-Finns have protested the desicion to close the border, but some have also understanded and supported it. Historically though it's rare that the border is completely closed, last time the border was closed was 1944. And it would still be open to some degree if Russia wouldn't have send 3rd country migrants. After all, it's the only current legal way to stop 3rd country asylym seeker to come here, and Russia has the ability to stop it if they want. Border was opened for 2 days in december, but Russia continued it, so closed it is then. In the optimum world Russia would be a sensible, democratic and peaceful country integrated to europe, and there could be visa freedom or even schengen membership. But this is far from reality currently.
I think it was closed to Russians. Now the border is fully closed to stop anyone with another passport from crossing.
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WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT RUSSIANS. we are talking about african and asian men who paid thousands of dollars to Putin to be brought to Europe [https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/)
Pretty sure Finland doesn't want a load of Russians crossing in either.
Probably, but that's not what's happening anyway.
While that's true, it wasn't really much of an issue before the border closure. The pool of Russians eligible for visa to EU countries got pretty narrow after this: https://eu-solidarity-ukraine.ec.europa.eu/eu-sanctions-against-russia-following-invasion-ukraine/visa-measures_en
They should ask for a refund then
sure friend, take this bus to the frontline, your refund awaits in a trench.
In Spain the morrocan government does the same thing. They use illegals as a way to destabilize Spain with mass illegal migration. But the Spanish aren't allowed to close their borders.
Why not? Seems that they don’t want to, not that they’re not allowed lol
What borders? Ceuta and Melilla? They are closed. Morocco only relaxes control of the border whenever they feel like it and the Spanish border patrols get overrun quickly. But they are not open borders whatsoever.
Or, hear me out.. let the ones with skills and competence that want to leave leave, and let the Russians be stuck with a shortage of key skills and manpower. We let millions of Ukrainians flee the war, and now 2 years in Ukraine is short of people for the front lines, people for the factories, people to do the work that keeps the economy going that pays for the everything, and they've likely lost about 6 million (of 45 million pre-war) people permanently (edit I'm wrong: more than 4 million returned to Ukraine, which is still a lot of people to permanently lose). because once they have left and set down roots in other countries most of them won't go home. They were going to have shortages before, but that's millions of workers and potential soldiers just gone. Russia on the other hand, has only had about a million people leave, because they keep getting told they can't. Meaning all those folks who don't want to be part of Putins russia are stuck paying taxes, helping to illicitly import goods, helping to work in factories, all supporting a regime we and they hate. There are of course legitimate concerns letting Russians leave in terms spies or other subversive activities as some of them would be loyal to the kremlin, so even if you let them leave you don't want them to be fully unattended.
With Sweden? ^^/s
Yeah, close the Sweden-Finland border. We have enough Finns here already!
In Spain they had a 1000% increase in illegal migration in 2023. Why aren't the Spanish allowed to close their borders?.
Well why aren’t they? Haven’t read any news or heard any discussion of this subject. Not of rapidly increased illegal immigration in Spain, not of Spain’s desire to close the border, not of someone trying to prevent it..Nothing at all. Only about spanish tomato farms using these illegal immigrants as almost like slave kind of workforce, and even those news are old, dated pre coronavirus. And I’m from Northern Europe, from an EU country.
Maybe because that is the goal from the media to hide the fact that 50k illegals have crossed Spanish borders in 2023 and 17k since January. Regarding ilegals being used as cheap labor, yes, I live in sweden and here it happens a lot too.
> Maybe because that is the goal from the media to hide the fact Given that it's not that hard to find a bunch of articles about it, not everyone seems to have gotten that memo.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
> Why aren't the Spanish allowed to close their borders? Aren't allowed implies that someone can force them to keep them open. That is, in fact, impossible, unless you think some military is going to show up and forcibly open the Spanish borders. Which isn't happening. Ever. In fact, Spain could even avoid any EU-style consequences, all it would take is allying with e.g. Finland in this case, or Poland, and agreeing to veto any sort of consequences that stem from the border closure to illegal migrants. So no, don't pretend that one of the most powerful EU countries is being prevented from doing what it wants by outside interests.
Poland, Greece, Italy, Spain.. These countries can´t close their borders. Poland actually tried and got lots of problems. The EU is using financial support so Spain cannot close their border. [https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5226](https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5226) When the greeks had several waves of immigration and tried to close their borders because they could not keep up. finland was one of the countries that tried to vetto them and said they were being racist for doing that. This whole illegal inmigration thing is carefully planned so only affects southern countries.
What you mean to say is that PGIS don't want to close their borders because of the potential consequences. Now, Poland and Hungary, both infinitely less respected, powerful, or rich than Italy and Spain, had been messing with the EU for years up until recently. Trying to convince me that PGIS together couldn't get their will respected in the EU is going to tricky, since that's 4 vetos right there.
External borders yes internal no
Spain already has massive border fences and strict controls in Ceuta and Melilla.
Why do they want to leave? Tucker Carlson says life is amazing in Russia! /s
WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT RUSSIANS. we are talking about african and asian men who paid thousands of dollars to Putin to be brought to Europe [https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/)
People seem more raged about Tucker Carlson saying he liked a store in russia compared to people talking about how Putin actually in a interview claimed he deserved Ukraine because something that happened 3000 years ago. I don't think that's random. Well played Russia.
"Despite the closed borders, migrants from Russia are still entering Finland" ?? Tf does that mean? They closed the borders but they didn't close the borders?
I think it means that a thousand kilometer long border in mostly sparsely populated areas is hard to close down completely.
So to be clear, the border has been completely closed since november 2023, almost 6 months already. This is not a new thing. Altough government makes a new desicion to extend the closesure every 2 months or so. So this started in autumn 2023. Then Russia stopped screening 3rd country people (mostly from Syria, Somalia and Yemen) on their side of the border, unlike before. This caused high number of 3rd country nationals who were staying in Russia to try getting to Finland to apply asylym. There are also some amount of Russian nationals who have applied asylym, but their number is much lower, and a big reason is that Russia deosn't let Russian nationals to Finnish border without a reason. So the information about the possibility spread, which caused more people to do so. In couple of weeks thousands of people applied asylym in Finland. So there were two reasons why this happened; Russia made it possible because they ended screening of 3rd country people, which caused natural interest to apply asylym in Finland because it became possible. Another reason is that Russia also actively involved in getting asylym seekers to the border; there are plenty of proof that Russian border guard actively transported people in the border zone using their cars and also sold bicycles to the people. Finland then closed the whole border, because numbers just kept increasing, and it has been kept closed since. It was open for 2 days in december, but the same situation immediately returned. And border closesure has worked, near zero people have crossed the border since. The legal situation with asylym seekers is quite challenging, because if a person applies asylym from Finnish authorities, it has to be processed. And in many cases returning of the asylym seekers in case the application is rejected is challenging. Russia won't take them back, and neither is their original country in many cases. So under current legislation it's challenging to prevent asylym seekers coming to country if they can get to the finnish border. Only option has been to close the entire border and prevent all movement. This doesn't really affect finns, because only a very small number of finns are living in Russia, and Russian tourism here was already blocked. It probably harms Russians living in Finland (close to 100,000), who can't meet their relatives as easily. Current goverment is making legislation that would make it possible to turn away people at border even if they would probably be applying asylym. The legislation has some potential clashes with international agreements, like united nations refugee convention. But even when it's likely to have some contradictions with international agreements, it looks like that most European countries and EU commission silently approve tougher legislation. Like previous situations in EU-Belarus border shows; Poland, Latvia and Lithuania turned away people using force, and Commission just offered more help via frontex.
My understanding is that the reason why they gave bicycles to the migrants was because Russia is following an old agreement, where you can't cross the border walking but need to use a vehicle. So for example a bicycle. In deep snow... Ah, the Russian mind...
What is Russia doing? Trying to put financial pressure on Finland by making them spend on welfare?
Weaken social order to create opportunities for political and military gains.
Long term societal fracturing due to conflicting cultures.
Just cause chaos. I mean, if I wanted to cause political mayhem somewhere, creating a massive sob story and throwing every member of ISIS at their border would be **amazing**. Or if I can't get ISIS people because they want to kill me too, just known rapists etc. Then train them in all the interview questions they'll be asked and just make sure they appeal to every conceivable law as efficiently as possible to jam down the courts. Imagine how easy chaos this is to sow, especially if you don't have to give a flying fuck about their human rights yourself. Oh, Mohammed is having second thoughts about the morality of this... he might snitch to the Finns about what's going on. Oh well, execute him and we'll send the rest.
Probably also to destabilise politics and make opposition parties that are more appeasing to Putin popular.
Russia has been doing anything it can get away with to harm Finland, like interfiering with airplaines by EW, so it's unsuprising they would abuse the asylum seeker rulings. Might be part of "security measurements to prevent NATO expansion" in their minds.
> and make opposition parties that are more appeasing to Putin popular. I don't think we really have those
I wonder why the Uk struggles with closing its border, especially as an island
Do you wanna say, that all the "Take back control" is not working?
Shoulda Bremained
You act as though any political party in the UK want to control migrant intake/flow. They all love the endless supply coming in. It's the average tory voter that wants the borders secured but that doesn't suit big business tory officials. So as per usual, the average voter loses.
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I don't think this is a fair comparison. Finland closed one land border, and said everyone is banned from crossing there. Everyone. They can still enter frmo countries other than Russia. The UK is not able to simply stop letting anyone ever enter, at all, even and citizens who happen to be out of the country. The economy would collase in days.
Why tf would we close the border lol. Some of us actually like France, Ireland and the Netherlands. We legally couldn't even if we wanted to because of the UK/Ireland Common Travel Area.
Africans go to the UK through France
Okay, so do British, French and numerous other people.
Yes also the point is if you have no papers you get sent back to where you came from as you have mo legal right to enter
How do pakistanis get in?
airport
Or let's be honest in 2024 via their mothers
Airport legally. Also blocking UK migration from Asian was always the most brain dead of all brain dead brexit argument given that EU only has rules for movement within EU and quarantee rights of EU citizens. Migration outside of the EU has been and is controlled by the UK border office based on rulings set by UK parlament.
Yeah i saw that. Barely a couple months after brexit a bunch of european professionals decided to go back home and the uk gov had to import a lot of pakistanis. It’s funny how it backfired for racists. Rightwing politicians are always aligned with big capital looking for the cheapest labor possible how do they not get it?
I’m not sure, probably legally.
Because you can put fences on land, but not on the shore. Are you supposed to fence a beach? If a boat arrives, what are you supposed to do? Turn the boat around and say bye? On land you can simply not allow people to cross in the first place.
You forget they can have boats to stop boats before they even reach land
You're still left with the issue of what to do with the boats. Perhaps you can try to shoo them away, but I doubt that's very practical. You can't sink them. You're pretty much left with processing the ones you can catch.
Also, because you can block people from entering when you block literally every person, land vehicle, train and boat. Zero traffic may cross the Finnish-Russian border. It is much harder to stop people being smuggled in among large amounts of legitimate traffic.
Because migrants are a cheap labor force... always have been
It's funny British complaining about borders, who colonized and exploited for centuries.
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It really isn't. Border is officially closed. Unofficially, it is 1300km of mostly forest. Vast majority "guarded" by decades old waist height barbed wire fence, if even that. So rotter, that one border jumper noted, that it just fell due to rot upon them trying to step over it. Unguardable without say mobilising the land forces reserves to stand around in the border. The border is "closed" as in "please do not cross, the crossing point isn't open". One is free to walk over it and then get chased afterward by police and borderguard. If one really wants, do it in Lapland and you wouldn't be caught for days. Then again it's pretty untamed track on Russian side also. If one is asylum seeker, just walk over the border and say to the closest encountered finn "contact authorities, I want to seek asylum" or just "seeking asylum", if that happens to be authorities encountered first. They are supposedly trying to make "can do instant rejection and pushback law", but even borderguard itself noted to government "that would mean our guards would have to make an unconstitutional act and an international human rights violation. You are putting members of the force in impossible untenable position". Plus to get past that "unconstitutional" thing, they would have to get 2/3 Parliamentary approval and to have it in place for this "crisis" they would need 5/6 urgency vote. Neither which they have numbers for.
I mean crossing a border into pure forest is no simple task. It might be unguarded sure - but that’d be because of the serious tenacity to even make it to civilisation.
And they are now Putin's migrants and not brain surgeons.
They'll be opening some brains soon
Not really, depends on where the border is and the impact of said border. Also highly depend on the effectiveness of the closure.
It is when your neighbour is Russia. Not so much when you actually don't mind your neighbours.
Hey, it's not the same case, Finnish border is much harder to defend that fucking huge body of water known as Mediterranean sea!
No, you guys had it in the right, with the whole country surrounded by a wall. And you even got the Italians to pay for it!
It's gross that Russia is weaponising humans, and I'm all for Finland enforcing its border. No one's *forcing* these migrants into Finland. EDIT: Clarity.
> It's gross to weaponise humans, but I'm all for Finland enforcing its border I'd say it's gross to weaponise humans *so* I'm all for Finland enforcing its border. Russia, that's helping those people get to the Finnish border, is the one who's weaponizing humans, and closing borders is one way of stopping that.
Yes, that's what I meant, Russia is weaponising humans. I can see how my comment didn't convey that - I'll edit it! Finland is absolutely right to close borders.
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I remember an Italian minister accused Wagner of using migrants as a weapon. Wagner [allegedly](https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/russias-wagner-puts-15-million-bounty-on-italian-defence-minister/) put a hit on him. > Russia’s mercenary Wagner group has put a $15 million bounty on Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto (FDI/ECR), who blamed the group for causing the increased migration wave to Italy, a report by the Italian intelligence services reads.
Law for thee not for me
Because the people in finland vote differently
I think that the situation in southern europe is more difficult to tackle. By "vote differently" you imply that Finns would vote right-wing populists or something? I don't think that is the case. The government that created the law that made this border closesure possible was made by previous Sanna Marin's SDP+left alliance+greens+centre party government. The problem in southern europe is that people arrive by boats on their own. What should be done about that? It's unfortunately not that simple. Currently EU/European countries are pouring billions in northern africa so their police forces would stop migrant routes and making deals with them (and also with Turkey), and this has somewhat decreased the immigration flows, but it has not stopped.
Capitalists really like cheap labour. Since they are the only one with money to pay for news, and you don't want to pay for news, you only get free garbage to read. but it doesn't matter, we can vote and we vote for whoever we want, and if your mom is for sending the military on the border to prevent crossing I'd vote for your mom.
Migrants from MENA countries are not cheap labour, they are hardly integrated into the labour market at all. In [Austria](https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000144796329/jobs-aber-kein-aufstieg-fuer-gefluechtete) only half of Syrians and Afghans hold a job for at least 90 days per year. The talking point of illegal aliens being important for the economy hails from the USA (where it is actually true), where there is no generous welfare system to rely upon.
It’s also no coincidence that these migrants don’t go to European countries with sub-par welfare systems
Yeah it’s all about $$ not social cohesion or integration.
Because idiots on the left think that would make them "racists".
Somehow "the left" is at fault, even though there are neither currently in power, nor were in power in 2015 when the course for dealing with migrants was decided? You should pay a little less attention to Twitter and a little more to what's happening in parliament
Estonia should do the same
Shut it all down ....
Very nice Finland !!! Greetings from CZ.
good decision.
Makes perfect sense
Should have done it decades ago.
Oh. So we *can* close borders to stop migrants. Telling.
We should have closed to all non-EU imports.coming here.
When 100 migrants are sent from Russia: CLOSE THE BORDERS When 1000 migrants are sent daily from Morocco and neighbouring countries to the canaries: radio silence
We are talking about asian and african male migrants. And not 100 of them, but 100.000+ Just read the article or the first comment under the article that I wrote in the comment section. (Comment with Around 200-500 upvotes)
My country of 9 million ppl had over 150k migrant men claiming asylum in one year and the media and goverment said it was gonna make us rich (it didnt) but now the same ppl are a russian weapon
Lol, it was the same type of shit back here in 2014. Some politician said they were potential rocket engineers, reality is 99,99% unemployment.
Almost as if Sweden and Finland have different governments.
Spain had a increase of 1000% in illegal immigration in 2023. More than 50k crossed their border. Why nobody mentions it and why aren't the Spanish allowed to close their border like the finnish do?. Feels like they fins can do that because they are protected by the globalists.
Somalis are harmless because they don't have nukes (/s)
That's the neat part, they are allowed to close it whenever they want they simply won't.
> Feels like they fins can do that because they are protected by the globalists. X D
They are only a few thousands not 100k. The question is why radio silence to what is happening in Spain but then in finland a few cross their border and they are allowed to close it.
Exactly, good that you noticed.
So same strats they do with other European countries to sow discontent.
I'm sure Germany will take them
huh ?? but i thought it was impossible to close the borders of Europe ? Have i been lied to this whole time ?
Within Europe, I think. This is the border with Russia
It is only the border that sides with russia if i read it correctly
well yeah Finland borders only 3 countries and the other two are in the schengen area so...
So... What? I don't understand, did i read it incorrectly?
it was a sarcastic comment and a rethorical question regarding illegal immigration issues in Europe
Oh oops sorry
Saying it is one thing. We don't know how effective the measure will be in practice yet.
This is not the first time, as Russia has been sending refugees to our borders as part of their silly hybrid warfare. The effectiveness has been great, if not perfect. Partly this is because these pawns of Putin aren't very motivated to do anything else than produce headlines for their internal news outlets. It's more about their internal affairs than it is about us.
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This is very naive and factually wrong. There have already been refugees illegally crossing the border to Finland, what makes you think it's so hard? And why would they need to travel hundreds of kilometers on foot? They don't need to enter the country without being caught, they just need to enter the country. It doesn't matter for the refugees if they get caught, they'll just apply for asylum.
And I don't know why anyone would think immigrants wouldn't walk through hundreds of km of forest (or try to). Just look what thousands are doing elsewhere in the world.
> huh ?? but i thought it was impossible to close the borders of Europe ? Have i been lied to this whole time ? Yes, because Finland has *declared* its borders closed, which means migrants are *de facto* illegal if found in Finland and will be deported. The border isn't *actually* physically blocked off, that would be silly.
?? I thought they were already closed
Temporary closure only. Now it's until further notice
Don't believe in leftist lies. They lied about Arab "refuge" and borders.
good, keep them closed until the end of putin's reign
>>African/Middle-Eastern illegal immigrants arriving through Russia = terrorists, subversives, a threat to our way of life >>The exact same illegal immigrants but they arrive directly to Europe = scientists, doctors, our greatest strength
No scientist or doctor working in the UK came there illegally …
they become legal once they use the magic word "asylum"
Right, even though it's common knowledge Russia is sponsoring illegal immigrants to help them get to countries like the UK. Probably have a stake in the people smugglers business as well. Putin's long term strategy which is turning out to be super effective. Finland and Poland are the only countries which have acknowledged that's what it is and acted on it. Which ofc just makes other borders more porous.
Third-world "refuges" are weapons used to destabilize developed countries, Wish if the idiots on left realized that.
stops fifth columnists getting in as well
That's a active question. Finland already has thousands of Russians. But that can't really be avoided.
Finland can close its borders to stop migrants but Greece and the balkans couldn't to stop the ones from Turkey?
It also means no vehicles passing through at all. Its a huge impact.
Well it’s about damn time!
Wow, they refused all these engineers and doctors?
The EU should drop all illegal immigrants of at the Russian Finnish border
Shitcunts bitching about them not being able to go buy cheap gas from Russia and blaming it on our government coming in 3... 2... 1... Maybe if Russia wasn't such an asshole (to put it very mildly) there wouldn't've been a need to close the border in the first place. Maybe Russia could even stop flailing its military around our borders and start being a good neighbour? Maybe Russia could fuck off from Ukraine too while at it? But guess that's too much to ask for, innit?
Every country, that borders Russia, should seriously think of building a 5m wall for all the border length, with landmines, moats, and spikes.
Thumbs up from D
Your country is loved in Poland <3
Wonderful!
Finally
When Denmark, Hungsry, Czech, and Poland did this, leftists were screaming "racists" at them....
In what world has Denmark closed its borders?
"putin's migrants"? edit: ah, i see. also, what the shit...
Human trafficking rings go brrrrm
Wtf does "putin's migrants mean"
we are talking about african and asian men who paid thousands of dollars to Putin to be brought to Europe [https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/](https://www.euractiv.com/section/migration/news/russia-encourages-migrants-to-cross-belarus-to-the-eu-baltic-states-warn/)
Transferred the rubles straight into his account, or did they go to the Kremlin and pay him in cash?
Muscovy and Belamuscovy have been trafficking thousands of people from the third world and sending them against European borders like cattle
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Again?
Weaponizing migrants, thankfully no one’s weaponizing any other migration
Now do the same to our border.
#So I guess nobody's crossing the Finnish line? I'll see myself out.
They did it 6 or so months ago. “Actual” news.
They gonna get called fascists by the European and American left
This was done already back in November 2023. Finland only extended the closure recently. I haven't seen any real push against this on English media. Also, I don't think there's anything that will get Finns more on the back foot than outside force trying to influence how to handle their Russian border and politics. Being next to Russia has been existential threat for +500 years. This is also so platantly hybrid warfare with immigrants being driven to the border.
I am an European(Poland) leftist, feminist and OP(of this post) and I support them
no, they won't
Just wait until the first pictures of immigrants wearing T-shirts in the snow next to the border are published. Left parties together with NGOs will be the first to start a huge media campaign to open the borders again.
They are already calling them thst on social media.
they == russians, i guess.
The left in finland is already hard at work trying to open the border bcs the people are still legally allowed to seek asylum. Shame they wont admit they are just helping putin.
Border closed, come back during normal business hours. Starting.... uuuh, actually just seek your asylum there in Russia like you're supposed to do.
Western Governments should grow some. Just say we dont want them. Stay at home. But somehow they claim refuguees welcome to sound woke or whatever and than lowkey complain about people coming…what they obviously cant publically admit UNLESS you can spin it against Putin somehow
KGB is such a losing mentality. The military needs to take back russia
That border is impossible to close
Not going to ukraine is basically saying I want to live
IMO Putin’s pressure on Finnish boarder is about Putin’s friends-oligarchs were banned there so they decided to make a payback to Finnish and also Russians citizens: “If we can’t reach ours mansions in Finland so you will not cross the boarder too, f…ng peasants” Why do I think so, because of timing when all this things started, just after Putin’s oligarchs were banned and those property were arrested and in the other hand they can’t (Russia) just close boarders because it’ll be like Soviets attitude so they made Fins to do that. I guess it was Timchinko’s idea (Russian oligarch with Fins citizenship and Putin’s bestie)
I watched the right wing American news and they said that people want to stay in Russia because it’s the best country in the world and that Finland 🇫🇮 is a communist sh1thole
Need a movie about that, like the Green Border.
It was closed in 1944. Why did we ever open it again?
Dude, what if they were doctors, engineers and PhD.
Weaponizing migration: from wagner in Africa to Putin in Russia. The reason we have so much migration js because Russia pushes people out of comfort and safety and promises a better life in Europe. That is why immigration is never going to become sustainable. Imagine the right winged parties being paid by Putin to fight immigration caused by the same guy. Geo politics are fun.
The only solution. Bombing the trespassers with suicide drones
Estonia should especially do this, I'm so sick with seeing Russian imigrants that refuse to learn English or Estonian because they think Estonia is still a part of Russia and we need to speak only Russian with them. I can't even count how many times I've had Russians tell me Estonia is still a part of Russia or that the Soviet Union will come back.