Eastern border|Since August of last year, the increased number of asylum seekers at the eastern border led in part to the fact that the government began to prepare to combat instrumentalized immigration. Parliament approved the controversial conversion law in July.
Gulf of Finland the investigation of the maritime guard’s crime prevention unit on the suspect who took advantage of the situation on the eastern border for organizing illegal immigration continues. Director of Investigation, Lieutenant Jyri Siitari says that out of about 1,300 people who crossed the border, more than 400 have left Finland.
“People came here, almost immediately continued their journey to Europe, and now they are sent back from there based on the Dublin agreement,” Siitari tells STT.
According to the Dublin Convention, a person’s asylum application is processed in the country where asylum was first applied for. According to Siitari, of the more than 400 people who left Finland, about 280 people are in the return process.
The investigation is related to the increase in the number of asylum seekers on Finland’s eastern border that started in August last year. The situation led to the fact that Finland closed the eastern border and the government began to prepare the fight against instrumentalized immigration, i.e. the so-called conversion law.
In the preparation of the law, secret intelligence on how many migrants Russia can mobilize to the Finnish border has been used, among other things. The controversial conversion law was approved by the parliament in July.
Crime prevention unit the biggest investigations concern Indian citizens who came to Finland.
“They came in a certain amount of time and left almost immediately. We started to pay attention to it and found a pattern that the trip has been forcibly sold and organized in such a way that Finland has only been a transit point through which the Schengen area has been entered. There are no Indians in these returns, which means they have probably continued their journey even further.”
The role of the Russian authorities as a whole has been to enable crossing the border.
“Our observations are that the border authorities on the Russian side have at least not stopped them. So they haven’t made it difficult to leave Russia.”
According to Siitari, people have been able to continue their journey from Finland to another Schengen country without difficulty.
“From our point of view, it has been unbelievably easy to leave Finland without any documents, even in air traffic.”
A zither says that illegal immigration is organized from other places than Finland. According to him, the suspects have organized a route for the arrivals from Russia to Finland and advised people on social media channels.
According to Siitari, free movement makes it difficult to uncover the organized crime behind human smuggling.
“If traveling out of here wasn’t this easy, criminal organizations would have to come to the place and be visible”, to forge documents and other things.
“These criminal organizations are in hiding at the moment.”
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