5,000 refugees missing from reception centres

More than 5,000 asylum seekers left the reception centres in the country and went into hiding, reported the national broadcaster Yle quoting a review of the country’s registered asylum seekers.

The refugees did not inform anything to the reception centres before leaving, said the report.

The Yle review said about 40,600 people applied for asylum in Finland in January 1, 2015 to July 1, 2017. The authorities approved 11,900 asylum applications and rejected 18,000 in that period.

The increasing number of negative decisions on asylum applications might have been a reason for refugees going into hiding.

According to the Yle statistics, a total of 11,500 applications were rejected in the last half of 2016. In that period, about 10,700 asylum seekers were either deported or left the country voluntarily.

The absconding refugees may stay in the country as undocumented migrants, or they may have moved on to other EU countries or voluntarily returned to their countries of origin without cancelling their asylum applications, said the Yle report.