Practices in issuing residence permits to trafficking victims to be reviewed

The Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment have ordered a review of the grounds on which victims of human trafficking are granted residence permits, said the ministries in a joint press release on Thursday.

The review will be conducted by the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman acting as the national human trafficking rapporteur.

The aim is to investigate how the Finnish Immigration Service applies the special regulation of the Aliens Act to the continuous residence permit granted to trafficking victims.

The review will examine the types of victims of human trafficking the Finnish Immigration Service has identified, what kinds of abuse the victims have endured, and what their chances of surviving the abuse are.

The examination will also cover how the Aliens Act has been applied in the processing of their applications and which factors have affected the interpretation of the Act.

One central research question also concerns how the vulnerability of the trafficking victims has been recognised and evaluated on the basis of the Aliens Act.

The research subjects are the residence permit and asylum decisions concerning victims of human trafficking the Finnish Immigration Service has made in the period between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2020. The aim is to produce information, based on which the possible needs for legislative amendment and development of the practices concerning application and interpretation of law can be assessed.

The parliament has demanded the government to find out whether there are legislative amendment needs related to the grounds for the residence permits of trafficking victims.

For example, the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman has paid attention to the residence permit practices concerning victims of human trafficking, such as the high threshold for granting a continuous residence permit and the varying application practices. The preparations of the government’s anti-trafficking action plan have also brought forward questions related to residence permits.

The research information produced by the review will also serve the sub-group of the development project of labour immigration set up by the Minister of Employment Tuula Haatainen in March 2020.

The rersults of the survey that is now in progress will be published in September 2021.