This week Yle News' All Points North podcast probes some of the obstacles people face when they arrive in the country — a host of issues relocation specialist Minna Franck told APN was a "big problem".
"We have to discuss the structural racism and xenophobia that exists in Finnish working life," Franck told the APN podcast. "I help highly educated people that are trying to find work in Finland, and I hear the stories about their struggles, even trying to get their foot in the door."
You can listen to the full podcast using the embedded player here, via Yle Areena, Spotify or Apple Podcasts or on your usual podcast player using the RSS feed.
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We also heard from Philipp von dem Knesebeck, who moved to Finland in July with his wife and has been documenting their relocation experience in a blog called 'Living HEL'. The Von dem Knesebecks have faced challenges getting Finnish social security numbers, opening bank accounts and registering their address.
Following this experience, he suggested Finland's immigration process should be significantly simplified and streamlined.
"There is no need for all these different processes, because they are all from the Finnish government and it's all based on the same central database, so why is it so damn complicated," he asked.
Evacuation uncertainty grows in Afghanistan
As Finland announced plans to end air evacuations from Afghanistan on Friday, we spoke with Yle's correspondent in the region Maija Liuhto, who said the situation in Kabul is very tense and uncertain.
"The feeling that Afghans on the ground have is that mostly only westerners are being evacuated, and there have been these stories of planes taking off almost completely empty, so it's a pretty terrible situation," Liuhto said.
Join the conversation!
This week's show was presented by Ronan Browne and Zena Iovino. The producer was Mark B. Odom and the audio engineer was Laura Koso.
If you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts, just contact us via WhatsApp on +358 44 421 0909, on our Facebook or Twitter accounts, or at yle.news@yle.fi and allpointsnorth@yle.fi.
