HELSINKI, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Finnish Minister for Employment Tuula Haatainen said on Wednesday that employers are suffering from lack of personnel and foreign labour is required to realize the existing growth potential.
There are people interested in coming to Finland for work, "but the process is terribly slow", the minister said at a press conference after a cabinet seminar.
At the seminar, the Finnish government rolled out emphasis on work-based immigration following the change of ministry duty.
At the start of the year, processing of work permit applications from non-EU citizens was transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. The official reasoning for the change was that the decisions on immigration would then be closer to the labour market.
Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo said after the seminar that work would begin under the new ministry location to "make Finland more attractive" to immigration.
Currently most recruitment of non-EU blue collar workers must be preceded by a necessity appraisal to make sure the jobs could not be filled with EU nationals. Expert level foreigners can be recruited without necessity appraisals, but companies have complained loudly that the work permit processes in Migri, the Finnish immigration authority, have taken too long time.
The industries have called for a total lifting of the assessment requirement, but the idea has been opposed in the unions, for fear that a wider entry of foreign labour to impact salary levels.
The ministers also talked to the media on measures to reach by the end of the summer the goal of 30,000 people increase in the labour force. The employment rate in Finland is now 73 percent but the cabinet wants to increase it to 75 by the end of the parliamentary period.
