Stranded in Nokialand: A Québec expat in Finland
Иммигрант из Квебека, Мартин-Эрик живет в Финляндии уже более десятилетия. В этом интервью он делится полезной информацией о таких практических вещах, как поиск работы и стоимость жизни. Несмотря на хороших финских друзей и прекрасные пейзажи новой страны, жизнь иммигранта для него оказалась далеко не сахарной. Познакомьтесь с беспощадным взглядом этого иностранца на жизнь в Финляндии.
An expat from Québec, Martin-Éric has been living in Finland for more than a decade and here shares helpful information on things like finding a job and the cost of living. However, good Finnish friends and beautiful scenery notwithstanding, expat life for him isn't at all a bed of roses. Read on for a no-holds-barred view of this foreigner's life in Finland.
-Where were you born?
Joliette, Québec, North America.
-In which country and city are you living now?
Helsinki, Suomi, Europe. (note: Finland really is called Suomi in Finnish and in neighboring Baltic languages)
-Are you living alone or with your family?
Alone, though I was briefly married to a local.
-How long have you been living in Finland?
11 years
-What is your age?
38
-When did you come up with the idea of living in Finland?
It was more by accident than anything else. I wanted out of the whole North American mess and ran into Finns online in the mid-90's. The language looked intriguing enough and Finnish friends pointed out that polyglots easily find work in Finland. After visiting and spending a full month trekking the country, I went back to pack my things and got a lead towards my first job via a local friend, which allowed me to get my first residence permit in 1998.
-Was it hard to get a working permit?
Getting the first one tends to be easy, because Finland wants to give the image of being a pro-immigration country.
However, renewals are handled by the local police station and that's where most expats first realize that this country is anything but pro-immigration. Basically, they keep on making it harder and harder, especially if they sense that the individual could pull off the herculean task of learning this difficult language and integrate well. This is easily noticed in the absurd justifications given for granting pointlessly short-term residence permits (even if someone's employment contract states "permanent" as duration of employment) or for granting them with ridiculously narrow restrictions on the type of profession or the field they are allowed to work in.
-Was it difficult for you to get medical insurance before you went there or when you first arrived?
National medical insurance support is free and automatically granted to anyone paying taxes in Finland.
-How do you make your living in Finland? Do you have any type of income generated?
Finding a job tends to be fairly easy, especially if someone works in language teaching or in technology. Popular job portals (Monster, etc.) have a Finnish version and many companies elect English as their corporate language. This being said, finding a job with a good salary and an obvious justification for hiring a foreigner does not guarantee that someone will be granted a residence permit, because the Law allows completely arbitrary decisions and that tends to mean pointlessly restrictive permits or even a rejected application.
-Do you speak Finnish and do you think it's important to speak the local language?
I speak Finnish in three regional dialects in addition to Karelian (a language related to Finnish that is still spoken in the Eastern part of the country) and Estonian, which is the language of the neighboring country and closely related to Karelian.
This being said, ignorance is bliss and many expats find that the day they start speaking passable Finnish is the day the locals start plotting towards ensuring a swift and "voluntary" return of the expats to wherever they came from. Also Finns are good at keeping a cheerful smile while talking behind a foreigner's back, assuming that Finnish is so difficult to learn that they can safely say anything they want right in front of a foreigner and get away with it.
One example that come to mind and that is fairly typical of Finnish mentality happened to a French pal who, upon starting his first job in Finland, was given the password to access his e-mail by the company's network administrator. Noticing that it sounded like a pronounceable word, he asked the administrator what the word meant. "Nothing. It's just random letters." Being keen on learning Finnish, the French pal eventually figured out that his password was in fact a short sentence that roughly translates to "You really suck."
Anyhow, Finns keep on dreaming of a world where all foreigners are Brits who steadfastly refuse to learn Finnish...
-Do you miss home and family sometimes?
I don't miss a thing. I briefly visited Québec last year after I got divorced and it took me exactly two days before I solemnly declared that "it was nice to see y'all, but I'd really like to go back home and have a sauna, now," adding that Québec is in such a crappy condition that even rural Russia looks less creepy nowadays and that they couldn't pay me enough to ever make me consider moving back to Québec.
I keep myself occupied by learing yet more regional slangs and by discovering the rest of Europe. Helsinki is a fairly potent airline hub, especially towards Asia, so it's easy to fly to wherever, although sadly the costs are much higher than from most Central European cities.
-Do you have other plans for the future?
For all intents and purposes, I have dumped Finland in favor of Estonia, partly out of frustration for still not qualifying for citizenship after all those years (one might as well call that framing someone into perpetual disqualification) and partly because Estonia is a much more happening country.
Whereas the Finnish bureaucrazy is still looking for excuses to cause me troubles, Estonians turn out to be surprisingly pragmatic and welcoming. While Finns have nothing but contempt for foreigners who speak Finnish, Estonians are quite appreciative of anyone at least giving a try at speaking Estonian. Finns tend to pigeonhole expats into career dead-ends that offer little to no potential for growth, because they like to keep the best jobs for themselves and to make all the decisions among Finns, while Estonians welcome expats and won't hesitate to place them in key positions if they see a keen individual with good potential.
However, lack of EU citizenship is preventing me from relocating to Estonia, which is why I haven't contributed an article about my Estonian experience here yet. Meanwhile, I'm stranded in Finland and commuting to Estonia as needed until I have succeeded at acquiring Finnish citizenship.
-What about housing? Have you bought, or are you renting a home? How much do you pay for it?
Apartment prices in Finland tend to be pointlessly high for ridiculously small surfaces. I currently pay 675EUR/month for 32m² for instance.
-What is the cost of living in Finland?
Amazingly enough, not as high as people would like to think - if you discount skyrocketing housing costs. Food and entertainment costs are about on par with other EU15 countries, although alcohol is excessively taxed. What really hurts is the income tax rate: people have very little purchasing power left after taxation, which is why this country feels expensive, even though the prices of goods and services are mostly reasonable.
-What do you think about the Finns?
Structural stealth racism is pretty much the norm in Finland:
A lot of blatantly nationalist and racist statements that have been tagged as politically incorrect or are subject to a lawsuit everywhere else in multiculturally-aware countries get blurted out wihtout anyone even blinking an eye in Finland.
Also, the Finnish bureaucracy routinely presumes that anyone foreign is obviously yet another useless immigrant who is living off social security and, to some extent, they work hard to ensure that the myth turns into a conveniently self-fulfilling prophecy that makes it easy to blame foreigners for all of the country's miseries.
The average Finn likes to think that every foreigner is a dormant English teacher waiting for their next student to appear. They refuse to entertain the possibility that languages other than English and Finnish exist on this planet and will rudely switch back to English, even in cases where an expat's Finnish is spotless while their own English wouldn't even cut it for kindergarten. Yet, many of them have downright pedantic knowledge of languages such as French, German or Russian - but even then, they simply expect that every foreigner ought to use English.
While Finns tend to be hard-working employees, they simply lack in common sense and are often rude beyond belief. The only redeeming factor seems to be the handful of people who diligently maintain the traditions of Finnish good behavior, courtesy, politeness and the will to do things the right way always.
-What are the positive and negative aspects of living in Finland?
Positive: Public transport that is affordable and runs on time. Good opportunities for short random foreign work experiences (but very little hope for anything long-term). In the extremely rare occasion that a Finn befriends you, it will be for life; despite everything that the bureaucracy made me endure, there's a few friends here that will always keep me coming back.
Negative: Deeply ingrained mentality to torment foreigners until they give up on settling down and agree to leave. Byzantine bureaucracy without any sense of responsibility or deadlines whatsoever. Skyrocketing housing costs. Steep taxation rates and yet (in practice and despite what the Law says) extremely limited access to public services as a non-citizen. Marriages to Finnish women tend to end with a violent divorce within 3 years and, usually, with the foreign man losing custody of his kids. Marriages to Finnish men tend to last longer, except that the foreign woman is often the victim of racism outside the house, which eventually makes her beg her Finnish husband to relocate abroad; many do so.
-Do you have any tips for our readers about living in Finland?
Don't be fooled by studies that declared Finland as the most competitive country on Earth; it's utter bull and even the Finnish League of Entrepreneurs harshly criticized the criteria used for the scoring. Ditto for this alleged need for foreign labor: perfectly qualified expats who even speak fluent Finnish are routinely overlooked by employers; if they wanna open cheap ethnic fastfood restaurants or accept menial jobs, great, otherwise, they're essentially viewed as stealers of top jobs that "should" go to Finns and therefore unwelcome. Also, the country's peaceful appearance (people and wilderness) hides unexpected gotchas, such as your shyest neighbor usually being found pissed drunk and pissing on the sidewalk while insulting bystanders on Friday nights.
On just about expat forum, you'll find that foreigners who just moved to Finland eagerly join the Finns in bashing expats who have anything to complain about. However, expats who have lived there longer eventually all agree that Finland is simply ruthless towards foreigners and it all becomes a game of "which one of us is gonna give up and leave next?" that leaves many expats feeling that they no longer know anyone from the old days when they had moved there. The truth is that the few expats that remain usually do it to stay close to the kids they had with their Finnish ex and they become bitterly resigned to living in an unwelcoming country. Those without kids eventually come to the conclusion that it's better to cut their losses and swiftly move on to a more welcoming country.
In other words, avoid Finland for anything else than adding random short-term international work experiences to your CV.
-Do you have any favorite Web sites or blogs about Finland?
The http://www.finlandforthought.net blog and its related expat forums have it all.
Posted September 10th, 2008 by PerkelixFinland
http://www.expatinterviews.com/finland/martin-eric.html
An expat from Québec, Martin-Éric has been living in Finland for more than a decade and here shares helpful information on things like finding a job and the cost of living. However, good Finnish friends and beautiful scenery notwithstanding, expat life for him isn't at all a bed of roses. Read on for a no-holds-barred view of this foreigner's life in Finland.
-Where were you born?
Joliette, Québec, North America.
-In which country and city are you living now?
Helsinki, Suomi, Europe. (note: Finland really is called Suomi in Finnish and in neighboring Baltic languages)
-Are you living alone or with your family?
Alone, though I was briefly married to a local.
-How long have you been living in Finland?
11 years
-What is your age?
38
-When did you come up with the idea of living in Finland?
It was more by accident than anything else. I wanted out of the whole North American mess and ran into Finns online in the mid-90's. The language looked intriguing enough and Finnish friends pointed out that polyglots easily find work in Finland. After visiting and spending a full month trekking the country, I went back to pack my things and got a lead towards my first job via a local friend, which allowed me to get my first residence permit in 1998.
-Was it hard to get a working permit?
Getting the first one tends to be easy, because Finland wants to give the image of being a pro-immigration country.
However, renewals are handled by the local police station and that's where most expats first realize that this country is anything but pro-immigration. Basically, they keep on making it harder and harder, especially if they sense that the individual could pull off the herculean task of learning this difficult language and integrate well. This is easily noticed in the absurd justifications given for granting pointlessly short-term residence permits (even if someone's employment contract states "permanent" as duration of employment) or for granting them with ridiculously narrow restrictions on the type of profession or the field they are allowed to work in.
-Was it difficult for you to get medical insurance before you went there or when you first arrived?
National medical insurance support is free and automatically granted to anyone paying taxes in Finland.
-How do you make your living in Finland? Do you have any type of income generated?
Finding a job tends to be fairly easy, especially if someone works in language teaching or in technology. Popular job portals (Monster, etc.) have a Finnish version and many companies elect English as their corporate language. This being said, finding a job with a good salary and an obvious justification for hiring a foreigner does not guarantee that someone will be granted a residence permit, because the Law allows completely arbitrary decisions and that tends to mean pointlessly restrictive permits or even a rejected application.
-Do you speak Finnish and do you think it's important to speak the local language?
I speak Finnish in three regional dialects in addition to Karelian (a language related to Finnish that is still spoken in the Eastern part of the country) and Estonian, which is the language of the neighboring country and closely related to Karelian.
This being said, ignorance is bliss and many expats find that the day they start speaking passable Finnish is the day the locals start plotting towards ensuring a swift and "voluntary" return of the expats to wherever they came from. Also Finns are good at keeping a cheerful smile while talking behind a foreigner's back, assuming that Finnish is so difficult to learn that they can safely say anything they want right in front of a foreigner and get away with it.
One example that come to mind and that is fairly typical of Finnish mentality happened to a French pal who, upon starting his first job in Finland, was given the password to access his e-mail by the company's network administrator. Noticing that it sounded like a pronounceable word, he asked the administrator what the word meant. "Nothing. It's just random letters." Being keen on learning Finnish, the French pal eventually figured out that his password was in fact a short sentence that roughly translates to "You really suck."
Anyhow, Finns keep on dreaming of a world where all foreigners are Brits who steadfastly refuse to learn Finnish...
-Do you miss home and family sometimes?
I don't miss a thing. I briefly visited Québec last year after I got divorced and it took me exactly two days before I solemnly declared that "it was nice to see y'all, but I'd really like to go back home and have a sauna, now," adding that Québec is in such a crappy condition that even rural Russia looks less creepy nowadays and that they couldn't pay me enough to ever make me consider moving back to Québec.
I keep myself occupied by learing yet more regional slangs and by discovering the rest of Europe. Helsinki is a fairly potent airline hub, especially towards Asia, so it's easy to fly to wherever, although sadly the costs are much higher than from most Central European cities.
-Do you have other plans for the future?
For all intents and purposes, I have dumped Finland in favor of Estonia, partly out of frustration for still not qualifying for citizenship after all those years (one might as well call that framing someone into perpetual disqualification) and partly because Estonia is a much more happening country.
Whereas the Finnish bureaucrazy is still looking for excuses to cause me troubles, Estonians turn out to be surprisingly pragmatic and welcoming. While Finns have nothing but contempt for foreigners who speak Finnish, Estonians are quite appreciative of anyone at least giving a try at speaking Estonian. Finns tend to pigeonhole expats into career dead-ends that offer little to no potential for growth, because they like to keep the best jobs for themselves and to make all the decisions among Finns, while Estonians welcome expats and won't hesitate to place them in key positions if they see a keen individual with good potential.
However, lack of EU citizenship is preventing me from relocating to Estonia, which is why I haven't contributed an article about my Estonian experience here yet. Meanwhile, I'm stranded in Finland and commuting to Estonia as needed until I have succeeded at acquiring Finnish citizenship.
-What about housing? Have you bought, or are you renting a home? How much do you pay for it?
Apartment prices in Finland tend to be pointlessly high for ridiculously small surfaces. I currently pay 675EUR/month for 32m² for instance.
-What is the cost of living in Finland?
Amazingly enough, not as high as people would like to think - if you discount skyrocketing housing costs. Food and entertainment costs are about on par with other EU15 countries, although alcohol is excessively taxed. What really hurts is the income tax rate: people have very little purchasing power left after taxation, which is why this country feels expensive, even though the prices of goods and services are mostly reasonable.
-What do you think about the Finns?
Structural stealth racism is pretty much the norm in Finland:
A lot of blatantly nationalist and racist statements that have been tagged as politically incorrect or are subject to a lawsuit everywhere else in multiculturally-aware countries get blurted out wihtout anyone even blinking an eye in Finland.
Also, the Finnish bureaucracy routinely presumes that anyone foreign is obviously yet another useless immigrant who is living off social security and, to some extent, they work hard to ensure that the myth turns into a conveniently self-fulfilling prophecy that makes it easy to blame foreigners for all of the country's miseries.
The average Finn likes to think that every foreigner is a dormant English teacher waiting for their next student to appear. They refuse to entertain the possibility that languages other than English and Finnish exist on this planet and will rudely switch back to English, even in cases where an expat's Finnish is spotless while their own English wouldn't even cut it for kindergarten. Yet, many of them have downright pedantic knowledge of languages such as French, German or Russian - but even then, they simply expect that every foreigner ought to use English.
While Finns tend to be hard-working employees, they simply lack in common sense and are often rude beyond belief. The only redeeming factor seems to be the handful of people who diligently maintain the traditions of Finnish good behavior, courtesy, politeness and the will to do things the right way always.
-What are the positive and negative aspects of living in Finland?
Positive: Public transport that is affordable and runs on time. Good opportunities for short random foreign work experiences (but very little hope for anything long-term). In the extremely rare occasion that a Finn befriends you, it will be for life; despite everything that the bureaucracy made me endure, there's a few friends here that will always keep me coming back.
Negative: Deeply ingrained mentality to torment foreigners until they give up on settling down and agree to leave. Byzantine bureaucracy without any sense of responsibility or deadlines whatsoever. Skyrocketing housing costs. Steep taxation rates and yet (in practice and despite what the Law says) extremely limited access to public services as a non-citizen. Marriages to Finnish women tend to end with a violent divorce within 3 years and, usually, with the foreign man losing custody of his kids. Marriages to Finnish men tend to last longer, except that the foreign woman is often the victim of racism outside the house, which eventually makes her beg her Finnish husband to relocate abroad; many do so.
-Do you have any tips for our readers about living in Finland?
Don't be fooled by studies that declared Finland as the most competitive country on Earth; it's utter bull and even the Finnish League of Entrepreneurs harshly criticized the criteria used for the scoring. Ditto for this alleged need for foreign labor: perfectly qualified expats who even speak fluent Finnish are routinely overlooked by employers; if they wanna open cheap ethnic fastfood restaurants or accept menial jobs, great, otherwise, they're essentially viewed as stealers of top jobs that "should" go to Finns and therefore unwelcome. Also, the country's peaceful appearance (people and wilderness) hides unexpected gotchas, such as your shyest neighbor usually being found pissed drunk and pissing on the sidewalk while insulting bystanders on Friday nights.
On just about expat forum, you'll find that foreigners who just moved to Finland eagerly join the Finns in bashing expats who have anything to complain about. However, expats who have lived there longer eventually all agree that Finland is simply ruthless towards foreigners and it all becomes a game of "which one of us is gonna give up and leave next?" that leaves many expats feeling that they no longer know anyone from the old days when they had moved there. The truth is that the few expats that remain usually do it to stay close to the kids they had with their Finnish ex and they become bitterly resigned to living in an unwelcoming country. Those without kids eventually come to the conclusion that it's better to cut their losses and swiftly move on to a more welcoming country.
In other words, avoid Finland for anything else than adding random short-term international work experiences to your CV.
-Do you have any favorite Web sites or blogs about Finland?
The http://www.finlandforthought.net blog and its related expat forums have it all.
Posted September 10th, 2008 by PerkelixFinland
http://www.expatinterviews.com/finland/martin-eric.html