When I first was moving to Finland I had a lot of adventures trying to navigate the maze of the process, though for the most part, the services and entities involved were all doing their earnest and often dour solemn Finnish best to help me out.
The post-script 2 years ago when I had to renew my US passport, which had expired, and consequently to renew my Finnish residence permit, was much more exciting. Because, you see, when I moved to Finland, there were about three times as many police stations in Finland, the places which dispense all permits, licenses, identity cards, residence permits, etc. A couple of years ago, thanks to years of determined neoliberal cutbacks, they moved the desk that handles non-citizen/immigration affairs - of ALL KINDS - away from Turku, the center of the country's third biggest urban area, with a county size of 300+ thousand. (When I moved here in 2004, there were 4 workers of that department there all day every day. Cutbacks had already reduced it first to two, then to one, before this move.) That entire operation was removed to our not-so-picturesque suburb of Raisio (<25k people) about 20 minutes away by bus (which, remember, is a common mode of transport for immigrants, including the sizable foreign student population at Turku's 3 universities and other institutes of higher education, all of whom have need of its services, and many of whom don't speak Finnish and aren't familiar with Finnish public transport yet!).
Well, I decided recently to apply for Finnish citizenship. I don't need it to continue living here and receiving all the benefits I have been receiving, so it hasn't been a priority. However, it will do two things for me:
The next parliamentary election is next year, and I hope to be able to vote for the least-white female members of the Green party I can find (that's what I always do in the municipal elections). I would be able to vote in presidential elections as well, but our current center-right crusty old white man is extremely popular and he won a decisive margin earlier this year before they even finished processing the early voting ballots. So the next one of those won't be for a while. Also the president isn't as practically important as the parliament in Finland, anyway.
SO anyway, I also want an id card (I don't have a driver's license/can't drive stick) so I won't have to carry my passport everywhere with me, and I just filled out the application, but because I'm a non-citizen, apparently, my citizenship has to be checked against my passport in person by the police. You can turn up at a station that has the service and queue all day and they see queue customers between the ones who have reserved an appointment, which makes it a very time-consuming method. If you get there early in the day you're likely to be seen but it takes hours. Reserving a time requires you go further in the future though. So the website offers me a map of the entire southwest region of Finland and all the police stations in the area with this service and their appointment books. Rather than the Turku police station, which does do this stuff, but has no time slots to book, it suggests the nearest one with openings - the tiny 16k person town of Pargas, ~30 minutes by car, where my mother-in-law lives. And it suggests a Friday in two and a half weeks. Now, by bus, this would be a two-bus trip which would end up being like 2ish hours round trip, in spite of costing very little now that our public transport and Pargas's are integrated, thankfully.
"That sounds like a civil service that isn't really working!" observed my wife. Of course, people with Finnish citizenship wouldn't have to do this, I pointed out.
The problem is that if I applied for citizenship first I'd be looking at up to 7 months' processing time, during which my passport would be gone and I'd just have a certified letter to the effect, which would make identifying myself if I have to sign for a delivery or get carded purchasing alcohol problematic (I've certainly gone 7 months without purchasing alcohol before, but 7 months without signing for a package is impossible, particularly right now as our postal service is vanishing down the tubes - of which more later). I'd probably get through this by explaining, but none of my other IDs are technically legal proof of identity, even the residence permit one with a picture (though they've taken it at the post office before).
So I made the appointment for early April and hopefully I can manage to be visiting my mother-in-law for the day and get both a free ride to the door & maybe food out of it in exchange for helping out with something.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waxjism has the day off because she works that Saturday (FUN!), so this is a plausible family togetherness activity, assuming her mother is not busy (her mother's social life is nearly as busy as the Turku police station's but not quite).
The post-script 2 years ago when I had to renew my US passport, which had expired, and consequently to renew my Finnish residence permit, was much more exciting. Because, you see, when I moved to Finland, there were about three times as many police stations in Finland, the places which dispense all permits, licenses, identity cards, residence permits, etc. A couple of years ago, thanks to years of determined neoliberal cutbacks, they moved the desk that handles non-citizen/immigration affairs - of ALL KINDS - away from Turku, the center of the country's third biggest urban area, with a county size of 300+ thousand. (When I moved here in 2004, there were 4 workers of that department there all day every day. Cutbacks had already reduced it first to two, then to one, before this move.) That entire operation was removed to our not-so-picturesque suburb of Raisio (<25k people) about 20 minutes away by bus (which, remember, is a common mode of transport for immigrants, including the sizable foreign student population at Turku's 3 universities and other institutes of higher education, all of whom have need of its services, and many of whom don't speak Finnish and aren't familiar with Finnish public transport yet!).
Well, I decided recently to apply for Finnish citizenship. I don't need it to continue living here and receiving all the benefits I have been receiving, so it hasn't been a priority. However, it will do two things for me:
- A Finnish passport will be much quicker and easier for travel between European countries, because the lines are always way shorter in the airport
- I will be able to vote in national elections (right now I can only vote in the municipal ones)
The next parliamentary election is next year, and I hope to be able to vote for the least-white female members of the Green party I can find (that's what I always do in the municipal elections). I would be able to vote in presidential elections as well, but our current center-right crusty old white man is extremely popular and he won a decisive margin earlier this year before they even finished processing the early voting ballots. So the next one of those won't be for a while. Also the president isn't as practically important as the parliament in Finland, anyway.
SO anyway, I also want an id card (I don't have a driver's license/can't drive stick) so I won't have to carry my passport everywhere with me, and I just filled out the application, but because I'm a non-citizen, apparently, my citizenship has to be checked against my passport in person by the police. You can turn up at a station that has the service and queue all day and they see queue customers between the ones who have reserved an appointment, which makes it a very time-consuming method. If you get there early in the day you're likely to be seen but it takes hours. Reserving a time requires you go further in the future though. So the website offers me a map of the entire southwest region of Finland and all the police stations in the area with this service and their appointment books. Rather than the Turku police station, which does do this stuff, but has no time slots to book, it suggests the nearest one with openings - the tiny 16k person town of Pargas, ~30 minutes by car, where my mother-in-law lives. And it suggests a Friday in two and a half weeks. Now, by bus, this would be a two-bus trip which would end up being like 2ish hours round trip, in spite of costing very little now that our public transport and Pargas's are integrated, thankfully.
"That sounds like a civil service that isn't really working!" observed my wife. Of course, people with Finnish citizenship wouldn't have to do this, I pointed out.
The problem is that if I applied for citizenship first I'd be looking at up to 7 months' processing time, during which my passport would be gone and I'd just have a certified letter to the effect, which would make identifying myself if I have to sign for a delivery or get carded purchasing alcohol problematic (I've certainly gone 7 months without purchasing alcohol before, but 7 months without signing for a package is impossible, particularly right now as our postal service is vanishing down the tubes - of which more later). I'd probably get through this by explaining, but none of my other IDs are technically legal proof of identity, even the residence permit one with a picture (though they've taken it at the post office before).
So I made the appointment for early April and hopefully I can manage to be visiting my mother-in-law for the day and get both a free ride to the door & maybe food out of it in exchange for helping out with something.
waxjism has the day off because she works that Saturday (FUN!), so this is a plausible family togetherness activity, assuming her mother is not busy (her mother's social life is nearly as busy as the Turku police station's but not quite).
