A thousand students are waiting for residence permits

The Finnish immigration service (Migri) admits there are backlogs in the processing of student residence permits for this autumn term. Those delays are affecting more than one thousand people.

"We are currently experiencing backlogs in the processing of students’ residence permit applications. In May–August, the Finnish Immigration Service received 4,376 residence permit applications from students, and 1,022 of these applications are still waiting to be processed", explains in its customer bulletin.

Migri blames this situation on the increasing number of candidates and the lack of personnel. "The reason for the backlogs is that the number of incoming applications has increased somewhat from last year (approximately 7%). Another reason is that the number of employees processing these applications has been insufficient", the immigration authority says.

In May–June, Migri decided on a total of 3,462 applications.

"We apologise for the situation. We are doing our best to process the remaining applications as efficiently as possible. At the moment, our employees are working overtime to clear the backlog", the immigration authority said.

Checklist for applicants waiting for a decision

Migri has made also public three recommendations to those who are still waiting for a student residence permit:

• If we ask for additional information from you, please send the requested documents as soon as possible. This facilitates the processing of your application.
• We publish a weekly update on the processing queue for students.
• You do not need to contact us and ask to have your application processed as urgent. We process all residence permit applications from students as urgent.