The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment will be accepting applications for EUR 4 million for guidance and counselling services for immigrants. The objective of this grant is to enhance the integration and employment of immigrants by developing guidance and counselling services and the related multi-sectoral cooperation. The application period will be open from 18 May to 18 June 2020.

The European Investment Fund invests EUR 10 million in an experiment aimed to find jobs for 2,500 immigrants in Finland within three years, while helping employers find the skilled labour they need.

Those asylum seekers who arrived last autumn and have since then been granted residence permits are now integrating into Finnish society. More than one half of those who have received a residence permit have moved from the reception centres to municipalities. Many have registered as clients at Employment and Economic Development Offices and have a completed integration plan.

The Iraqis living in Finland are a group with many voices when it comes to politics, ethnicity and religion, with multiple and mutually challenging interpretations of their home country, culture and reasons behind the conflicts. These divisions also impact on the lives of Iraqi people living in Finland as persons belonging to different groups meet in their daily lives, for example, as neighbours.

In the second supplementary budget for 2016 the unemployment benefit appropriations are targeted to education and training for immigrants to support their integration and managing structural changes in the ICT sector. The supplementary appropriation totals EUR 13.1 million. The Government decided on the allocation of funds to the Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment on 18 August 2016.