How I got my Finnish citizenship: journey to getting a Finnish passport
Hi, in today’s blog post, I'm sharing about a topic that means a lot to me: How I got my Finnish citizenship. I will write about the whole journey, from the date I arrived in Finland for the first time, until the date I held the Finnish passport in my hand.
Disclaimer: I am not an immigration expert, everything in this post is written based on my own experience.
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Alright, back to the Finnish citizenship. According to the official website from Migri, one needs to fulfill the below requirements to be able to apply for Finnish citizenship. Let’s go through the list of requirements together.
Requirements for becoming a Finnish citizen
You are at least 18 years old and your identity has been reliably established
I arrived in Finland on 03/02/2017. I was 19 years old at the time, and 25 when I received the Finnish citizenship. I am a Vietnamese citizen and have a valid Vietnamese passport. Fortunately, Vietnam allows dual citizenship, and Finland as well!
You know Finnish or Swedish on a satisfactory level
From what I have seen, the easiest and most common way to prove this is to take the YKI test. One needs to pass at least 2 out of the 4 skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) and the combination has to be correct (at least one active and one passive skill). According to Migri, the accepted combination is seen in the image below:
I think this is the most difficult requirement for the citizenship application because learning a language takes a lot of time and practice. I already wrote about my Finnish language learning journey and how I passed the YKI test at the first try, the post also includes all the resources I used to study Finnish.
You live in Finland and you have lived here long enough
The requirement is that you have to live in Finland for 5 years without interruption.
Migri explains the rules to calculate period of residence on their site. My understanding is that in order to make your residence uninterrupted, your traveling outside of Finland should follow these rules:
- Short trips like weekend trips or a few days' trips are fine, there’s no limit.
- One-month-long trips are fine and also unlimited.
- 1-2 month absences: maximum 6 times.
- 2-6 month absences: maximum 2 times.
Knowing this information, I tried to keep my abroad travels within the limit: I did an exchange in Japan for 3 months, went home to Vietnam every year before Covid for about 1-2 months each time (total 4 times), and had a lot of short Europe trips over the years.
In the application, you are asked to list all abroad travelings over the years (destinations and dates). I only listed the big ones, which were longer than 10 days.
About calculating the residence period: I arrived in Finland with a visa type B, which is a student visa. It means that every 2 years on a visa type B equals 1 year that could be calculated towards this 5-year requirement.
- I had a student visa from 2017 until I graduated in 2020, so 4-year student visa equals 2 years for citizenship application.
- Then I was on my work visa from 12/2020 until I applied for citizenship in 01/2023, so 2 more years accumulated.
By the time I applied, I had about 4 years of continuous residence in total. And it still works. Because according to this Migri FAQ, you could already apply after 4 years if you passed the language test. Another explanation that I heard often is that the processing time for a citizenship application is usually quite long (6-28 months), so by the time your application gets processed, it’ll already be 5 years or more.
You are not guilty of any crime or no restraining order has been issued against you
I guess this is self-explanatory, as a clean record is preferred everywhere. The Migri website says petty fines are not a deal-breaker. So I believe if someone forgot to pay for a metro ticket and had to pay a fine, it’s not gonna stop them from getting the citizenship.
You have met your payment obligations
I think this is about having good credit, that you pay your debt, your taxes and any fines. Fun fact: I had my final back taxes decision of this year on 21/06/2023 and paid it immediately that day. The next day 22/06/2023 my application got to the processing phase and I had my decision within a few hours on the same day. I don’t know if the two have anything to do with each other, but it’s still an interesting coincidence.
You have informed us about your means of support
You can find official info about means of support here. In my case, I listed in my application all the paid jobs that I did in Finland:
- Cleaning jobs in N-clean and Sol in Turku. I worked on the ships for a few months over the summer when I was a student. I don’t have the contracts anymore, so I provided the names of the companies I worked for, the work period, and some contact info of my supervisors at that time.
- Student Assistant job in Turku UAS. I still have a copy of the contract so I submitted it.
- Software Developer job in my previous workplace. I submitted the contract and the last 3 pay slips from the company.
- Software Engineer job in my current workplace. I submitted my contract and pay slips from the latest 3 months.
Citizenship application process
Fill in the application in EnterFinland and pay for it
See my general checklist for an EnterFinland citizenship application below:
This might be irrelevant, but I also submitted a scanned version of my Bachelor's Degree, as I graduated from a Finnish University of Applied Sciences. I don't think it's required anywhere, but I still had it included in my application.
The citizenship application costs 460 euros when applying online (at least in January 2023). See the fees details from Migri here.
Book an appointment to visit the service point
You can book an appointment from Migri's reservation website. Remember to bring all the original documents that you submitted in your EnterFinland application. The non-negotiable ones are your passport, residence permit, and the YKI certificate. On the day of the appointment, try to come 5-10 minutes early and listen attentively in the waiting room, because they will call out your name and the room number you should go to, at the exact time of your appointment.
This appointment is said to be a mini language evaluation, as you are expected to communicate in the language that you took the exam in (Finnish or Swedish). Some of my friends say that in case you took the Swedish exam and your interviewer doesn't speak any Swedish, you may get away with speaking in English (?), but I am not sure how true this is.
Because I took the Finnish language test, I spoke in Finnish at the appointment with the Migri officer. He didn’t ask me so much, just a few basic questions about my address, my work, if I own my own company or if I work as an employee…The longest part of the conversation was when I tried to explain to him why there were 2 stamps from the Berlin Wall (?) in my passport 😩. With both verbal and body language efforts I told him about how I was 19 and thought that a 2-euro stamp in my passport would be so cool because it was proof that I visited Berlin (tip: DON’T have any unofficial stamps in your passport!!). Anyway, the whole meeting was about 20 minutes long and not as difficult as I imagined.
Wait for the decision
So after all that hard work with the application and the verification appointment, all I had to do was...waiting. There's a way to track your application with the Kamu chatbot from Migri. I actually tried to check my application status over time, see below an authentic record of my application's queue number:
I submitted my EnterFinland application on 08/01/2023. I had my in-person appointment with the Migri officer on 16/01/2023. My application got to the processing phase on 22/06/2023 in the morning around 9 a.m. After 2 hours, I logged in to EnterFinland to find out that a decision was ready and that I became a Finnish citizen! No further documentation was required in my case, yay :D They didn’t send a separate email about the ready decision, so logging in EnterFinland was the only way to find out. The total waiting time for my case was 5 months and 4 days. It’s a lot better than the expected processing time on Migri website (6-28 months), and for that I am thankful!
Order passport and ID
After getting the citizenship decision, everything is automatically updated on the system, so you could immediately order your Finnish passport and ID from Poliisi. There was a deal when I ordered mine, that if you order both passport and ID at the same time you’ll pay 100€ for both and save like 8 euros. Check out the fee details here.
If you don’t have a photo that has been taken in the last 6 months, then you’ll have to get a passport photo first. I recommend getting the photo’s electronic code option for more convenience.
You also need to book an appointment to the police station so they could take your fingerprints. I received my ID and passport exactly 1 week after the appointment at the police station.
Final words
It was a long road to get the Finnish passport, but the benefits of a Finnish passport are clear to me. Finnish passport ranks third in the world in 2023, meaning traveling around is a lot easier. Finland has been the happiest country in the world for the last 6 years. For me, it translates to a safe and clean environment, easy access to nature, free education, good social safety nets, accessible health care, and a highly educated population. Holding a European passport also opens many doors, because in case I ever want to move to another EU country, the amount of paperwork would (hopefully) be significantly less overwhelming. If you have lived in Finland for more than 3 years, I'd highly recommend taking the time to learn the language and apply for Finnish citizenship.
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