Startup Refugees: Migration Brain Gain Could Be Economic Winner for Finland

Even though fellow Finns regard mass migration as a mixed blessing, entrepreneurs Riku Rantala and Tunna Milonoff believe that refugees will ultimately help Finland's economy, not strain it.

The Finnish organization Startup Refugees, which was founded by Riku Rantala and Tunna Milonoff, seeks to provide refugees with the skills required to start their own businesses.

At present, Finland's job market is in the doldrums, with unemployment reaching a 13-year high last year and the youth unemployment rate hovering around 22 percent. Unsurprisingly, foreign-born inhabitants of Finland are the ones most heavily affected by joblessness, with unemployment peaking among immigrants from Somalia and Iraq, over half of which are out of work. Fittingly, Startup Refugees's motto is "Welcome. We don't have jobs. Let's create them together."

Judging by the present state of affairs, Finland is set to remain one of the laggards in the euro area as far as economic performance is concerned, the current outlook for the Finnish job market none too positive. Finland needs to accelerate its economic growth to over two per cent per annum, according to an estimate by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä of the Center Party.

"The current growth rate of 0.5 percent is not enough to reduce unemployment, but a growth rate of more than two per cent is needed," Sipilä said in a recent interview with Finland's national broadcaster.

Last year, over 32,000 new refugees entered the country, which marked an almost 10-fold increase in comparison with the year before. Due to staff shortages and red tape, thousands of asylum-seekers have ended up sitting in reception centers with nothing to do for as long as a year, even though Finnish law permits them to start working three months after applying for asylum.

Asylum centers only stand for the refugee's basic needs, providing them with food and shelter, whereas Startup Refugees regards immigration as brain gain and hopes to make the most of on the imported human capital, while simultaneously giving a long-welcome boost to Finland's stagnant economy, as well as help the new arrivals settle in the country.

In order to ease the pressure on Finland's already clogged circle of bureaucracy, a group of Finnish university students began to visit reception centers, surveying the refugees' skills and their hope for the future. If someone had a skill that can be of immediate use within the reception center itself, the program helped connect them with a local mentor and get to work.

Startup Refugees is reported to have signed up a total of 350 different companies, organizations and individuals, including Finnish gaming giant Supercell, Microsoft, the Finnish Ministry of the Interior, and the Finnish Immigration Service, as well as several communications and PR agencies, universities and research institutes.