Finland Grants Citizenship to Record Number of Foreigners in 2016

Some 96 percent of new Finnish nationals retain their former citizenship.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — More than 9,000 people were granted Finnish citizenship in 2016, making it the largest number since the European country gained independence in 1917, the Statistics Finland agency said in a statement.

"Finnish citizenship was granted in 2016 to 9,375 foreign citizens permanently resident in Finland. The number is the highest during Finnish independence. Altogether, 1,454 more citizenships were granted than in 2015," the Friday statement said.

According to the statement, the citizenship was granted to 4,914 women with an average age of 28.4 years and to 4,461 men with an average age of 26.4 years.

The statement added that 96 percent of new Finnish nationals retained their former citizenship, bringing a total number of the Finnish nationals with dual citizenship to 104,997.

#Finnish passport gets one to 175 countries without a visa. No 3 on @IATA #henley&partners listing. #travel pic.twitter.com/T8ZZDQJiiy

— Kirsti Pohjankukka (@KPohjankukka) 1 марта 2016 г.

Finland is quite stable and wealthy European state that makes its nationality quite attractive country both for refugees from crisis-torn countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia as well as for people from more well-off countries as Russia, Sweden and the United States.

The new Finnish passport is a flipbook. @soveryfinnish pic.twitter.com/y2lk99rXRf

— Khai (@ThamKhaiMeng) 12 апреля 2017 г.