On Thursday, the Finnish Immigration Service began using automated decision-making to process student permits.
As of October 19, 2023, the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) has introduced automatic decision-making for student residence permits. The immigration service will automatically decide on applications that meet all the conditions for obtaining a permit. Automated decision-making will not be used for negative decisions and decisions requiring individual consideration.
Automated decision-making is one of the measures taken to make the processing of residence permits “more efficient and uniform,” Migri notes in a statement.
For residence permits for workers and students, the Finnish Immigration Service aims for an average processing time of “no more than one month.”
“Automated processing will standardize the processing of applications, which promotes safe and seamless immigration. Automation also frees up specialists’ time to work on cases that need individual consideration or further clarification, Elina Immonen, the deputy director-general at the Finnish Immigration Service, says in the statement.
The Finnish Immigration Service is initially testing automated decisions on residence permit applications from university students and all exchange students. The automation will be extended to other customer groups based on the results.
Automated decisions are positive residence permit decisions issued by the Immigration Service’s automation system.
The system verifies compliance with the approval requirements, according to MIGRI, using the same criteria as a clerk would. Furthermore, the client must prove his identity at a Finnish mission or a Finnish Migration Board office.
Suppose a student or exchange student has submitted the application via the Enter Finland online service. In that case, if the processing fee has been paid, the application contains all the necessary information, and all the conditions for issuing the permit are met, the Finnish Immigration Service can issue an automatic decision. If the requirements are unmet or the application needs to be clarified, the application will always be passed on to an official who will decide on it.
This limited pilot project makes it possible to introduce automated decision-making in a controlled way and to make sure that it is working the way Migri wants it to.
