Lupa elää - In English

Lupa elää (Permit to live) citizens` initiative is now open for signatures! Read more about the initiative in English.

Lupa elää - Permit to Live

The aim of the citizen’s initiative is the issuing of a 4-year continuous residence permit for people who have applied for asylum in Finland before 1.1.2017 and have not been issued continuous residence permits.

An unprecedented number of asylum seekers arrived in Finland during the years 2015 and 2016. Many went through asylum processes that were hurried and of poor quality. More than 5 years later, some of them are in a legal limbo and are still waiting for a residence permit, while some are waiting for the first non-appealable decision to their asylum applications.

Issuing residence permits is a simple solution to an urgent human rights problem in Finland. The situation of people who have ended up in prolonged asylum processes or become undocumented has reached the scale of a humanitarian crisis. For the sixth year in a row, at least 5000 people who have applied for asylum are living under the threat of becoming undocumented.

The initiative concerns people whose current situation is a significant social problem. Different forms of exploitation of undocumented people are extremely common according to civil society representatives and experts in migration law.

Asylum seekers have a legal right to work, but those undocumented do not. Therefore, the end of an asylum process can mean the end of a years-long employment contract. When people try to get by without a legal status, they are vulnerable to phenomena like exploitation and human trafficking.

By signing the initiative, you help people who are part of society, but who do not have the possibility to do basic things in life due to the lack of a residence permit. 

Your signature is a small concrete way to impact people’s everyday circumstances. 

Click here to sign (external site in Finnish/Swedish). You need to be a Finnish citizen in order to sign any official citizens` initiative in Finland.