Finland's Prime Minister takes a 17 year old refugee i to his own home

[pampango]

7. More on the response of Finns to the refugee crisis from Alternet.

As Many Governments Flail, Ordinary Europeans Are Making Extraordinary Gestures to Help Refugees

This past weekend, the prime minister of Finland, Juha Sipilä, announced that he would provide one of his own luxurious homes for immigrant families to live in for an indefinite period of time. Last week, the director of the Bank of Finland announced that he is donating a month of his annual salary—10,000 euros--to refugee relief efforts through the Finnish Red Cross.

While public gestures like these have been a welcome and unexpected relief in European countries like Finland, which have been beset by anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric in the midst of the greatest refugee crisis since World War II, the true heroes are emerging from the ranks of everyday citizens. In Finland, working class and middle-class families are clearing out extra bedrooms to make room for traumatized refugees. Volunteers are lining up by the thousands at Finnish Red Cross centers across the country to become friends of new immigrants, to help with childcare, to donate clothing, materials, labor, even medical expertise. A campaign is even underway to knit thousands of pairs of wool socks to help prepare an expected 30,000 refugees primarily from Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Eritrea for the freezing winter to come.

It is in Hungary that the ugliest facets of the European Union's chaotic approach to the greatest refugee crisis since World War II are perhaps most evident. (Hungarian president Orban is the head of the national right-wing xenophobic ruling party Fidesz.) The Hungarian parliament recently introduced emergency anti-migration laws, including three-year jail terms for people attempting to climb over razor wire fences lining the border with Serbia. Hungary has also created stark and militarized “transit zones” to imprison asylum seekers which offer little or no medical assistance food or shelter, outside of what volunteers are able to provide.

The rapid growth of the extremist right-wing in Europe has everything to do with why individual member states like Hungary and Finland are putting up such a fight, even in the face of the blatantly visible humanitarian needs of innocent victims of civil wars. Overtly far-right and/or neo-fascist political parties such as France's National Front, Austria’s Freedom Party, Italy’s Northern League, Greece's Golden Dawn, Dutch PVV, the Belgian Flemish Interest Party and the Finns Party have coalesced

http://www.alternet.org/world/many-governments-flail-ordinary-europeans-are-making-extraordinary-gestures-help-refugees

Nothing to do with the refugee crisis but the director of the Bank of Finland makes just €120,000 ($130,000) a year. No wonder income equality is so much better in Scandinavia.

It is great to see "working class and middle-class families" stepping up while many governments, influenced by "overtly far-right and/or neo-fascist political parties" stand by and do little.