An EU citizen with hearing loss was treated rudely

My encounter with Migri happened in 2018. Perhaps things have improved since, but even then I believe my story should be shared as an example of things gone wrong, that could be easily avoided with better training and a bit of good will.

I am a citizen of another EU country and married to a Finn, who resides in Finland. I needed Migri to register my right of residence, which should not have been a huge ordeal. For some reason there is no Migri office in Keski-Suomi, so I set up an appointment to prove my identity in Kuopio. My husband accompanied me, mostly to serve as a backup in case of communication difficulty. I am profoundly deaf. At the time I was still using my hearing aids, which were getting old and no longer fit my hearing loss. The sound I had access to only made lip-reading easier. I had pretty much zero speech comprehension without access to visual cues. That doesn’t mean I was generally doing badly in daily life, often people weren’t aware that I had any hearing loss due to it being far from obvious in face to face conversations.

When my appointment time came I was led to a tiny, dimly lit box. The official sat behind glass that was covered by iron bars too. I don’t really know why there was a need for the bars, but all that together was distorting the sound even further for me and obscuring the view. I recall there being a poster in the upper part of the glass tile that said something along the lines of “In this office, women take care of their own matters”. In retrospect the message may seem a bit sarcastic in there?

The official was asking me some questions, I was struggling to understand under those circumstances. At some point I completely missed what she said and asked for a repetition, saying I could not understand her. She then said something even less clearly while peeking under her desk, so I could not see her face. I explained that I am deaf and I really can’t understand her when she is not keeping face contact with me. She replied something while still avoiding looking at me and then started talking in Finnish to my husband, who sat behind me.

For the remainder of the appointment the lady spoke exclusively to my husband and not a word to me anymore. According to what my husband confessed to me later, she was quite rude when talking to him and was nitpicking at possible flaws in the applications.

We were told that the application gets put on hold until we provide more documents proving sufficient income. It was hinted that the official thought that a deaf person can’t sustain herself in Finland. I admit that at the time my income wasn’t great, most of it came from my husband’s part time job as I was unemployed and looking for jobs at the time in IT sector. In the field of software development my hearing shouldn’t play a huge role. Regardless, we had all the bills paid and were never suffering hunger and there were no guidelines for what is considered enough of an income. Just up to a random official’s judgement.

We submitted all the paperwork, but the application was stuck. Months were passing with no change in progress. Only ten months later after I sent an administrative complaints the application suddenly got some traction. Unfortunately I had to re-submit a lot of papers, because they were considered no longer up to date by Migri then. The time waiting was also time where I had no Kela coverage, so had limited access to healthcare, because my home country only provides the insurance when you are actively paying taxes there, meaning no EHIC in my case. Overall the experience has negatively impacted my physical and mental health.

I hope my voice helps the cause, showing that Migri needs to invest in trainings and empathy when dealing with applicants, not just treat them with one size fits most attitude and get unprofessional when that doesn't work out.

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