Finland’s government has put forward changes to the country’s residence permit rules, aiming to make it harder for employers who exploit foreign workers to keep bringing people into the country. The bill was submitted to Parliament on November 5, and if it passes, the new rules are due to come into force in March 2027.
At the heart of the proposal is a simple idea. A foreign worker’s right to live and work in Finland should not depend on staying quiet about abuse. Under the changes, the Finnish Immigration Service, known as Migri, would find it easier to refuse a residence permit when the employer behind the application is suspected of exploitation. The restriction would apply for a set period, closing a route unscrupulous employers have used repeatedly.
The bill also closes off a practice that traps workers before they start. If an employer charged a worker a fee to enter into an employment relationship, the permit would be refused. A worker who paid heavily for a job arrives in debt, and debt makes it far harder to walk away when wages go unpaid or conditions are nothing like those promised. By making the fee itself grounds for refusal, Finland aims to remove the incentive at its source.
The proposal also clarifies when residence permits can be granted to victims of exploitation. That matters because fear of losing legal status is often what keeps exploited workers silent. A person whose permit is tied to a single employer will think twice before reporting unpaid wages, excessive hours or unsafe conditions. Clearer rules should give those workers a way out without losing everything.
Employment Minister Matias Marttinen has been blunt about where the responsibility lies. Employers and companies using supplied labour must take greater responsibility for the people working for them, he said, urging employers to recognise the risks of using recruitment agencies. There is no place for labour exploitation in Finland, he has said, and employers who abuse workers will face strong action. Penalties for work-related exploitation have already been tightened, and Marttinen said stronger sanctions will now follow for employers who break the rules.
The bill is the latest step in a wider overhaul of Finland’s immigration and labour rules that has gathered pace through 2026. Last month, amendment 912/2026 to the Aliens Act was signed by President Alexander Stubb on October 16 and took effect on October 27, introducing Finland’s first statutory ceiling on work-based residence permit decisions, a three-month limit once an application is complete, and obliging employers to report a new non-EU hire within seven days. It also added three months’ protection for workers suspected of serious exploitation, taking the maximum grace period after losing a job to nine months. Before reaching Parliament, the bill went through a public consultation from July 2 to August 27, 2026, and employers’ representatives have broadly backed the crackdown while asking how Migri will judge the risk of abuse in individual cases.
The proposal also includes technical changes to the Seasonal Workers Act after a European Commission infringement procedure. Seasonal work has been one of the most sensitive areas. In May 2026, Migri announced that every application from wild berry pickers would face extra-rigorous checks from the 2026 season onwards, after cases in which pickers recruited mainly from Asia were housed in poor conditions and paid far below the earnings they had been promised. The bill forms part of Finland’s broader action plan against labour exploitation, under which the status of berry pickers has been improved, multilingual information about workers’ rights has been expanded, and ethical recruitment practices have been developed with partner countries. The start of 2026 also brought a six-year residence requirement for permanent residence, higher income thresholds and stepped-up workplace inspections.
The reason Finland is moving in this direction is not hard to see. Like much of Europe, the country faces an ageing population and labour shortages in health care, construction, agriculture and technology, and foreign workers have become essential to keeping those sectors running. That dependence creates a risk. When a worker’s legal right to remain in the country is tied to a single employer, the balance of power tilts sharply in the employer’s favour, and the workers most in need of protection are the ones least able to demand it. Finland’s answer is to use the residence permit system itself as a lever, rewarding employers who follow the rules and shutting the door on those who do not.
What happens next now rests with Parliament, which will examine the bill in committee before a vote, with the changes due to take effect in March 2027. For employers, the practical effect will be closer attention to how workers are recruited and what is charged along the way. For foreign workers, including the many who look to Finland from countries such as Pakistan, the changes promise a system in which a permit is harder to obtain through an exploitative employer but easier to keep when exploitation is found. Whether that promise holds will depend on enforcement and on workers knowing their rights well enough to speak up.
