On Monday, he confirmed to the daily newspaper that he was specifically referring to immigrants.
“As my answer to the open question of the voting guides suggests, I was talking about immigrants. An immigrant can become part of the welfare system and social security with a maximum of 700 euros, he said.
“The labor productivity problem naturally affects all Finns. But we have proposed improving labor productivity by, among other things, lowering taxes.
Party leaders who partially agreed with the statement were Petteri Orpo (NCP), Annika Saarikko (Center), Sari Essayah (CD) and Harry Harkimo (MN). The National Congress has been the loudest advocate of cutting social security benefits, seeing it as a way to both save public money and improve work performance.
“We don’t want to cut benefits,” Purra replied to Helsingin Sanomat. “It’s not a solution.”
The populist right-wing party is only ready to reform earnings-related unemployment insurance so that the benefit would be higher at the beginning of the unemployment period, but would decrease as the period lengthened. It has also expressed a willingness to leave immigrants out of the welfare system entirely, although that is likely to be a long-term goal as it would require constitutional changes.
The party is also ready to cut development cooperation, immigration expenses and YLE’s funding.
The pension insurance institution Kela reported in 2020 that immigrants arriving for humanitarian reasons – i.e. refugees and asylum seekers – are prone to employment difficulties and primarily live on social security benefits.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
Source: The Nordic Page