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Finland has not a long history of obtaining masses of immigrants. In recent decades more refugees have been accepted to the country, it's not been seen as a good thing only, because they come here unemployed and since they don't know the culture or the language, they need time to adapt. Our own citizens are often being worse taken care of than the refugees, being unemployed and depending on social welfare.
In addition to this I live in Finnish-Swedish speaking area, where in some extent already occurs problems, because of this language division. Depending on the new location for immigrants, their first new language in the country may be Swedish, and it is easier to learn than Finnish, but it's only spoken in quite narrow area.
I understand 5 languages, but none of the languages the common refugees speak as their native language. I have to admit that I find foreign nationalities a bit intimidating in larger groups, when they speak their own language, also sometimes because they look different. It is a primitive reaction.
The best way to integrate to a community like ours, is to learn our language, imo. We are only about 5 million people in the world speaking this language and when a foreigner speaks understandable Finnish, I can trust them knowing our culture well enough to think of them as "one of us".
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