In recent days, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen and Interior Minister Anne Holmlund have publicly questioned why Shkupolli, a Kosovo Albanian, was allowed to remain in Finland despite several criminal convictions and a rejected citizenship application.

If politicians intend to lower the threshold for deportation to a level that might have prevented the Sello shopping mall shootings, major changes would have to be made to current legislation.

“Our judicial and administrative court procedures would have to be changed significantly,” National Police Commissioner Mikko Paatero told YLE. “Hundreds of people who would have to be deported.”

Deportations Bog Down in Red Tape

Heikki Taskinen, Director of the Immigration unit at the Finnish Immigration Service, agrees.

“We would be talking about hundreds or even thousands of cases annually,” he estimates.

At present, less than 100 deportation rulings are made each year, most of them involving individuals guilty of serious crimes, he says. Most of these cases become bogged down in the administrative court appeal process, which can drag on for years.

Police seek deportation orders based on comprehensive evaluations of each case. The individual’s ties to Finland play a major role in this decision. As Shkupolli had lived in the country for 18 years, legislative changes that would have allowed him to be deported would be so broad that virtually any foreigner convicted of any crime would have to be deported.

In 2008, about 2,500 foreign citizens resident in Finland were convicted of crimes at the district court level -- proportionally about the same as Finnish citizens.

Taskinen points out that since the deportation process is so arduous, carrying out thousands of cases a year would represent an immense amount of work for officials.

“Deportation is a very heavy-handed procedure. It does not simply mean that the person has to leave Finland; it also means they are barred from entering the entire Schengen area,” which includes 25 European countries. This has a drastic impact on the individual and his or her potential family members, he notes.

Holmlund: Tougher Terms For Residence