Tag Archives: Suomi

Mission accomplished for my first step seeking residency in Finland, my ancestral homeland

After nearly eight months of costly and tedious work, I finally completed the first phase of a project that holds great personal and emotional importance to me.

I submitted my formal application to the Government of Finland, specifically Finnish Immigration Services, known as Maahanmuuttovirasto, for Finnish residency, based on being a descendant of a Finnish citizen by birth status—grandchild of a Finnish citizen.

For this process, I had to fly down to Los Angeles for an in-person interview at the Finnish Consulate General, in Los Angeles, located near the large Veterans Administration medical complex off of Wilshire Boulevard. I took a 6 a.m. flight from Portland to LAX, had my interview at 11:30 a.m., and then headed by cab straight back to LAX for my flight back to Portland by 4:20 p.m.

I made this video right after my interview and paying my application fee of $620 on March 12, 2025.

Click on the image to open the video or copy and paste this URL to a new browser: https://youtu.be/ap_SGq3Arow.

The immigration service, known to Finns as “Migri,” makes clear that residency is possible based on family relations, being a descendant of a Finnish citizen. Migri’s summary of this residency process notes:

You may get a residence permit if at least one of your parents or grandparents is or has been a Finnish citizen by birth.
It does not matter if your grandparent or parent has later lost his or her Finnish citizenship, for example by becoming a citizen of some other country.
You do not need to give a statement on your means of support, although other residence permit applicants usually need to do so.

In my case, my maternal grandmother is the daughter of my great grandparents, who were Finnish citizens by birth. Both of my maternal great grandparents were born in Finland. They emigrated to the United States, where they married in the State of Michigan in 1903. My job was to show Migri that I meet this legal standard based on my relatives’ nationality status and my relation to my grandmother, the daughter of two Finnish citizens, of whom I am their direct, biological family descendant.

This is even more complex because I am an adoptee, who was severed from my Finnish American and Finnish kin by the U.S. adoption system in 1965. I have since found my kin and biological families in 1989, and in 2023, I found and established a strong and growing relationship with my wonderful Finnish relatives in Finland.

I felt even more connected to my relatives during this long, costly, and maddening process. Three of my Finnish relatives sent letters that I submitted with my application, along with my extensive vital records documentation that included my family’s vital records going as far back as the 1880s, to a small village in South Ostrobothnia, Finland, where my great grandmother was born. I even got her birth record, an original copy, from the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church, to document her Finnish citizenship.

This process was nearly derailed because of state-sanctioned discrimination against Michigan born adoptees, like me. This ongoing prejudice practiced by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), which holds tens of thousands of Michigan adoptees’ vital records, forced my application to be delayed by nearly three months. MDHHS illegally forced me to get a court order to release two more copies of my original birth certificate, in violation of state law. I won, but it was time I will never get back, and it cost me money I never should have had to spend.

Regardless of the outcome, this has been worth it.

I feel more connected to my Finnish family than before. I feel grounded knowing precisely who I am and where I came from. More importantly, I feel stronger bonds to my Finnish relatives who immediately and strongly supported my efforts.

Being adopted, for countless adoptees like me, means living your life unconnected to roots and to kin. My roots feel even stronger now. I am so glad I did this. I feel blessed I got so lucky that I have people—my family—across the world who care about me and my desire to establish a formal and lasting relationship with the country of my ancestors.

I should hear back in about eight months. Toivotan onnea!

Everything is fine with Finland, my ancestral home

Rudy Owens in Helsinki, Finland, February 2024

As a Finnish-American by birth, with one quarter of my ancestry rooted in the Nordic nation of Finland, I am by birthright personally and biologically attached to this country. Today, this is cause for celebration, as suddenly all things Finnish, in the eyes of the world and social media, are wildly cool—or as the Finns say, “Siistia!”

In March 2024, it was named, for the seventh year in a row, the world’s “happiest country,” according to a United Nations report examining major areas of individual and societal wellbeing. But that is not the reason I have taken a strong and later-in-life interest in my core Finnishness and my biological family history that can be traced to Finland’s farming belt.

I am a long lost “son” of Suomi because of my origins being separated from my kin through adoption. Naturally, my Finnish “sisu” prevailed. I found my kin and my heritage, against improbable odds. This also became part my book I published in 2018 called: You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are. Not only did I find my U.S. kin, I connected in 2023 and 2024 with my wonderful and long-lost Finnish relatives in a nation that is suddenly popping up in health research, documentaries, wonky policy research, and on countless social media streams.

All told, I’ve written 15 articles and some long-form stories (one is 9,000 words!) about Finland and my ties to it since March 2023. I’ve had my writing published the Genealogical Society of Finland (a 4,000 word story is available to its members) and I’ve been interviewed on the Michigan Radio news magazine “Stateside,” to discuss my story connecting with my Finnish kin. I’ve put all of my writing and my in-depth Finnish photo essays on my page that I’ve branded: “Celebrating all things Finnish—Kaikkea suomalaista juhlitaan.” Let me know what you think. We can learn a lot from the Finnish people, especially how they care their people.

(Note: I’ll be updating this page later with more photo essays and an essay about what I learned taking saunas in Finland, including the “sauna capital of the world,” beautiful Tampere.)

Enjoy/ Nauttia!

What I learned about happiness in Finland, my ancestral homeland

Some photos from a family meal capture the warmth of connecting with family, a joy almost like summer, in Kurikka, Finland (February 2024).

Today I published a new story examining my ties to one of my ancestral home countries, Finland, and why it consistently scores at the top of the charts for social wellbeing.

I think the Finnish people must be tiring by now of the many articles that latch on to the country’s consistent ranking, six years in a row, as the world’s “happiest country.” That’s the analysis provided annually in a big and well-researched report on individual and national wellbeing generated by the United Nations.

As a Finnish-American who only last year found his biological kin/family in Finland, I have a strong interest in “cracking the code” to what has made this Nordic nation of about 5.6 million rise to such lofty heights. It is certainly not the weather. On my last fabulous trip there, in February 2024, I had a mix of rain and snow, and mostly clouds.

Mostly I feel lucky to be Suomalainen (Finnish), at least one-quarter by birth, and to have had a chance to learn more about Finland from people who call it home.

On my last trip, to Helsinki, Tampere, Seinäjoki, and Kurikka, I visited my newly found “distal” kin/family and stayed in their homes. Naturally, we shared the joy of taking saunas. That gave me great perspectives that have warmed me even more to the Finnish people and their country. Thanks for the great memories, Finland/ Kiitos upeista muistoista, Suomi!

We all have a right to know our origins

Finding myself and my kin in beautiful Finland

This month, I had the good fortune to have one of the most memorable trips I have ever had.

I visited Finland, or Suomi, in Finnish.

It is the ancestral home of my maternal great grandmother and great grandfather. I am a proud Finnish-American by birthright.

Using information shared with me by my biological family, along with the help of strangers as well as just good luck, I found my biological relatives before I Ieft for the country of some of my ancestral kin. We share a common ancestry to small villages in South Ostrobothnia, about 75 kilometers from the city of Vaasa. We are bound and connected by blood.

Over several days, I met many of my kin in different cities. I will be sharing more on that later. Those encounters reaffirmed for me, again, the basic human truth of the critical importance of kin relationships and biological family to our place in the universe. Deprived of that knowledge, we will forever feel adrift. With that knowledge, we feel a connection.

Many thousands of Michigan-born adoptees, like me, are denied this soul-enriching information by discriminatory state laws.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has done nothing to try and fix this grave injustice after nearly six years in office, though her and her staff are well aware of his legal inequality to thousands of people. There is also indifference visible by public silence to this systemic denial of basic rights by the Democratically controlled state legislature as well.

The only solution to this problem is the passage of lasting legislative reform.

I have been working on this for years, and I’ve reached out repeatedly to lawmakers, the state vital records keepers, and to Gov. Whitmer’s senior staff. They know about the issue, and they will do nothing unless they are forced to do something by residents in Michigan impacted by these laws.

Here are some suggestions I shared earlier this year for lobbying for reform to end this harm. I hope you will support these efforts, even if you are not a Michigan-born adoptee. As my Finnish relatives would say, “Kiitos!”