As frequent readers of this blog and anyone who has seen my Flickr profile know, I do my fair share of travelling, both for leisure and due to my job. Therefore, I do have my own personal and very subjective "ranking" of border officials, as not all my trips are within the Schengen area. The story I want to share with you happened last Saturday, when we were coming back from our honeymoon.

Since the Czech Republic is outside Schengen, we had to go through normal border procedures when we returned. As I don't have a European passport, I can't go through the fast line, but I'm used to answer a couple of questions from the guards, who after all are just doing their job. The problem this time was, as often is when I come home, that I had another overzealous guard. Even though the conversation was in Finnish (which should be enough indication about what follows), I had to answer plenty of questions about my life in Finland, the length of my stay, my employment, my ties to the country and so on (regardless of the fact that, of course, all my papers are perfectly in order and all my personal information is available to said individual through the government's databases).

The straw that broke the camel's back, as they say, was when said individual said "So, if you have so good Finnish-language skills and you've been living here that long, why don't you have a Finnish passport?".  Which is simply because I don't fulfill the requirements just yet (which is another long, sad story).  I understand that these people are doing their job, but I I usually have less problems entering Germany or even the UK, where they should be much more worried about security threats than in Finland.

I love my wife, I really like my job, and I also deeply appreciate the house we have, so it is ridiculuous that I have so many hurdles every time I'm returning to Finland, which at the moment is where home is.  If this is the way the country wants to attract a highly educated, tax-paying immigrant workforce, it is in trouble.