New Finns (Finnish: uussuomalainen) are those people in Finland’s population who have a non-ethnic Finnish background and who reside permanently in the country. A new Finn may have various backgrounds; including immigrant, immigrant-origin, refugee and/or having come to Finland for family reasons. The term is especially used to emphasize those that have a Finnish citizenship and carry Finnish passports, to those foreigners who live permanently in Finland and intend to be naturalized in Finland at some point in the future. Finland has experienced large-scale, continuous non-European immigration only within the past couple of decades. The term uussuomalainen is beginning to come into usage to commonly refer to these new, naturalized Finns, who are beginning to change and affect the national landscape of the country.
New Finns are affecting the national psyche of Finland because they are becoming a new, different cultural force of their own who are reshaping the national consciousness as to who a Finn can and cannot be.
New Finns in general:
The term uussuomalainen also describes the descendants of immigrants better than the term "immigrant", because these people have in many cases been born and raised in Finland to parents from other countries.
Many first and second generation immigrant background new Finns are well known in the cultural circles in Finland. Some well-known new-Finn writers are Toivo Flink, Neil Hardwick, Alexis Kouros, Zinaida Lindén, Harri István Mäki, Hella Wuolijoki, Jutta Zilliacus, Jason Tiilikainen, Arvi Perttu, Ranya Paasonen, Jim Thompson, Umayya Abu-Hanna and Wilson Kirwa. New-Finn writer Sofi Oksanen has written about the plight of new-Finn women in today's Finland.
For statistics, in 2008: