Finnish Prime Minister Opens Private Residence to Refugees

Finland's prime minister has said that he will allow refugees to stay at his private residence as thousands of people continue to pour into Europe from war torn areas of Africa and the Middle East.

Reuters reports that Prime Minister Juha Sipila announced the move in an interview with Finland's national broadcaster, YLE. Sipila said his home in the northern Finnish town of Kempele was underutilized and that it should be used to house desperate migrants.

The European Union is currently wrestling with how to deal with the influx of refugees, as the current system has been called inadequate and unfair. The current policy is that whatever country a refugee or asylum seeker lands in must provide care and services to those people, but this means that the European nations closest to Africa and the Middle East, like Greece and Spain must cope with the problem, while northern nations like Germany and the Netherlands don't.

As many of the EU countries closest to Africa and the Middle East, such as Greece, are poorer and struggling with a terrible economic situation, many have called the current system unfair.

Sipila said a new program to distribute 120,000 migrants throughout the EU should be voluntary and that he was opening his house to migrants in the hopes he could set an example of compassion.

Xinhua reports that Sipila has asked Finns to welcome the migrants and that he also has asked other groups such as charities and churches to do their part in easing their suffering.

Finland recently doubled its estimate for the number of asylum seekers it would host in 2015 from 15,000 to 30,000.