A record number of people received Finnish citizenship last year, as the immigration authority cleared a backlog of applications submitted in previous years.A record 14,703 people were granted Finnish passports in 2025. Image: Elliot SimonsYle News14:31Fewer people immigrated to Finland last year, but labour-related immigration started to rise again in early 2026.The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) attributed last year's decline to the country's weak economic situation and the government's tightening of immigration legislation.The number of work-based permits fell by nearly a quarter from the previous year, with the sharpest drops in the social and health sector (-81 percent) and the building trade (-24 percent).In the first months of this year, though, the number of applications for work-based residence permits were 11 percent higher than during the first quarter of 2025."The increase in the number of applications during the first half of the year is explained by the ongoing industrial projects in Finland, for which international workers have been recruited. The impact of industrial projects is particularly visible in employee residence permit applications," Migri's information services director, Johannes Hirvelä, said in a report issued on Friday.Most residence permits based on family tiesIn 2025, family ties were the most common grounds for a positive residence permit. While the number of first work-based and student permits granted slumped, family ties were the only ground that saw an increase (+10 percent)."The clear majority of family members apply for a residence permit in Finland on the basis of a spouse or guardian residing on a work-based residence permit or student residence permit. Asian countries are prominent in family-based residence permits, and last year the largest applicant nationalities were the Philippines, Sri Lanka and India," Hirvelä explained.Few asylum seekersThe number of asylum seekers arriving in Finland continued to decline to just over 2,500. The largest numbers were filed by citizens of Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia."The number of asylum applications submitted in the EU has decreased since 2024. The decrease in the number of applications has been influenced by, among other things, changes in the countries' push factors and the difficulty of entering the EU," Hirvelä noted.Record number of new citizensLast year, a record 14,703 people were granted Finnish citizenship, up from 13,973 the year before. The largest groups of new citizens were from Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia.Migri says that the higher number of citizenship decisions is due to its clearing a backlog of citizenship applications submitted in previous years.Since 2024, the government has toughened requirements for obtaining citizenship. Just before the first amendments to the Citizenship Act took effect, the number of applications spiked to a record high in 2023–24.Last year, they dropped back down to the level of previous years, falling by more than a third from 2024.According to the official statistics bureau, just under 10 percent of Finland's 5.65 million inhabitants were born abroad.