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Another journalistic gem a lá Pravda.
Keep doing your thing...By Outi Kaartamo
“A foreign resident’s ID card is shit-brown in colour. A Finnish national’s card is sky-blue”, an Iraqi-born man living in Finland wrote in his Facebook update on Monday.
The new official identity cards issued by Finnish authorities that came into force at the beginning of June recognise colour.
An adult Finnish citizen’s ID card is now blue instead of white. This is fitting, for at least in the winter most of the Finns are more blue than white in skin tone.
The colour of an underage Finn’s ID card is now purple. How fitting and how modern: the colour of repentance and confessing of sins does not take notice of one’s gender.
And yes. The identification card of a foreigner living in Finland is now brown in hue.
According to the National Police Board, there was a need for the colour coding system.
The purpose behind the move was to make checking people’s IDs easier.
If one cannot tell at first glance that a five-year-old really is a child, then the colour of his or her ID card resolves this mystery even from a short distance.
And of course it is handy that a foreign national carries a special indicator in his wallet to attest to his origin, as being a foreigner does not always show on one’s face.
The foreign national “Trevor Traveller” from the adjacent model ID card, however, is set for a disappointment.
Unlike in the case of the Finnish nationals, whose ID card allows them to use it as a valid travel document when travelling in the European Union, the Nordic Countries, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and The Vatican, for poor Trevor the brown ID card is only good when touring domestically.
That is to say, umm... when travelling abroad… errr… inside his present country of residence.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.6.2011
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