Issuing residence permits to students has become an an unbearable pain in the lives of student in the Helsinki region of Finland. Students have to wait for almost a minimum of 6 months to get their permit!

But from the Finnish immigration site, you can see that the permit is supposed to be ready in about a month. For your perusal: http://www.migri.fi/netcomm/content.asp?article=2588

During the 6 months or so (if not even more than) of waiting, you will be like a refugee. You cant travel any where out of Finland. They will normally tell you to request for speed up if you want to travel, they also ask you to present your travel documents. If you do, you would not even get it because, they don't accept speed up requests for holiday trips. Then what kind of trip do they accept speed up request for? I am absolutely pissed off by the way they handle student permit issues.