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Associated Press

Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila said on Saturday morning that he is ready to open his house for refugees, and they can move in on January 1, 2016. 
Sipila told Finnish broadcaster YLE that his family has a house in central Finland that they no longer use since moving to Helsinki.
Details of how to apply and how many people the house could accommodate were not immediately available.
Last month, Finland’s interior ministry said it expects that up to 15,000 people would apply for asylum in the country — 10,000 higher than previous estimates.
The leader of the centre Party, Sipila has been heading a centre-right government since May.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there is no legal limit to the number of asylum seekers her country can receive.
Merkel told the Funke consortium of newspapers in an interview published Saturday that “the right to political asylum has no limits on the number of asylum seekers”.
She said that “as a strong, economically healthy country we have the strength to do what is necessary” and ensure every asylum seeker gets a fair hearing.
But Merkel repeated her government’s position that those migrants who stand no realistic chance of getting permission to stay need to be returned to their home country.
Germany has seen tens of thousands of migrants arriving each month, many of them refugees fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Eritrea and elsewhere.
More than 1,000 people from the Middle East and Asia, exhausted after breaking away from police and marching for hours toward Western Europe, have arrived before dawn Saturday on the border with Austria. 
The breakthrough became possible when Austria announced that it and Germany would take the migrants on humanitarian grounds and to aid their EU neighbour.
In jubilant scenes on the border, hundreds of migrants bearing blankets over their shoulders to provide cover from heavy rains walked off from buses and into Austria, where volunteers at a roadside Red Cross shelter offered them hot tea and handshakes of welcome. 
Many collapsed in exhaustion on the floor, smiles on their faces.


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UK says it’s ending ‘golden ticket’ for refugees with asylum overhaul

Europe’s refugee crisis

‘Take my house’: Finnish prime minister makes offer to migrants as refugee crisis deepens

Refugees have been flooding into Western Europe from Africa and the Middle East. Photo: EPA

Thousands of refugees stream towards Germany in a 'wake-up call' for Europe

A joyful young refugee boy tries on a police officer's cap after arriving at a railway station in Munich yesterday.Photo: Reuters

Hundreds of refugees at an Austrian border town.Photo: EPA

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