Anti-immigration Finns Party should consider leaving government: deputy chair

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's anti-immigration Finns Party should vote on whether to remain in the ruling coalition, one of its deputy leaders said on Monday as tensions grew over handling of an influx of asylum seekers. Sebastian Tynkkynen, one of three vice chairmen, said the three-party coalition government was ignoring its commitment to keeping the number of asylum seekers at 2014 levels - 3,600. Following a big spike in arrivals last month, the Helsinki government has raised its estimate for the number of asylum seekers expected to reach the Nordic country this year to about 50,000. "If the coalition can't close the Swedish border and thereby stop 50,000 people from arriving in our country, the Finns Party cannot stand back and allow the immigration policy to be wrecked," Tynkkynen said in a statement. But the Finns Party chairman, Foreign Minister Timo Soini, said Tynkkynen's call for a meeting of party officials was unnecessary. "Quitting the government at this point would be irresponsible and create a political crisis in Finland," Soini told national broadcaster YLE. Tynkkynen later on Monday said that party leadership had tried to prevent him from making the proposal, and that Soini's key aide had asked him to consider resigning from the party. The Finns party, formerly known as True Finns, joined the coalition government in May for the first time in its history, compromising on its trademark policies - EU bailouts and immigration. More than 500,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in European Union countries from the Middle East, Africa and Asia this year - the continent's biggest migration wave since the end of World War Two. (Reporting by Anna Ercanbrack and Jussi Rosendahl; Editing by Terje Solsvik, Mark Heinrich and Richard Balmforth)