I'm from Finland. You mentioned that a travel agent told your son that the fare is about $1800 round trip to fly to Finland. This sounds really expensive to me! Which airline would that be and which route? I was last year in the US and used Icelandair to fly from Helsinki to New York and back. I paid about $500-600 for the flights! It included stops in Stockholm and Reykjavik but as it was so much cheaper than other alternatives, I didn't mind and all in all the total travelling time wasn't longer than for those using another route. Icelandair flies also to many other destinations in the US, not only to New York.

Tuija in Nokia, Finland