Getting a Swiss passport is not easy, but those who overcome this path receive rights that are practically unmatched in any other country in the world.
The new Swiss Citizenship Law greatly resembles Swiss watches: it is complex, precise, intricate, and the work on it in administrative corridors lasted a record amount of time. And now, after endless debates and discussions, Swiss deputies have finally managed to adopt such a text of the law (Bürgerrechtsgesetz) that, for the most part, satisfies the demands of all major political forces and parties in the country. And this is far from a trivial result, considering that the draft law went back and forth between the large and small chambers of parliament five times before the final, cleared of the last disagreements, version of this crucial legislative act for Switzerland saw the light of day.
The central aspect in this whole story is not even the usual Swiss desire to achieve a compromise solution that would suit practically everyone, but rather the desire to adopt such a version of the document so that after reading it, no one in the country would have the desire to put this law to a referendum.
Let us recall that deputies in Switzerland work under the "sword of Damocles" of the system of direct democracy, which allows, in particular, to put any document adopted by parliament to a popular vote, and this can be done within one hundred days from the date of entry into force of this law. Indeed, no one wants to hold a referendum on such a delicate issue as citizenship rights now, especially since this issue has remained in limbo for too long.
The time has come to finally create a solid legal framework here and put an end to all kinds of fears and speculations, not to mention that in 2015 the country will hold next parliamentary elections, and therefore unnecessary debates on citizenship issues would only "add fuel to the fire" of the right-conservative forces. It was these considerations that guided the deputies when voting for the final version of the Citizenship Law.
Now, under the Citizenship Law, which was completely revised by the Swiss parliament and approved by it on June 20, 2014, applicants for a Confederation passport must have lived in the country for at least 10 years before they can apply for naturalization. Candidates must have a residence permit of category "C", which is issued only after five or ten years of residence in Switzerland, depending on the applicant's country of origin and circumstances. The category "C" residence permit is an unlimited residence permit.
In addition, to apply for citizenship, the interested party must have lived in the same canton without moving for a certain period, which can range from two to five years depending on the region.
Young foreigners can take advantage of a simplified naturalization procedure. A year spent in Switzerland between the ages of 8 and 18 counts as two years. Currently, between 30,000 and 40,000 people acquire Swiss citizenship annually. As of the end of April 2014, there were 1.9 million foreigners in Switzerland, accounting for 23.5 percent of the total population.
Even after the minimum period of residence in the country for applying for citizenship was reduced from 12 to 10 years, Switzerland still remains one of those European countries where conditions for obtaining citizenship are quite strict. According to the organization "European Union Democracy Observatory" (EUDO), only six countries, among them Italy, Spain, and Austria, require a foreigner to have lived in the country for the same period of 10 years before they can apply for citizenship. In Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, the minimum residence period is eight years; in Norway and Greece, seven years; in Portugal, six years. France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, and the Czech Republic have reduced the period to five years.
Initially, the Swiss federal government pursued three main goals. First, to radically modernize the Citizenship Law, which was adopted back in 1952 and had remained unchanged since then. Second, it was necessary to finally take into account and unify the cantonal procedures for obtaining citizenship, which are largely structured very differently (recall that in Switzerland, citizenship rights are granted at the municipality level, the lowest tier of the Swiss federal system, and only by being a citizen of a given municipality is a person a citizen of the country as a whole). Finally, it was necessary to make the main factor in the decision to naturalize a person their "will to real integration" into the country's society. The new law partially achieved all these goals, but only partially.
"The goal of the Federal Council, the country's government, is by no means to increase the number of foreigners naturalized annually. On the contrary, our goal is to grant civil rights only to persons who are most integrated into the society of their new homeland," stated Swiss Minister of Justice and Police Simonetta Sommaruga during the debates on the adoption of the new version of the law. According to her, "there are foreigners who, after only five years of residence, fit perfectly into the country's society, and there are those who are incapable of this even after decades of living in Switzerland, and that is precisely why the quantitative criterion (length of residence) should give way to the qualitative criterion (degree of integration)," the minister emphasized.
Based on this, the federal cabinet proposed reducing the minimum required residence time in Switzerland from the current 12 years to eight, considering that even these eight years are a simply gigantic period compared to naturalization practices in other Western European countries. Left-wing parties and movements supported such a reduction in the residence period, arguing that such realistic timeframes could "stimulate foreigners to make additional efforts to increase their degree of social integration."
Right-wing parties and movements advocated maintaining the current 12-year period to prevent "abuses and an excessive influx of foreigners, otherwise Switzerland risks starting to 'Helvetize' everyone en masse, including outright criminal elements." In the end, parliamentarians reached a true Swiss compromise, agreeing on 10 years required to obtain the coveted red passport with a white cross.
Furthermore, such a foreigner must have lived in the same canton for a certain number of years. Currently, different cantons impose different requirements on "their" foreigners in this regard, ranging from 2 to 12 years. The Federal Council proposed unifying this practice by introducing a minimum continuous residence period of three years in all cantons, arguing that such a period would be the most realistic and appropriate response to modern global mobility.
Parliament did not go so far as to cut cantonal rights, but it did narrow the range somewhat, allowing cantons to require from two to five years of continuous residence in one canton, depending on local conditions.
A complex and contentious issue until the very end was the problem of the so-called "simplified naturalization" of young foreigners. Currently, years spent by a child in Switzerland between the ages of 10 and 20 are counted on a "year for two" basis. Right-wing parties sought to abolish this rule altogether, while left-wing parties proposed allowing double credit for all years spent by a child in the country, i.e., from age zero rather than 10. After lengthy discussions, a compromise was found here as well – years from ages 8 to 18 will be counted double.
However, the true masterpiece of the art of Helvetic compromise was the decision on how to count years spent by a person in Switzerland as an officially recognized refugee. Fearing that too "generous" a solution to this problem could give the right a reason to trigger a referendum procedure, parliament ultimately decided to count these years on the inverse principle, i.e., not "year for two", but "two years for one".
Considering the even by Swiss standards lengthy time taken to prepare the new version of the Citizenship Law, some left-wing deputies reminded their parliamentary colleagues of the famous 1978 film "How to Become a Swiss" ("Die Schweizermacher"), which satirically criticizes the overly pedantic employees of the Swiss migration authority.
But right-wing deputies saw nothing funny here. In their opinion, the obstacles to obtaining Swiss citizenship should remain high, considering that, in their view, obtaining the red passport is essentially akin to being inducted into a noble knighthood, that the passport provides access to a community of people with unique civil rights, and only those who are able to properly appreciate and correctly use such rights should have them. But that is precisely why the new version of the Citizenship Law focuses not on quantitative indicators, but on qualitative factors.
However, even after the revision of the Citizenship Law, foreigners must be patient if they want to obtain a Swiss passport. Even after 10 years of residence in the country, citizenship will not be granted automatically. After living 10 years in Switzerland, interested parties merely obtain the formal opportunity to submit an application, which will then be reviewed at three levels – federal, cantonal, and local. The entire process can take years.
Candidates for a Swiss passport must meet a number of criteria. First, they must demonstrate that they are truly capable of integrating. They must know and respect the Swiss way of life, comply with laws, social rules, and values enshrined in the Constitution. In addition, applicants must show that they participate in the economic life of the country and contribute to its prosperity (have a job and pay taxes), as well as being willing to improve their knowledge, take advanced training courses, etc.
But that is not all. Parliament also ruled that in the future it will no longer be enough to simply speak one national language. Applicants are now also required to be able to write in that language correctly. For the German-speaking part of Switzerland, this means that foreigners will in fact often have to master two German languages: the dialect (which children, as a rule, acquire as a gift) and written standard German, which already requires serious effort.
And, as before, to ensure that the Confederation's passport is truly in one's pocket, a foreigner will need to have a deposit of several thousand Swiss francs in a bank account.
Armando Mombelli.
Translation by Nadezhda Kapone and Igor Petrov.
//swissinfo.ch