Issuing residence permits and processing settlement permits was and remains in Switzerland the prerogative of the federal center
“I heard that in Switzerland it’s much better,” says Purevmaa from Mongolia, recalling how about 13 years ago she arrived in Geneva and decided to go underground. Today she is one of the migrants who took part in the unique project “Papyrus,” whose goal is to bring out of the shadows people living and working in Geneva without a valid official residence permit. In total, along with her, more than a thousand people became participants in the project.
Purevmaa ended up in Switzerland in 2005 and has since earned a living as a cleaner. “Many women from my country were able to find good work here in Geneva,” she says. “So I decided to come here too. I was 24 then; I arrived in Geneva with another young woman whose brother already lived in the city. We all settled with him and soon found work.”
Women in Geneva, according to her, find it very easy to get a job, for example, as a domestic worker. Moreover, employers generally treated her very well. Her earnings were enough to live on, and together with her husband’s income, she could cover all the family’s needs. However, upon hearing about the Papyrus project, she decided to take the chance and apply for recognition of her current migration status.
The “Union of Employees and Workers” (SIT) helped her fill out all the paperwork correctly. “It took me three months to gather the documents,” she says. Much harder was enduring the six months of waiting for a decision on her case. The risk was high: a refusal would have meant immediate deportation. But she was lucky and stayed.
According to Geneva cantonal government member and security minister Pierre Maudet, the Papyrus project pursued two goals: “First, it was meant to help normalize the situation in the area of illegal migration according to strict criteria and within clearly defined legal procedures. Second, we wanted to decisively bring order to those sectors of the economy where, as a result of ‘black employment,’ an especially intolerable situation had developed in terms of ensuring basic social conditions, such as fair pay.”
Pierre Maudet spoke about this at a press conference marking the first year of the Papyrus project, a unique initiative with no equal in Switzerland or abroad. Since its launch in 2015, 1,093 people (244 families, 8 childless couples, 291 single individuals) have been able to legalize their status. All received official residence permits. Only 4 people were refused and deported from the country.
Of course, such a project could not avoid public attention. Being a cantonal initiative, it also received support from the federal center. For the authorities in Bern, the Geneva experience became “an interesting approach to solving tasks and finding answers to problems and questions arising in the areas of migration and black employment,” emphasizes Mario Gattiker, head of the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM, a division of the Federal Department of Justice and Police).
At the same time, he reminds that issuing residence permits and processing settlement permits was and remains in Switzerland the prerogative of the federal center. Thus, all applications for legalization of migration status submitted under Operation Papyrus will still be checked for compliance with current federal law. This project “is not a collective indulgence or amnesty; it is merely a form that allows each individual applicant’s case to be decided according to their individual circumstances.”
Operation Papyrus is also the result of a long, at least 15-year, persistent struggle by a number of Swiss non-governmental and charitable organizations, generally left-leaning, advocating for the consistent improvement of the situation of so-called “people without documents” (Sans Papiers). The main difficulty was finding real people who met the legalization criteria.
In total, about three thousand people sought help under the project. This information was provided by Marianne Halle from the organization “Swiss Contact Center for Immigrants.” According to experts from the University of Geneva, the majority of those who applied for legalization of their migration status came from Latin America. They account for 80% of all applications. Natives of the Balkan countries (Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) account for 10% of applications, another 6% from Asian countries (Philippines, Mongolia), and 3% from African countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia). Many of them, however, did not meet all the criteria.
Currently, according to SEM, about 13,000 migrants continue to live illegally in Geneva. According to Rémy Camermann, a lawyer from the “Protestant Social Center,” not all of them were eligible to participate in the project due to “having debts or, for example, if these individuals did not have sufficient income to finance their stay in the country.”
But for those who met all the conditions, participation in the Papyrus project meant a significant change in their lives, full of fears and stress. The project is currently ongoing; each month the authorities receive up to 15 new applications, and both within the canton and beyond, it has, of course, long been the subject of heated debate. Not everyone sees it as a good idea.
For example, the local Geneva branch of the right-wing conservative Swiss People's Party is convinced that "Papyrus" is a "catastrophic signal" for all "idlers and illegals who will now arrive in Geneva in rows and columns." According to available data, 17% of all "people without documents" in Switzerland currently live in Geneva. Despite this, even before the start of the "Papyrus" project, the cantonal authorities were more active than other regions in dealing with the legalization of persons residing illegally in the country.
Zurich, for example, lags significantly behind Geneva in this regard. The city on the Limmat has the largest share of all Swiss illegals, but between 2012 and 2016 only 10 people managed to legalize their status there. As Rémy Kamermann says, "the authorities of the German-speaking cantons often simply do not want to acknowledge the problem of 'people without documents,' and it is especially surprising to encounter such a position in Zurich, where the number of such people ranges from 25,000 to 30,000."
In these cantons, as well as in the Anglo-Saxon world, for example in the United States, one often hears the argument that programs like "Papyrus" are another incentive for illegal immigration. However, the fact remains that many in the German-speaking cantons are watching the situation in Geneva very closely and are waiting, as M. Gattiker says, for the publication of the final report on the results of Operation "Papyrus" so that, after analyzing it, they can launch a similar project tailored to their own local conditions.
In conclusion, Swissinfo.ch reminds of the criteria for participation in the "Papyrus" program: illegals must prove their financial independence; disclose their employment relationships; have no debts and not be under investigation or trial; have lived continuously in the country for 10 years (5 years for those with school-age children); and have a basic knowledge of French.