Jungfrau Zeitung – Obstacles for naturalization should be doubled
civil rights | February 19, 2022
Anyone who wants to be naturalized in Switzerland as a person in the third generation will face too many stumbling blocks and bureaucratic obstacles. This is the conclusion of a study commissioned by the Federal Migration Commission.
For foreigners in the third generation, the path to a Swiss passport is still difficult.Photo: Keystone, Christian Beutler
Of around 25,000 people who could be naturalized, only 1,847 received a Swiss passport by the end of 2020, as the Federal Migration Commission (FCM) announced on Friday. Three years after the constitutional article came into force, that was a “sobering result”.
In order to find out the reasons for this, the EKM commissioned a study from the Universities of Geneva and Neuchâtel. These have now proven that the age limit, various bureaucratic stumbling blocks and insufficient information for the persons concerned make easy naturalization difficult.
In order to remove the hurdles, the authors of the study recommend abolishing the age limit of 25 years, removing the “unnecessarily high” administrative hurdles in accessing the procedure and proactively drawing the attention of those wishing to naturalize to the easy naturalization.
Since February 2018, foreigners whose grandparents have already lived in Switzerland and die themselves were born in Switzerland have been able to be naturalized in a friendly manner. That’s what the Swiss voters decided.