Foreigners with a Swiss diploma should be able to stay

After the diploma, it was the end of the line for the employee from Indonesia. The woman had graduated from the hotel school in Switzerland and had the prospect of a job in a five-star hotel where she had completed an internship during her internship.

But the Secretariat of State for Migration put a spanner in the works for her and the Bern hotel. The reason: the quota. Only 8,500 so-called third-country nationals will receive a residence permit this year. Since the limit had already been reached, the woman had to leave Switzerland. And the hotel is looking for another employee.

“Economically, that’s nonsense!”

Christophe Hans (58) of the Hotelleriesuisse association knows many such cases. He gets mad at everyone. “From an economic point of view, it is nonsense if we train someone in Switzerland and send them away after graduation,” he says. It also makes no sense given the current shortage of skilled workers – including in the hotel industry. A survey by the association at the beginning of the year showed that two-thirds of hotels have difficulty filling vacancies.

The hotel industry is now hoping for parliament: the gastro-entrepreneur and national councilor of Basel SP Mustafa Atici (53) is calling for exceptions to the quota system for specialists who have completed a hotel school or another higher technical school in Switzerland – and who are in the industrial work where there is a shortage of skilled workers. He says, “We need these people for our business!”

Representatives from several parties, including some SVP members, have signed the initiative, although Atici is torpedoing the implementation of the SVP immigration initiative.

There is an exception for university graduates

The advance is certainly not without a chance. After all, Atici does not break new ground. A few years ago, parliament passed a similar quota exception, as requested by the Basler SPler, for university graduates from third countries – by a large majority.

In the coming weeks, the Federal Council will submit a concrete proposal to Parliament to implement the relaxation for university graduates. And the federal government has also announced further easing of the quota system for people from third countries to accommodate the economy. But these don’t go far enough for the hotel industry. She hopes for Atici’s advance.

Every counts

“Switzerland is always incredibly proud of its vocational training. But actually it always favors university graduates’, annoys Christophe Hans of Hotelleriesuisse. Susanne Welle (51), director of the hotel management schools in Geneva and Zurich, also criticizes the unequal treatment of university graduates and those who leave college.

This unequal treatment must be abolished. Not only an ETH graduate, but also a hotel management student should be allowed to stay and work in Switzerland after successfully completing his studies, she believes. It is believed that about 150 to 300 people would benefit from the renewed relaxation, says Christophe Hans. “So there will be no mass immigration,” he emphasizes. For the hotel industry, however, every professional that you can retain counts.