He wants more Swiss passports

Excitement was high when Sanija Ameti (30) announced a new naturalization initiative last Sunday. “We are working with other actors on a liberal civil rights initiative,” the head of Operation Libero told the Sunday Blick. What exactly the initiative is about and who is behind it remained unclear.

Appearance Arber Bullakaj (36): The SP politician from Wil SG received the red passport at the age of 19. The “arbitrary Swiss naturalization system” has occupied him for half his life. That is why he founded the association Aktion Vierviertel three years ago. The goal: a right to naturalization.

Now the four-quarter campaign is getting underway. Soon she will launch the popular initiative for modern civil rights. In two weeks, the general meeting of the association wants to decide on the final text. Signature collection will begin shortly after.

“You don’t even have a foreign haircut”

What are the initiators asking? Firstly, a shortening of the period of stay. “This is set way too high at ten years,” says Bullakaj. Secondly, the initiators demand objective criteria for obtaining citizenship. “Uniform preconditions are needed in all Swiss municipalities to eliminate arbitrariness at the local level.”

Mergim Ahmeti (27) can tell you a few things about it. He was born and raised in Montlingen SG. In the small village in the Rhine Valley of St. Gallen, he goes to school, plays football and does an internship. In 2017, at the age of 22, he wants to naturalize.

The process becomes a glove run. As soon as the discussion with the council’s naturalization board gets going, they say about Ahmeti’s long hair: “You don’t even have a foreigner’s haircut.” Then follows a comment about his Muslim faith: “But not that you roll out the prayer rug now.” The panel wants to know what he thinks about the fact that women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Which language do you speak at home? And how many Swiss friends he has.

Many friends in other communities

Then the apparently crucial question: What are the pubs in the village called? Ahmeti knows: there are four of them. Ahmeti knows: one of them is the deer. He can’t remember the names of the other three.

That’s enough for the Naturalization Board. Because the young man cannot name names, is currently not active in any association and also has many friends in other communities, the committee concludes: “Integration in the village of Montlingen is weak.” Application for naturalization rejected. That’s what the minutes of the conversation are available on SonntagsBlick.

Ahmeti hires a lawyer and appeals to the canton. This concludes: The Naturalization Board had used its discretion “abusively or arbitrarily”. Ahmed is right. And the Swiss passport. Most of the legal costs are borne by him.

Lack of integration due to a job outside the canton

Sonia Casadei was also born and raised in Switzerland. When she wanted to naturalize in Arth SZ in 2015, the naturalization board accused her of a lack of integration – because she had taken a job outside her canton where she lives. Her husband is accused of the same thing: as a plasterer he has customers who do not just come from Schwyz. Moreover, he does not know the answer to the question with whom the bear shares the enclosure at Goldau Zoo. Both applications for naturalization are rejected.

Casadei and her husband are appealing. Five years later, the municipality must naturalize both. But the bad experience doesn’t let Casadei rest – she takes action. Together with friends, she created the website einbürgerungsgeschichten.ch, which documents similar cases from the canton of Schwyz. Because: “What happened to me and my family unfortunately happens often.”

Naturalization candidates all want the same red passport. But what they should take with them depends entirely on where they live. That has a lot to do with Swiss citizenship at three levels: municipality, canton, federal government – ​​all three levels are involved.

Forced naturalizations have been discussed in the past

“The federal government determines the central conditions,” says Christin Achermann (47), professor of Migration, Law and Society at the University of Neuchâtel. “But the cantons and municipalities have a lot of freedom in implementing these conditions. The differences are correspondingly large.”

25 percent of all people living in Switzerland have a foreign passport. “The Swiss naturalization system is one of the most restrictive in Europe,” says historian Kijan Espahangizi, 44, author of a new book on the Swiss migration complex. “But that was not always the case. At the beginning of the 20th century, Switzerland reacted to rising immigration rates and thought of more naturalizations instead of fewer.”

Even forced naturalizations were discussed at the time – under the motto: naturalizations are the best remedy against a large proportion of foreigners!

Increasing proportion of foreigners

That changed after the Second World War: the local economy recruited more and more guest workers, of whom more and more stayed. At the same time, Switzerland tightened the naturalization criteria en masse.

The share of foreigners rose from 5 to 25 percent today. “This rate will continue to rise,” says Espahangizi. This leads to a fundamental question that goes to the heart of the Swiss self-image: “When does a democracy cease to be a democracy? With 30, 40 or 50 percent of the resident population without political rights?»

The Modern Civil Rights Initiative focuses on facilitating naturalization through objective and thus calculable criteria. What she is not demanding, however, is the jus soli, the right to a Swiss passport for anyone born in the country.

“Neither up-to-date nor targeted”

The resistance is programmed on the part of the bourgeoisie – even those who sympathize with the interests of the initiative. This is what Përparim Avdili (35), president of the FDP city of Zurich and vice president of the Secondos Zurich association says: “The way in which we partially implement naturalization today is neither current nor expedient.” But he also says: “For me it is not the same whether someone grew up in Switzerland or comes here as an adult.”

It is wrong to talk about integration for people who grow up here. “It’s more our duty as a society,” Avdili says. However, immigrant adults can certainly be expected to perform well in terms of integration. Avdili is therefore critical of the initiative.

The FDP politician proposes that the state take an offensive attitude towards Secondos: “Everyone growing up in Switzerland should receive a letter as a child saying: You belong to us. All you have to do is say yes and you’re Swiss.” This creates identification and an emotional bond.

“Who is Switzerland?”

Avdili agrees with Aktion Vierviertel that naturalization should not be arbitrary. The residence periods of the municipalities and cantons are also time-barred. “We benefit if democratic participation increases. On the contrary, one should demand this instead of complicating it.”

Migration researcher Christin Achermann judges: “Acceptance of the initiative would be a big step for Switzerland. In a European comparison, however, it would be nothing special.”

The historian Espahangizi sees the initiative as an opportunity for a necessary cultural change: “We need to renegotiate what it means today to be Swiss – or to put it another way: who is Switzerland?”