Who does the bear share a flat with? What are the pubs in the village called? Where do you leave your waste oil? And anyway: would you marry a Swiss woman?
These are questions that those who wish to naturalize in Switzerland must answer. Or rather: have to endure. All too often, the naturalization authorities are not interested in getting to know the other person, but in looking for reasons why the other person is not a ‘real’ Swiss after all. And so in some places the conversation is like an interrogation: those who want to be naturalized must constantly fear that an answer will be interpreted against them. In addition, they have to prove that they are better Swiss than the Swiss themselves, ideally they are members of one or better two local clubs, go to the local Chilbi every year and have only Swiss friends who all live in the village.
The absurdity is, of course, that the majority of the Swiss do not live that way. Is not a member of a club, (also) has friends with a migration background, works in the city. This does not prevent the – often older – members of the naturalization authorities in the communities from taking their own lives as a benchmark for how ‘real’ Swiss should behave. The result is absurd, arbitrary decisions: people are denied citizenship because they can’t list all the restaurants in the village. Or because they dare to look for a job outside the canton.
Contrary to what some politicians may think, these are not isolated cases. Especially in small, conservative communities, people who want to naturalize are sometimes refused their Swiss passport en masse. Even though they had a good chance of appeal, many of them forgo it. Because what gets through to them is the message: they don’t want me here.
This is all the more tragic because many of them are actually Swiss – people who were born and raised here. Instead of encouraging them to get involved and participate democratically, the door is being slammed in their face.
Arbitrariness reigns precisely where access to our democracy is at stake. That is not worthy of a rule of law. The current procedures, whereby members of the authorities can refuse a passport to a person who wishes to naturalize according to their own taste, should be abolished.