facilitated naturalisation from abroad (specifically US) for spouse of Swiss citizen

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
1
Hello everyone,

Glad to have found this forum, and the very helpful posts made by so many citizens, soon-to-be citizens and general fans of CH.

I am married to a Swiss lady and stumbled across the 'facilitated naturalisation from abroad' process some time back. As it turns out, I should be able to hit all the relevant criteria by '23/'24, so I am excited to pursue this route and become a citizen of a country I admire so much!

Questions for this community (and please feel free to route me to other threads if I am being repetitive here, apologies):

1. Is anyone currently going through or has recently gone through facilitated naturalisation from abroad in the US specifically? If yes, please do comment below. It would be great to connect with others to learn from your experience and support each other through this long process.

2. I'm getting conflicting reads across the different documentation on the 6 year timing requirement. Does someone here know for certain if it is A) 6 years of marriage OR B) 6 years of living together after marriage? I ask because those two don't line up perfectly for us, and will impact when I can submit the application.

Thank you everyone, and look forward to engaging with this community in the coming months.

Suissemari

2

Welcome to the forum

Living together is the default, but acceptable exceptions may apply. The criteria is the lasting will to continue the marital union, the evidence of which will be the fact that you are now living together and still married.

See art. 10 of the ordonance .

I would think that this can be enquired informally in advance, and reliably, see here .

3
It's 6 years married. I don't think anywhere it states living together and I don't think they ask for proof. Especially if you are not living in Switzerland, I doubt they'll even realise.

4
Translation of art. 10 by deepl:

5
Thank you both - very helpful.

@UrsMax I’m impressed at both your depth of knowledge, and speed of response. Seems the safer thing to do is to apply after 6 years of continuous living together so I’ll plan for that. Gives me more time to continue learning about Switzerland, and improving my French

Merci beaucoup.

6
Bumping this thread up, specifically for the below request:

1. Is anyone currently going through or has recently gone through facilitated naturalisation from abroad in the US specifically? If yes, please do comment below. It would be great to connect with others to learn from your experience and support each other through this long process.

Thanks in advance.

7
I did it from abroad but not in the US.

8
Hi SwissPino,

Thank you for the response. It seems they have standardized the process quite a bit so it may not be relevant whether it is the US or elsewhere (I was originally mistaken that it was distinct by country/region).

Are you comfortable sharing some more details about your interview process process, specifically:

1. What were the questions asked during the interview?

2. What were the questions on the written exam?

3. What did you do to prepare for the spoken and written parts?

4. What level of fluency in German/French/Italian did you feel was important for the interview? (A2 vs B1)

It will be helpful for everyone in the forum to learn from someone who had a more recent experience, since some of the posts in other threads are quite dated at this stage, and there are fewer for facilitated naturalisation from abroad.

Appreciate your guidance and thank you!