My trailing US spouse, with a solid background in IT could not find a job with 6 months of intense search, this is with an L permit. We did receive a B permit after this period, but then decided to leave anyway as his prospects are way better in the US.
Your husband will get the same permit as you so no problem there, but: with an L permit employers will be reluctant to hire him since it is a relatively short-term permit. For most long term, open ended jobs he will not have a chance unless the company is willing to sponsor him eventually, when said permit expires (but then we are back to the requirements of Swiss/EU preference, must be executive level etc). With a 2 year contract I think you have good chances of getting a B permit though.
Sounds like there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Persistence and a fair measure of patience in learning what is obvious to the Swiss, but not always everyone else, does tend to pay off here.
I 'heard' (not sure how dependable this source is) here are only 3,500 non EU B permits available in Switzerland each year. Importantly for the Geneva area, the UN and other diplomats do not 'count' against this total. I imagine Proctor and Gamble take up a big chunk of the Geneva quota.
Canton of Vaud (Lausanne is capitol), next door to Geneva, and ever so slightly more affordable in the housing market, reportedly has 700 such visas to dole out. Yahoo, Chikita, American Tobacco, Novartis, and Nestle (yes, I know it is Swiss, but there are lots of non-Swiss employees), are in Vaud, so hard to say if it is more or less difficult to obtain a visa here, but it may be worth looking into.
Some companies require you to live in the Canton where they operate in part due to the negotiations in the visa process, as practically all things in Switzerland are driven from the bottom (village and Canton) upward. It is tempting to try to live in France when you work in Geneva as it is substantially cheaper (though gradually equilibrating). This seems to be a major hassle for Americans, but is theoretically possible. Also, as it is 'that' time of year, don't forget that Americans have US income tax liability when living abroad, including Switzerland.
Best of luck.
I feel like Im in the same boat.. Isnt it odd that the country with 400k new unemployed every week, has better potential for a job.
People seem to always forget that this is a very small country. Also, if the trailing spouse doesn't speak the local language they are out of 80% of the market.
With an L permit the trailing spouse can not work without additional permits/permission/paperwork.
This is not true, or at least not in all cases. My US spouse was allowed to take up work with his L permit. Of course it being a 6 month permit no one cared to hire him.
Do you know what status he had and/or the link for info on this? It would be very helpful to others to know under what circumstances their L permit non-EU spouse can work.
His L status was based on the right to family regroupment. I am EU. His L permit clearly stated that he was authorized to engage in lucrative activities (I just double-checked this in his permit to be sure).
Ah. I was talking about non-EU L permits. I guess I should have been clearer.
hi all!
just an update and a request for advice. my fiance and i are now married and my employer plans to file for my work permit in the next few weeks. my now husband still has an offer oustanding from a Swiss employer. there seems to be confusion as to how to obtain authorization for him to work. as a reminder, we are both US citizens and I will likely be on an L permit. these are my questions:
1) my understanding is that my husband does not have the right to work on a dependent L permit without additional authorization (is this true? i seem to see conflicting accounts - perhaps it is the difference between an EU and non-US dependent L permit?)
2) if the answer to my first question is that i am correct that a dependent L permit does not provide him with the right to work, then what is the best approach to obtaining authorization? is it possible to submit both my application with my offer letter and his offer letter so that we can both receive authorization at the same time? or do we HAVE to wait until i receive authorization and then convert his dependent L permit (residency) into a work permit? we're trying to figure out the quickest approach as we don't want the employer to drop the offer if the time frame is too long...
3) either way we approach this, how difficult is it to convert a dependent L permit (residency) to a dependent L (working authorization)? from what i've read people seem to have had relatively quick success with this, but we're still a bit worried... as more background, they have already liaised with the authorities on the salary, advertised the position, and actually hired and conducted an unsuccessful trial period with a Swiss national, so all signs point to that his employer has successfully "proved" that they cannot hire an EU/Swiss national, so i would think the conversion could be fairly quick? i have heard that Geneva has been taking a long time in the past few weeks to process permits though...
any advice/thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!
thank you!
In answer:
1) if you are both Non-EU and the permit is L, then the spouse is not automatically entitled to work, and his employer has to go through the same application process to get him that permission. You have to decide very quickly who is going to be the 'primary' applicant - assuming that neither employer has put the application in yet - if yours has already gone in, the details should be copied to the second potential employer so they can use that info to get their process started (ideally the two employers should just communicate directly to coordinate it, it's in their interest to do that).
2) It's possible to do it 'in coordination' - we did this with a married couple where we employed both staff members to two different jobs - husband was the 'primary' applicant as he was more specialised/qualified, and wife was 'secondary' and it came through OK.
3) If the employer meets all the normal criteria for bringing someone in from outside Europe, then it should be quite efficient - my husband's original permit process took 12 weeks to bring us from Australia, but mine as the 'dependent L' to get the work permission only took 4 weeks - there's was far less checking to be done because I was already approved to be 'in the country'. If you can tandem the applications and have them matched up 'in process' then my guess would be 12-14 weeks for both to be approved, from the time that the employer actually submits all the paperwork and it's complete. Expect it to take longer if something gets stuffed up along the way.
Oh, and another thing I just remembered, when my L 'permission to work' was submitted, our visas were under renewal (it was exactly 1 year after we arrived) - and my new employers info was crossed over with this renewal process and even though the info was not on the renewal documents, my new photo card came with my employer's details printed on it and 'permission to work' - so that shows you that the internal processes are very efficient/coordinated - I was expecting to get my new photo card with the old info, and then having to pay to have it updated once the new permission to work was added - but it was all fixed internally within a 3-4 week window when it was wall renewing - I remember finding that pretty impressive!
thank you swisspea this is really helpful (and gives us an optimistic outlook too)!!
TBH, with a bit of "re-skilling" I could imagine there's a market for private consulting on US tax issues...
The amount of threads here discussing US tax issues, it would seem like a proverbial potential goldmine - pardon the pun.
Need some help,
i know this might have been asked but i kept searching and could not find an answer.
I have a professional B permit that allows me to work with my company here in CH.
My wife got a B permit, but she can not work in Switzerland unless another company applies for a working B Permit (like my one). I assume hers is strictly residential.
I thought that it would be the same B permit that I have (meaning she can get a job), but she cant unless she applies to a company that is willing to file for a B permit for her.
My HR Dept tells me the above, I can work, but my wife will need an employer to apply/sponsor her working B permit.
Does this sound right?
Hi, simple answer is that she does have to find an employer to apply for the permit. However, it's just a formality with a Non-EU B permit as a spouse, as she should be 'free to work' - so it's just a matter of her employer being willing to make a couple of phone calls and to fill in a document or two...
The main thing is that she adds a copy of her permit with job applications, and I would add maybe in the covering letter that she already has residency in Switzerland and so getting work permission is not expected to be a hurdle to employment.
When I renew my residency permit every year, there is a place for my employer to stamp on the back, to confirm my employment details, but it doesn't get printed on my Residency ID card because I'm not 'tied' to my employer...
As far as I know, it didn't cost anything for my employer to get the confirmation of permission to employ me on a B permit - it's just a simple checking procedure... and we do similar checks on all Non-Swiss employees as part of the recruitment process, as a precaution to ensure we aren't employing anyone illegally...
Hope that helps... employers who are familiar with employing foreigners (eg. the big international schools) will probably have someone on staff who is well-versed in these procedures. Simplest way to 'educate' a potential employer is to just tell them (nicely) that they can check your permit status with the relevant work permission authorities....
das war zehr gut, thanks for the info!!
Hi everyone! Wanted to circle back and update you on our situation in case it gives anyone else in similar situations some hope (which I think it should!)
When we arrived in Switzerland, we were told we were getting B permits and our Attestation de Residence actually stated B permits avec activite. So my husband proceeded to get everything lined up to start at his job and then L permits sans activite showed up in the mail. You can imagine how frustrated we were as we though everything had been going smoothly. So my husband's employer's immigration lawyers contacted the authorities to talk to them about their "mistake". The admitted they made a mistake in issuing the temporary permit as a B and then sending L permits in the mail. They then reviewed his work application and resume in 24 hours and provided official approval for him to work, so he now has a n L permit "avec activite" that is contingent on my duration of employment in Switzerland. This whole permit and job journey for my husband has been really long and frustrating (we started the process in March 2012), but I'm so happy that it worked out and it gives me faith that although it is often really difficult for spouses to get jobs here, there is still hope for others and it isn't all doom and gloom! It certainly provides me with an interesting frame of reference for immigration/employment laws in my own country as well!
By the way -- I suppose its time to change my member name from 'hopefulgenevaexpat' to 'officialgenevaexpat'