Thanks, it’s very helpful! I also want to attend a local voting, I understand it’s allowed for foreigners without voting of course.
Hi kisiy35124,
Yes, you can attend the gemeindeversammlung. Also worth doing.
Kind Regards.
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In other words, you have to be more of a native than the natives…
Hi litespeed,
As funny as it may sound, it’s actually true. Having spoken with our Swiss friends after the interviews, none of them would have passed them. However, to think about it, not sure many of us would have passed naturalisation test in our native countries. I would certainly not 
Kind Regards.
Indeed. In Tessin, one of the questions you can get asked is “how many km of freeway are there in Tessin?” . You can be sure not even 10% of native Tessiners will know this.
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What? What merit is in knowing this kind of information
@litespeed,
10%? You are being generous 
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Another update @TheExile got a letter on Friday that Geminderechts have been granted. Now waiting for kantonrechts approval in next meeting at kanton level. Then we have a wait again of 30 days.
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I am so envious of you guys, in a positive motivational way 
Congrats
To some degree this is true, but it’s also understandable. No one has a human right to become a citizen of any country and thus, the people that country wants as citizens is quite strict, especially in Switzerland.
Some of the shenanigans are rather arbitrary, like having to live 5y in the same canton… it’s a bit outdated I suppose. Others, like the language ability, are imho way too lax - AG is considering raising the language requirement to C1 for naturalization. I personally very much am in favor of raising it to B2 in both spoken and written.
One can question why this is the way it is - after all, my kids or the kids of anyone after naturalization will be Swiss, regardless of that, but this again boils down to the principle that no one ha a right to get naturalized. I personally however would rather have stricter hard requirements on language, culture, secularity, etc. than asking people what to do if the fondue gets to thin or if they joined a club or which 236 micro rivers flow through my canton, etc. whatever.
@zug,
Congrats! You will be Swiss quite soon then. The next letter will be golden
Kind Regards.
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It is a filter system, and if you accept the Gemeindes as the center of politics, then it becomes more understandable. And I would agree stronger language requirements make sense. However I know of a native who waited for citizenship then left, with no real desire to integrate, just wanted another passport. But yes, they should leave out micro-rivers and total km of freeway.
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I don’t have much of a problem with that, as the requirement is to be here for 10y… so doing it just for the PP is quite teious.
To be fair I don’t see what’s the use of raising the language level competency requirements in the German speaking side. I guess this will divide even more the born-swiss from naturalized-swiss population. I bet when people learn German to a C level they’ll never take any effort to learn any dialect, on the contrary when your language competence is just the bare minimum then you’re more likely to keep learning the language you’re surrounded with. Just my 2 rappen
I personally think C1 is a bit too much - but definitely doable in 10y. B1 however is clearly too low (imho) and for written German it’s A2… My wife was A2 in less than a year of learning.
A B2/B2 requirement is the most sensible - B2 roughly means every day fluency in spoken and written language. I think this is something that can be expected for citizens of a country. Becoming Swiss is not a human right either, we should be very selective to not end up devaluating our travel document and diplomatic power. One could even argue that it’s very sensible to be more strict with naturalizations than with natives, but I also do think there is a certain cross function going on - if someone is here 30y and speaks “only” B1 - they probably are fine to be naturalized. If someone is here 5y and is C2 level, I’d also be fine with naturalizing them.
In fact I’d be in favor of a point system or something like that, instead of arbitrary requirenments. This way you can incentivize integration quite a lot: So for example - if you have Swiss references (people born and not naturalized in Switzerland) you get points, language level gets points, etc.
The only thing that really bothers me is the archaic requirement of not being able to move without losing 2-5y of the process. Cantons are very tiny administrative units, if you’re not living in ZH, AG or VD - and it doesn’t make any sense to me personally.
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I totally agree. This is the thing I accepted that perhaps I can’t understand just because I’m not Swiss 
As you said, naturalized Swiss will be Swiss, not ZH/AG/VD-only Swiss. Then you’ve got the language requirement, only the local one (or even not the local one when it comes to German side). If they want to rise the bar to make everyone work a bit to obtain naturalization despite of their origin the easiest would be to require B1 of all 3 languages, no free path for Germans/Italians/French…
I like the bottom up democracy, and accept that the local town hall should be the most important one, but it serves only the regulatory part. When it comes to the center of my life, it’s in another canton due to the proximity of the town which offers what I need, then my work center is yet in another canton, whilst I live in between those two because I was lucky to get a newly-built flat 5 min walk to the train station with frequent connections in both directions
I personally don’t have a problem with intellectually understanding where the process comes from, but that it’s still in place the way it is. The way naturalization works is, contrary to what you said, exactly the opposite - no matter what intentions you personally have.
Art. 37 Bürgerrechte
(1) Schweizerbürgerin oder Schweizerbürger ist, wer das Bürgerrecht einer Gemeinde und das Bürgerrecht des Kantons besitzt.
You become the citizen of your new place of origin - (Heimatort), which makes you a citizen of the canton of e. g. Aargau and because Aargau is part of Switzerland, you become Swiss. It’s subsidiarity at it’s finest - and even the due diligence process works that way - you wait the longest on the municipal and cantonal level. The federal administrative process is generally speaking a formality (they just check if you aren’t a terrorist).
I do think the language requirements should be tied to the general surroundings, so if you live in VD it makes sense to need French and in ZH you need German.
The criteria of naturalization are the result of compromises between the left (almost everyone should have a chance to become a citizen some day) and the right (only naturalize citizens if they’re major contributors to our state) political view. A strict, but fair point system that focuses on qualitative criterea (language levels, Swiss social sphere, contributions to Switzerland, volounteering, etc.) is much better imho, but it probably won’t happen, unless we get more political pressure in the right center of parliament.
It’s not because of that. People with a certificate C1/C2 usually have higher level of education, work in the companies full of foreigners and often use high German or English at work. They hear less Swiss German, they have less chances to practice it. Also people in their circle often switch to high German when they are around.
Increasing language requirements from B1 to C1 you will make naturalization more difficult for two categories of candidates:
- people with lower level of education in general: some of them may struggle to write a two pages text about the “UNO summit on the global warming” even in their native language. Also they have less money for language courses.
- highly educated migrants that do not use German in real life and are only learning it for the purpose of naturalisation.
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Well, you sound like the cantons had a free choice to be or not to be part of Switzerland. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true on paper, but in practice I bet it’s impossible because all who have the place of origin (heimatort) there but are living elsewhere would have the right to vote, wouldn’t they?
People who desire the Swiss passport often quote ZH (especially Zurich city) as the best bet to get it done.
Regarding my intentions, I’m ambivalent about this on one hand it feels like I should have the same right as everyone else around after living so many years in Switzerland, but on the other what for? I can’t complain about anything and since I have no children there’s no reason to stay here on retirement.
agree, that’s my point. I had the initial motivation to learn it, but it quickly faded away once I realized that everywhere I go people would prefer English, otherwise they speak the dialect so knowing high German is useless (the few paperwork pages I receive per year I can auto translate)