Hi EF,
Long time lurker and very thankful for so much good advice on these forums. Now it’s time to ask for help in my own crisis re: permits. I’m Canadian and have lived 5.5 years in Basel Stadt doing an academic postdoc. It seems always a bit of a grey area if my permit is a student permit or not, but certainly it was always restricted to my current position (L then B).
I have done a good job integrating, lots of Swiss friends, Swiss partner, no fines/debts and I learned German from nothing to B2 in 3 years. I hoped after 5 years I could try my luck at the early C permit on grounds of integration and 5 years uninterrupted stay. My postdoc has been a colossal failure and I wanted the C for freedom to have time off to recover and slowly search for a better job without all the barriers of non-EU.
I got the rejection last week on grounds that my job title as “postdoc” is more like a temporary Study/Weiterbildung and does not count towards the 5 years. The letter said I would have to find another (real) job, and stay there 2 years for the postdoc years to be counted retroactively. Shitty luck, but fair enough.
My goal now is desperately trying to determine what my actual rights are regarding job searches . With a restricted B, I cannot change jobs without a company doing a whole sponsorship application. However, if they want to consider my postdoc as “study”, I now wonder if I might be eligible for the 6 month Stellungssuche B permit that would put me on the same level as other CH/EU citizens. In some parts of this law it says “hochschulabschluss” and in other parts it says “aus/weiterbildung”. So I am wondering if anyone has any advice.
Howdy - Canadian academic here in Switzerland 11+ years (one of a few on Englishforum actually).
The 6 month job seeker permit (L permit, issued twice for 3 months in duration each time) is for graduates of PhD's not postdocs (those who have been issued a degree from a Swiss university ) - this has been clarified to me by multiple immigration lawyers in Switzerland.
Furthermore, once your studies i.e. your postdoc ends in Switzerland, you need to have a job lined up or otherwise you have to leave the country and also you wont be eligible for RAV (also confirmed by multiple immigration lawyers).
It's not the most romantic proposition but the safest bet is to marry, then at least you can fall back on dependent B permit, which may give you a better access to the job market.
Yep, easiest would be to marry your partner - if things are heading that way - then you’d get a B permit under family reunification and have no problems with seeking another job; all the non-EU hassle would be bypassed with that permit.
Another (by coincidence also Canadian) academic worker here.
Unfortunately your post-doc indeed does not count years towards early C permit, and you also aren't eligible for a student job-seekers permit. We moved here on my spouse's EU post-doc permit, so fortunately he could look for work as an EU. But it took us 10 years to get a C.
If you want to stay your two options are to find a job as a skilled worker, or to marry your partner.
Hello my fellow Canucks! Many thanks for your informative (although depressing) replies.
Kind of twisted the C is rejected because I'm just studying temporarily, but they also don't give you the privileges that foreigners get from training in Switzerland. ("you're not a student when it would help you" and "you are a student when it doesn't help you").
It is written on your permit "Ausbildung mit Erwerbstätigkeit"? If not, then you have a proper working permit and I am surprised that it was rejected only because of the title of your job.
I know somebody from EU who was rejected for the C permit in Basel Stadt because he was working as a postdoc (more precisely, they didn't want to take his application), although EU postdocs (and PhD students) get 5-year B permit when they start. It seems like the decision depends on the person who is considering the application if they case is in the gray zone...
My permit has the remarks "Berechtigt zur Erwerbstätigkeit" on the front and "Unbefristet Selbst. Erwerbstätigkeit ist bewilligungspflichtig" on the back
I also wonder if this is a gray area depending on who looks at it. An American work colleague of mine in the EXACT same situation lives in canton Solothurn and had no problems with the early C after 5 years. My guess is they simply don't see as many applications from postdoc foreigners as in Basel.
That is definitely not a "student" permit, but a proper working permit and it could be even an unrestricted one (since they don't say anything about the job change, only about the change to self-employment). I don't know how much energy, time and money you are willing to invest into this, but if I were you, I would appeal against the decision...
Thank you very much for your reply. I am currently seeking some expert advice and then will decide whether an appeal is worth it. At the very least I am going to ask what my rights are with regards to job search. "Berechtigt zur Erwerbstätigkeit" does not seem to imply restriction, but I'm not sure.
It's not a grey area in terms of legislation, the thing is that people in the permit office are often not exactly aware of the rules. I know of an EU PhD student who renewed her B permit after 5 years and was shocked to have been given a C, even though she hadn't requested one and she knew she wasn't eligible. We also had EU postdoc friends who moved to CH around the same time as us, they were also spontaneously given a C after 5 years without them requesting it. We applied for a C after 5 years and were rejected, we had to wait 5 more years before getting a C. Permit renewal/upgrading does seem to partly depend on the knowledge of the person processing your application...
You are eligible for a C permit after 5 years study as an EU citizen. I have a handful of EU friends who all got C permits after/during their studies. None applied for it, and they were told they had no choice to decline the permit i.e. they weren't allowed to keep or request B permits (even though one of them was going to leave the country a few months later!
Because Postdoc positions are considered as educational, they have preferential treatment regarding admission of third country foreigner and are not subject to the quota rules.
You cannot see from the text on your permit that you got a "Postdoc permit". And specially, not every first job of a PhD graduate is a postdoc position.
Thanks for your reply. Yes, it's a whole other world for EU citizens. I have European colleagues who were handed a C after 5 years without even applying or having met the language requirements. But my case is complicated by my non-EU status.
It’s a reciprocal agreement among CH and other countries. Swiss citizens residing in those countries also get a C after 5 years with no language requirements.
Another Canadian, did roughly the same thing. Came for a postdoc in 2014, started a full time job in 2018 after the postdoc. I've been applying for the C every year since the 5 year mark (with language certificate etc) been denied every year (keep getting 1 year B permits). Applied again in January, my permit expired end of February. My salary puts me well above the threshold that I have to file my taxes (not just at the source).
Well, one more year and then you have the 10 years (so it's not even an early-C permit anymore haha), I think they can't use the "postdoc/training" reason against you at that stage anymore.
But wow...this is truly unbelievable. I slowly start to realise why Swiss think the immigration system is completely broken...clearly they want to have as little immigration as possible, but they have to follow the bare minimum of human rights for Europe/the world. So they compensate by rejecting skilled and integrated workers. And then whine about how immigrants use all the social security, and how there are not enough skilled workers for the workforce.