My Swiss employer is supporting me to move to Switzerland from my current base in Asia (I am a non-EU foreigner), and will manage the immigration process for me. Can anyone tell me what sort of background checking the Swiss immigration are likely to do? Do they do criminal history checks, and how many years back do they go?
Yes they do. You will need to provide a criminal history report from your home country and/or the country where you are currently resident. The period covered depends on how long the home country maintains the record.
Swissbob is right but they will make exceptions. When I moved back here from Hong Kong, the HK police wouldn't supply a certificate of no criminal record. We just explained that and they waived the requirement. Might've helped that I'd lived here before and my guess is that the degree of flexibility will vary from canton to canton.
Thanks for the info. Nev, are you originally from HK? If not, did they also require it from your home country?
I'm from the UK but haven't lived there for years. They just waived the rule altogether.