Staying in Switzerland - Three Month Rule

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
1
I want to move to Switzerland.

I know that you're allowed to stay in Switzerland for up to three months without having a job. Hopefully I will find one but does anyone know how often the three month rule applies? Can I stay for three months, leave the country for a week and then come back for another three months? Or is it that I can stay for up to three months every year? Two years? etc.

Any info on this rule would be super helpful because all the legal stuff I've read on it so far hasn't really been clear.

2
Why?

You can stay for three months as a tourist -- technically, not as a job hunter.

I don't know the answer to your multiple-visit question. I can tell you that Switzerland is party to the Schengen Agreement, as are its neighbours, so you would be free to come and go as you please; therefore it would be difficult to assess how long you had been in Switzerland. However, I wouldn't try to pull the wool over Swiss authorities' eyes. They don't like it, and can get a touch pernickety.

3
Do you have a EU or UK passport ?

If not, it's not technically acceptable to come in as a 'tourist' and then go 'job hunting'...

4
Answer . ...

5
This is a good website (mostly english with some .pdf documents in German) for reading a little more about employment within Switzerland

http://www.ch.ch/private/00054/00055...x.html?lang=en

It is also a good website for other useful information, living here, etc.

Hope this helps?

campkm

6
90 days in Schengen, 90 days out of Schengen. That's basically the rule. Non-EU people have a very very difficult time getting a job in Switzerland. If you are non-EU best to find the job before you come over.

Good luck.

7
It wouldn't be difficult to tell how long the person has been here because the 90 days applies to the entire shengen area. So if you spend a couple of days in Italy before (or during) your stay the 90 day "clock" in Switzerland has started.

When you enter any country within the shengen area, your passport will be stamped and indicate that you entered on a certain date....If you leave the Shengen area after the 90 days, you will have your passport examined and if they noticed you overstayed...you can get fined and the passport will likely be blacklisted for a period which depends on the severity of the transgression.

So...you could come here...live longer than 90 days...but after that you will get caught

8
A word of warning, a friend of mine a few years ago overstayed the 90 days deliberately and was hit with a 2 year penalty.

9
How could you possibly come here as a tourist and try to stay more than 3 months? You'll have to sleep somewhere. More than 3 months in hotels? Without a job? I hope you have a lot of money to spend. Rent an apartment? Won't you have to register at the Contrôle des Habitants? They'll want to see your visa!

My advice: know and follow the rules.

10
what about non working spouses? 90 day rule apply? i carefully read the "answer" as you posted, and there is no mention of spouses.

any help?

VD

11
then the spouse (who is working in Switzerland) applies for a family reunification visa for the spouse.

12
I knew a Swiss guy who did that in the US, and even though he only overstayed by two days (while on business), got a TEN YEAR penalty!

Tom

13
He at least did overstay. A friend on mine couldn't get into the States because he couldn't convince the custom officers that he really was THE Peter Meier and not another one. He had to take the next plane taking off LA and found himself in Vancouver. There he got himself a car and drove without any problems back to Los Angeles, where we met with a delay of two days.

14
A few years ago, when dirty furriners upon entering the USA still got that little tourist visa coupon (I-94W Departure Card) stapled to their passports, which was removed by the airline staff at the gate desk while leaving the USA, my coupon was not removed. I noticed that mistake several months after returning to Switzerland. From the legal point of view of the US immigration authorities, I was an overstay, although I had left the country.

There is a little office in London, Kentucky, that deals with such cases. At that point in time, all it had was a P.O. box address, no street address, let alone a phone number, fax number or email address. I was asked to send them evidence of my presence in Switzerland, such as boarding passes (who keeps them?), wage slips (I'm self employed), a Swiss immigration stamp in my passport (I'm Swiss, so I didn't get any), signed bank checks (nobody uses checks in Switzerland, it's sooo medieval) -- the whole list of possible documents didn't apply to my case.

The guys in Kentucky usually needed eight weeks to answer one of my letters, and express was mail impossible, because that needs a street address. In summer, the time for my next trip to the USA was running out. A friend of mine in Michigan, a famous journalist, suggested to ask the regional Representative on the Hill for help. And that helped indeed. Within ten days, my next entry to the USA was cleared. Without that, I would have been arrested on the spot and put in the next plane leaving the country, no matter what the destination was. Seriously.

That's bureaucracy at its best. And now the USA even demand payment of kind of an entrance fee for tourist, saying the profit is used for promoting tourism. That's like to promote virginity.

Swiss authorities handle overstays fairly strictly, which, in my opinion, is a necessity to prevent abuse, but they are humans too. My American OH recently had an issue, an overstay of one day due to a canceled flight. A brief call to the Federal Immagration Office in Bern solved the case within minutes, and other than a somewhat-longer-than-usual look of the guy in the passport booth at the monitor after scanning her passport, there was no problem.

15
Dirty furriners still get it if entering the US on a visa.

About a month ago I was flying out of Tampa towards the Bahamas so I stopped halfways in Fort Lauderdale Exec to get an exit stamp or surrender the I94 to the customs officer. There's no exit stamp, and the CBP wouldn't accept my I94 stub "because there is no procedure for the pilot surrendering his own I94, and how do we know if you really leave the country". So how do I prove I left the country? "Not our problem". Ah.

Eventually I was able to reenter the US not once but twice without having officially left. So much for the efficiency of inflated bureaucracy and border paranoia.

16
simply amazing Shorrick .....but then I had to look up your word "obfuscate".

Can someone please help me count? or tell me when the counting re-sets? my husband and I are confused on the issue but understand the basics, 90days in 180.

I have always tried to be within this when I escape the heat to walk through Switzerland but on leaving this summer (sadly) the Airport Migration lady looked for about 10 minutes at all my passport stamps - viele vom in der Schweiz naturalich. And in my schleckt Schweizer Deutsch I told her about my Schweizer friends, langauge learning, bergwald projekt, Wanderung...and she is probably still getting lots of laughs over her story........

then having an hour to wait for the flight (I hate being late) I did a little counting myself.....mmmm.....it seems to me that within a 148 day period, I did 4 trips from outside Schengen to in der Schweiz and Schengen....that amounted to 105 days....so please , when does the clock re-set?

does this mean I cant go back for 180 days now ? ie no white Christmas?

we so want B permits, as Australians it seems almost impossible.

17
Please use only English on the forum. If you write in another language you should translate it to English. So I have no idea what you said or what the agent said.

But since you are over your 90 days in a 180 day period you need to wait another 90 days before you can come back in.

18
so my humour does not translate either?

sorry I am just not 'getting it' but when does the clock re-set? it seems that it is not when you leave the 1st time, but that a whole 180 days must go by? is that it ?

19
There is no set time for when the "clock rests". If you have already used up 90 days within the last 180 days then you need to wait another 90 days before you can come back otherwise you'll be over the limit.

20
It's a sliding 180 day window, so if you have 90 days in the past 180, you have to wait until you have less than 90.

If today you have 90, but tomorrow you only have 89, then tomorrow you can come for one day.

If you want to come for 30 days, you must wait until the date that you only have 60 days in the past 180, etc.

Tom