Swiss Grandfather, can I get Swiss citizenship? Advice needed

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
1
Hi,

This is my first post on the forum and I was hoping for some help/guidance for if I'm eligible for Swiss citizenship. I have had a look online but I find it all quite confusing.

I'm 23 and live in the UK. My Grandfather was a Swiss Citizen his whole life. His birth and death are registered in Bern. My mum's birth was also registered in Bern but she for whatever reason decided not to keep her citizenship. Both of my aunties hold a Swiss passport but live in the UK.

I have a good knowledge of swiss politics/history and spent many happy summers in Switzerland with my Grandfather and try to go on holiday there as much as possible.

Sorry for a long first post but does anyone think that I am eligible for Swiss citizenship?

Thanks

Tim

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https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politic...nship/43211068

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1. Was your mother a Swiss citizen at the time of your birth?

2. Did your mother truly cease to be a Swiss citizen or did she simply neglect to renew her passport? If she did cease to be a Swiss citizen, how?

3. Were you ever announced to the Swiss authorities as the child of a Swiss citizen or have you ever held a document issued by the Swiss authorities or the authorities of a canton recognising any citizenship rights?

If your mother was Swiss at the time of your birth you will have been born a Swiss citizen due to art. 1 al. 1 aLN regardless of whether or not your parents were married.

However, since you were born abroad and assuming that you've never been announced to the Swiss authorities, your Swiss citizenship would have expired on your 22nd birthday (art. 10 al. 1 aLN).

Because your nationality expired, you can apply to be renaturalised under a facilitated procedure (art. 27 al. 1 LN). This action is available for 10 years following your denaturalisation, so you'd be able to do it until your 32nd birthday.

The new nationality law causes nationality to expire at age 25, but since you were 22 before the new law came into effect on 01.01.2018 one has to apply the law applicable at the time.

If your mother was not Swiss at the time of your birth , I am afraid there's no possibility for you to acquire Swiss nationality by way of facilitated naturalisation and therefore your only option would be to submit an application for ordinary naturalisation after having met the conditions.

Old nationality law: https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classifi...208/index.html

Current nationality law: https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classifi...990/index.html

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This may well be poor advice.

OP, just like the rest of this thread you should take what follows with a good measure of doubt. At any rate you do want to get reliable information by enquiring with the UK embassy or the Swiss government ( www.sem.admin.ch ).

Under old Swiss law the wife would automatically get the husbands's nationality upon marriage. Since holding multiple nationalities was forbidden she would lose her Swiss nationality.

Fast forward to 2006 when the current law became effective. These days there are no automatisms WRT citizenship, in particular each spouse keeps his/her nationality but may qualify for simplified Swiss naturalisation at some later point.

Now, there were multiple steps in the transition from old to new. But to cut a long story short, to remedy past discriminatory automatisms §58 of the law on naturalisation enables reinstatement of the wife's Swiss citizenship if she lost it due to marriage with a foreigner (she may have lost it, may have had to relinquish it, or may have failed to declare the wish to keep it, subject to when that happened and thereby what version of the law on naturalisation applied).

If your mother qualifies and applies for reinstatement of her Swiss citizenship, that would mean she was retroactively Swiss at the time of your birth which in turn would automatically give you the right to Swiss citizenship. The fact that you didn't register until age 22 would probably have no bearing because nobody knew you had that option in the first place.

Mind, what really applies depends on what actually happened, and when.

But the closing statement of section 2.2 in this federal paper (in German, sorry) tells me you definitely want to enquire further and get reliable information

"Conversely, the child can call on §58.1 if the mother was/is Swiss by birth and if her Swiss nationality has been reinstated after the child's birth."

"Hingegen kann sich dasjenige Kind, dessen Mutter nach seiner Geburt als gebürtige Schweizerin wiedereingebürgert oder aufgrund ihrer Abstammung erleichtert eingebürgert worden ist, auf Art. 58a Abs. 1 BüG berufen. "

Best of luck. And please report back on the reliable information you get.

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This is why I put the questions at the start of my post. Often people mistake an expired passport for expired nationality which is obviously erroneous.

You've quoted the old nationality law which is no longer in force.

Art. 24 al. 1 LN specifically mentions the conditions under which the child of a reintegrated Swiss citizen can acquire Swiss citizenship by way of facilitated naturalisation: Aged under 22 5 years of residence in Switzerland Of which the previous 3 years

The legislator has clearly given a solution to the question of the children of women who lost nationality prior to the birth of their children, and art. 58a aLN has not been transported into the new LN 2014. This solution is actually quite common in nationality laws. The determining moment for the transmission of nationality to one's children is the moment of birth, i.e. it depends on the nationality held at the moment of the child's birth.

Also, the document you linked is not a federal paper (Bundesblatt); it's a federal manual. The federal paper is this: https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/bu...ndesblatt.html

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Fast forward (actually backward) to 2018 were your so called "new and current law" became obsolete and was replaced with a new law, ordinance, and SEM handbook:

Law : https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classifi...990/index.html

Ordinance: https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classifi...117/index.html

Handbook: https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/de/home...rgerrecht.html

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Wrong.

Art. 58a old law https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classifi...ndex.html#a58a is covered in Art. 51 of the new law https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classifi...index.html#a51 .

Which in conclusion means the following statement is also incorrect:

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Swiss law has nothing to do with her getting (or not) English nationality when marrying in England, it is English laws that apply to such and those do not give away nationality through marriage as an automated proces.

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Until what year?

I know several woman who married Swiss guys in the 60s, 70s, and 80s who got their Swiss citizenship immediately and kept their own.

Tom

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He must have made a typo in that sentence, it makes no sense at all that Swiss law would make her gain a Swiss nationality by marriage in Switzerland and by doing so she would lose her Swiss nationality, or in case of marriage in England that Swiss law can dictate that she would get English nationality.

One of the two "Swiss" in his sentence must be "English", but which one.

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1978. And it applied to woman who married non-Swiss guys. But it was only automatic in case the woman did not declare that she wants to keep the Swiss citizenship as well. Here the original version from September 29 1952

https://www.amtsdruckschriften.bar.a...do?id=10038030

Art. 9

also the law did not really forbid double citizenship:

Art. 17

This weak formulation, which was abolished January 1 1992 as it was never really enforced and did only apply for ordinary naturalization. Any Swiss by birth, marriage, or through facilitated naturalization could have and acquire as many other citizenship as they wished and could acquire.

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I do know from several Dutch women who married in the 60s and 70s in Switzerland and who then lost their Dutch nationality on becoming Swiss.

Now it is possible to have both (under certain circumstances).

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My late wife had that problem when we married in '88, for 6 months I was married and she wasn't, and they wanted to take away her Swiss citizenship as she hadn't announced before we got married that she wanted to keep it.

Fortunately, the same had happened to a friend's sister when she married a German a few years earlier (and he has a Swiss law degree), so he knew what to do, but it all took six months and CHF 35 to iron it all out.

Tom

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Ah yes I overlooked that. Thanks for the correction

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Change the last "d" in the URL for an "f" or an "i" and the language changes. But you knew that already. I wouldn't get too pedantic about "paper" because it might have been meant generically, but yes it is the administrative manual.

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There is an old thesis on loss of Swiss nationality "over time" and in particular the mysogynistic old Swiss law that particularly affected women who were accorded a foreign nationality automatically upon marriage: in other words not including those who married Americans.

Pierre Immer, La perte de la nationalité suisse par l’écoulement du temps; péremption de la nationalité, Lausanne, Impr. Rencontre, 1964.

Also: Candice Lewis Bredbenner, A Nationality of Her Own: Women, Marriage, and the Law of Citizenship, online at https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpress...&brand=ucpress