Comment by stakhanov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stakhanov | Hacker News Reader

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Last time I heard (which was indeed a long time ago, so maybe things have changed), if you wanted citizenship, then your village had to take a vote, so you were well-advised to join the volunteer fire department and that sort of thing, if you wanted citizenship.

Now, with an eye toward the social dynamics of village life, I've always found the notion quite alienating to try to immigrate in a country where petty grievances held against me by my fellow villagers might block my path towards naturalization.

The picture is probably slightly different in more urbanized places, but, in those, it probably boils down more to a question of money.

I'm not sure what to make of your "a quarter are immigrant" statistic. Do you mean they live there, without being citizens? Is that number high precisely because the path to naturalization is so difficult? The number of non-citizen permanent residents, for example, is also extremely high in certain rich Arab countries (like the UAE), but they are effectively an underclass of indentured servants. So "immigration-friendly" is not what that kind of a statistic is saying at all.

(From personal experience) there's a large proportion of people living in the big Swiss cities as 'ex-pats', working for (mostly large) employers who support/sponsor their immigration and ongoing employment. (Such people are well-paid and equally-treated, and certainly not "an underclass of indentured servants".)

If one stays employed in the long term, citizenship is not needed, and IME only a small proportion of ex-pats attempt to achieve it - either because their career and life plans are likely to eventually lead them to move elsewhere, or because there's no incentive in their personal case, or disinterest, or because of the perceived difficulties.

You're right that parts of the system for achieving citizenship may sometimes be problematic, and the Swiss have somewhat of a reputation for racism, especially in the less metropolitan areas. (Of course, you could also say the same for many countries.). There have been anecdotes of people repeatedly failing to achieve citizenship through exactly the issue you originally raised.

That said, the overall approach to citizenship taken by the Swiss is mostly praiseworthy, as some of the more impressive aspects of Switzerland (e.g. its direct democracy, and the engagement of citizens in politics and the democratic process) are embedded within the shared culture of its citizens, and the citizenship process takes a decent shot at preserving this culture - requiring, for example, proof of significant language skills and knowledge of current affairs and politics.

Reminds me of a friend that married a German. In order to become himself a German citizen he had to pass an integration exam with questions about history, law and culture. He passed the exam, his German partner tried the same set of questions and failed it.

Such an exam exists also for America, the USCIS Civics Test.

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