Swiss citizenship

I took a Swiss citizenship course last year.   We must wait yet another year to begin the process (residency requirement reduced from 12 to 10 years in 2016) but I thought the course would be fun and it was.  Unlike the US, Switzerland has no Jus soli law (Latin: right of the soil) which grants the right of citizenship to anyone born in the country.   It doesn’t matter how many generations of your family were born here, someone needs to get the citizenship ball rolling.  Only about 2% of the roughly one million people (out of eight million total) who have been in Switzerland long enough to apply have done so.  In response, the government has initiated some measures, this course being one of them.  Ironically, six weeks into the class the Swiss collectively, but narrowly, voted to restrict immigration.  This didn’t affect us as we already had our “C” permits (like a green card in the US) but it was fascinating to see this issue from both sides.  All of the others in the class were similarly legal and it made for some interesting discussions.  I was the only citizen of a G8 country (the Russian lady would’ve counted until Putin invaded the Crimea) and as an American I (not proudly) admit to a certain smug tendency to assume that this ballot wasn’t meant for us anyway.  The class included a guy from the Congo who came here by accident 22 years ago and a Croatian couple who’ve been here since 1987 and whose three children were all born here.  The others were from Turkey (several), China, Portugal, Serbia, Greece and Colombia.  Citizenship requires a language test (written and speaking), knowledge of Swiss history and government and demonstration of assimilation.  People ask me often if we’ll apply if we’re still here in 2018 and it seems like a no brainer, not so much for Lisa and I as for Paige.  You can never have too many options and someone needs to get the ball rolling.