I heard this morning (from a friend who attended the BS-BL Integration "round table" - an event where the city officials meet with a bunch of companies and organisations that help foreigners) that as of next week anyone registering their residence in Basel Land will be required to attend German classes in the first year of their residence if they wish for their work/residence permit to be approved. After a year it will be necessary to prove language proficiency if you wish to keep your permit.

Has anyone heard of this (utter tosh!) before? The BS officials seem to be quite happy about this apparently - they basically said something along the lines of "now all the foreigners will be living and paying taxes in BS then!" apparently the relocation agencies who were attending were pretty stunned by this too.

Is it new? Has it been on the cards for a while? Anyone else heard this? I mean, I've heard rumours of such things in the past but it's never actually materialised. Should we be worried?

I wonder if lessons will be free.

"Bring it on" I say, I need a good kick up the ar**

You should not be worried, you should improve your German

Ich auch

The lessons will be free, BUT there will be some fees to be paid

- registration : CHF 12.50
- admin. fee : CHF 09.75
- contribution: CHF 08.75
- Fixe Taxe etc CHF 05.25
- Porti, phones CHF 07.75
---------------------------------
total --------- CHF 44. --
=============================

to be paid on registration with the
Sekretariat

...if people in Switzerland would actually speak german it would make sense...

seriously, no they can't force people to learn the language and throw them out if they don't...good luck on getting people to work for this country...

If they force language classes AND provide them for free, I'd try to get hubby to agree to move out to BL - probably easier than getting him to pay for (my) classes.

Rent is cheaper Peg AND you would be closer to me

The companies are responsible for bringing in foreigners, so I say, let them organize intensive language classes during working time...

Well, for me, my German is "OK" so I reckon if it was a basic test then I could do it. My husband is also fluent so I might be allowed to hang onto mine by marriage! There was actually no mention of retrospective checks - so only for "new" people coming into the canton. One would hope that those of us having lived here for 15 years and speaking rubbish German would be exempt

And no, there was no mention of free classes - I asked that too! Although I guess a lot of international companies offer classes in relocation packages.

I suppose it just bugs me - I think it's yet another "try to get rid of/discourage all those nasty foreigners" move - I can't see anything encouraging or helpful about taking away someones right to live/work here if they don't learn German.

Most people who live here for a while do try and learn. But some (like me) find it very hard - both to find the time to do lessons and also just that I'm not good at languages full stop. But I can still contribute a lot to society and pay my taxes even without being fluent in German. Why should the government care if I speak English, German or something else? I'm not harming anybody by speaking rubbish German, and I don't insist that everyone else speaks English, so I can't see why it's important enough to not grant a permit to someone. I know a lot of people who came here because they can speak English - their companies want native English speakers.

Presumably it applies only to non-EU citizens - otherwise they would be in breach of the bilateral agreement; which is more of benefit to CH than the other way.

Cheers,
Nick

Was söll dänn daaas heisse ? Di allermeischte Lüüt daa dünnd ja Düütsch rede !

In other words, people, I mean the overwhelming majority in this country DOES speak German

even if some local sayings like "da da da da, da da das ?" (Dass das das darf, darf das das), or "«Aa Zaane voll Saapfe d’Laatere abschlaapfe». (ä Zeine voll Seife d'Leitere abschliiffe) are a bit difficult to get,. just as to realize that "Schtaa am Rhaa" is Stein-am-Rhein and that people from that town of course when speaking do "Schtaanere"

The Bilateral Agreements of course are beneficial to CH in a big way, but the SVP since the start of that program continuously tried to ruin the Bilateral process

I speak french like the majority of the Swiss. Even on the german side. I am happy this way and lucky the swiss want to speak french with me!

I honestly don't feel handicaped to not speak german. I know enough of the basic to make people understand that I don't speak german but I also can figure out what they are telling me in german.

I am trully lucky and thankful to them for that.

If you understand what people are telling you in German you have won 80% of the show

At the other hand, Baslers and French language are a rather strange thing. I still remember an evening in Paris. I met a friend from Zurich who told me that we were to meet three chaps also in aviation journalism from Basel, and so I by error thought that THEY would take over the French BlaBla. It in reality turned out that it was me who in that Brasserie got appointed to be Mr BlaBlaFrançais !

I'd expect you, being French-Canadian, to speak much better French than the majority of the Swiss.

Ok, you deserve the Thank here! Soon you'll get the greenie....

Majority yes. Overwhelming majority? Not so much.

I've no idea whether this proposal is true or not, but (as a non-speaker of German resident in BL), I'm supportive of the idea.

I find it pretty difficult to navigate my way through the bureaucratic quagmire of Basel Landschaft government, taxation, permits, utilities, etc, without at least basic German, and harder still to integrate myself into the local social scene if I expect everybody else to switch to English whenever I'm around.

For those of us from English-speaking countries with large immigrant populations, how many residents of your homeland did you meet who couldn't speak enough English to make themselves understood? In decades of living in Australia, I can recall maybe two such people, and both were very elderly (and seemed a little peeved at being there -- clearly it was purely because their children had decided it would be better for them to be there than in Vietnam). Sure, English is the lingua franca and there's no real need for English-speaking residents of English-speaking countries to speak any other language, since most of the rest of the world learns at least some English at school -- but why should we expect non-English-speakers to speak English in their own countries?

The British Raj is dead and buried.