Hallo all,

Currently I am in Swiss for last 3 years on PhD student B-permit. My wife joined me on family re-union visa (B-permit) and found a job in Swiss. My contract is going to end on Feb2013 but my my wife has a unlimited contract from a well known company. Currently my wife employer has applied for her permit to make it independent.

I would like to know/hear your experinces of getting it. Please let me know if you have faced any situation like this.

Thanks in advance and any suggestions please.

regards,
Sai

I received visa for myself. Now waiting for the authorization for my wife. According to the dependent visa document it takes 6-8 weeks. Is there any tracking system? Will these x-mas vacation delay the process?

Hi everyone, I have recently moved to Geneva. We are non-eu and my husband is a b permit holder. We have recently done our civil marriage in Geneva canton and received our certificate of family. To get my permit card, we received a letter from canton stating that we are scheduled for a meeting at canton office in 1st week of April. My questions:

1. Is it possible to get the canton meeting pre-poned? I would like to apply for a suitable job opening that is open for just next 2 weeks

2. After the canton meeting, how long does it take to get the permit card?

Many thanks for help in advance.

Yesterday I got authorization letter for my wife. Now I will be able to travel along with my wife.

Hello

Is birth certificate compulsory?

No it is not required!

Thank you. In the official list of docs it says its only applicable if there are children. But saw some posts that they asked. Maybe they took it out as a necessary doc.

The Application is submitted in India. I sent an email to migrationsamt asking if I could give the documents in parallel. They sent me a reply saying fill Gesuch um Einreisebewilligung and then we will contact you for further documents after we receive it.

Should I do that or should I wait for the known process, i.e. let them contact me once they receive notification from the Indian side?

Thanks for your response.

It is indeed a great post SPatkar, I'm an Indian citizen pursuing PhD at ETH, I would like to get my here on dependent visa. I followed the process exactly as mentioned in your post. It worked absolutely fine until now without any hassles (thanks a ton for describing it so well) however I'm a bit confused now, hoping that you or anyone from this forum would help me out.
My wife submitted dependent visa application about 10 days ago and she also got her passport back with a small stamp on it. Like Spatkar had suggested I visited migration office Zurich to ask what docs I need to submit from my end however that asked me apply first and handed me "gesuch um einreisebewilligung" and asked me to submit this with passport copy of my wife. Today, that is after about after 5 days after I submitted got a letter from migration office stating list of docs I need to submit. I'm surprised to see that the list of docs are very different to what Spatkar has mentioned. They are asking for orginal marriage certificate, application form from my wife, health insurance offer for my wife etc.

I reckon that I approached migration before they received any notification from India that my wife applied hence they are thinking that I'm applying her entry from Switzerland. Could some please help me with this issue.

Many thanks
Athmanya

That's because you are supposed to start the application off, not your wife. She's your dependent, therefore you are the one who should make the initial application. If permission is not granted for a dependent's permit then a visa will not be issued!

Regulations have changed since SPatkar originally posted back in 2011 which is why the document requirements are different.

Also non-EU B permit holders don't have the right to bring their spouses to Switzerland under family reunification. However it can be done provided you meet the necessary requirements, which is another reason why you and not your wife has to initiate the application.

https://www.ch.ch/en/family-reunification

Thanks for the quick reply Medea Fleecestealer, I infact spoke to migration office Zurich before asking her to initiate her to the process.

Yes, but it sounds as if you didn't fill in any paperwork for the dependent permit application at that time.

I actually wanted to initiate the process here but migration office Zurich told me that my wife has to do it from India and once they get notification from India that my wife has submitted the application for dependent visa with all the necessary docs then I will be contacted by them asking for the documents I need to submit.

If this process is has changed them Swiss consulate in India would not accept her application for dependent visa isn't it? She also has a small stamp on her passport saying dependent visa.

Eshwar - are you perhaps confusing visa with permit? They are not the same thing. The visa, which your wife now has stamped in her passport, is to enter the country...not to stay and reside here. This is what the residence permit is for. It sounds like the visa has been approved for at least visiting you, and now you must submit the required paperwork for residency based on family reunification. Does that help a little?

Thanks 3wishes, I'm not confused with visa and permit. Its the small stamp(explained on Spatkar's post) on the page which says type of visa you have applied for and date it was applied. This is very different from the actual visa sticker.

@vishi, could you please let me know which process you finally opted for as I'm in a similar situation as you and would like to which is better.

Cheers

Guys in the same boat!

My husband has got himself registered in the canton of zurich & applied for our entry permit. They reverted back saying we had to apply at the Swiss embassy in India & we did. Our docs were sent via mail to Migration off in Zurich, but they needed the personal consular application as a hard copy which was despatched from the Swiss embassy here through the Diplomatic Post. This is what we were informed. My passport has been returned by the Swiss embassy in Delhi after 10 days with a small Visa D stamp, upon which I cannot travel to Switzerland or any Schengen state till the authorization from Zurich is received.

When I contacted the Swiss embassy they asked me to check with the Migration Office in Zurich. When I called Migrationsmat they told that the papers are with the scanning Department. But no news on the dates>. So all we do is just wait...

We have already completed nearly 5 weeks since my husband applied for us in Zurich & 3 weeks since we made an application in India.

Please be patient. It takes time. It took us 5 weeks after applying in India.

Hello all!
Finally we got our permits within 5 weeks and are now in Zurich. As per my experience, just a simple advise to all who are waiting- don't simply wait. Pls. Call canton offices and the embassy in India to get the exact status of your application. This is to ensure that nothing is stopping your applications from moving. In our case we were surprised to have been told by the canton office that after 5 weeks of my husband giving his biometrics the work permit was not through as the canton office had lost/ misplaced his biometrics data. This might just be a one off case, but we were asked to wait so we waited. If we would have not called the work permit would have been held even longer. No one called us or his office to inform about the same. So yes on one side being patient with the entire process is the key, it should not stop us from really getting an accurate status of our applications.

Thank you for the information. Will the Swiss Embassy in India send back the original marriage certificate along with the passport ?