Congratulations gonzus..!!

so are there now any big moves planned for the near future..?

By the way, the Swiss citizenship did come around before the Spanish one. So I am still waiting for that one, but not that excited anymore...

I am Swiss. Yeah!

Well... Not really. I am open to anything but have no concrete plans as of now to move out of Chile. And with the world economy being in the state it is, perhaps this is a wise decision for the time being.

Why, do you have a job offer for me?

Congratulations!!!

Congratulations on the official news! That's great!

Congratulations gonzus! Enjoy your new feeling of Swissness!

I'm still waiting for mine though!

I apologize in advance for gloating... Today I received my shiny new passport and identity card. I think they are already worn out from how much I have been looking at them!

A couple of questions regarding the passport:

1. On page 01 it says "Signature", so I guess I do have to sign it. Is this so? What happens if I don't sign it? In Chile we don't sign our passports, hence my question.
2. On page 02 there is a list of items with numbers: "1 Name Nom Cognome..." etc. I guess these are just explanations for each of the information pieces included in the page where my photo is, right? Or do I need to do something with this page as well?

Happy as a clam.

Congratulations !
1. You should sign that page. Otherwise you will be stopped and be asked to sign it when you use your new passport at the passport control.
2. yes, they are just explanation in the four languages.

Congratulations on becoming a "high quality Swiss". What's that? I fear that I am only plain Swiss.

It was tongue in cheek, joking about the extremes the Swiss government goes to before giving out the citizenship. In this case, I had presented a certificate in March 2008 stating I had no legal problems in Chile, but they asked for another one, identical, in April 2009. That is why I wrote that I would become a "high quality Swiss"; I guess before that I would not have been high quality, according to the government's standards.

Sorry if I sounded presumptuous, I absolutely did not mean to. Best regards.

Hi, has anybody been asked about their close ties with swiss clubs abroad, I am a member of a swiss social club abroad but I do not participate. is it important to be an active member and does it have influence on the success of the application.

Hi johnny

How will they be ab le to determine how active you are?

Might be an idea to show up to the occasional event though.

Hola Gonzus:
Felicitaciones....! Finalmente no fue la Novena Region ni Pucon, sino Suiza..

Congratulations.

In my experience, there are two levels of filtering:

1. First level is at your local Embassy, where they will check (through the interview) whether you can speak one of the languages and what I call your local credentials: local Swiss nationals who know you (and who wrote letters for you), membership in local groups, etc. In my case, I made sure to participate in a couple of events organized by the group I belong to, where I knew the lady from the embassy would be present. That way, I was already in her mind by the time of the interview.
2. Second level is at Bern. They re-check everything the local embassy did, but have to trust the local good judgment anyway. Then, if they feel satisfied with that, they will contact the Swiss people living in Switzerland whose names you included in your application. They will basically ask them three questions: 1) do you know this person? 2) does this person have close ties with Switzerland? 3) can this person speak one of the official Swiss languages?

Hope this helps, good luck and best regards.

Gracias Fran. Se siente como un ciclo cerrado después de un siglo.

For the non-Spanish speakers: I am saying that gaining my Swiss citizenship feels like closing a circle that has lasted a century.

I find the experience of others quite different from my own. But there are different kinds of 'facilitated naturalisation' and perhaps that's the reason.

At one time, when Switzerland prohibited dual nationality, many Swiss women lost their Swiss nationality involuntarily by act of law when they married and automatically gained their husband's nationality. Or else when they voluntarily naturalised. After Swiss women gained the vote in the 1960s there was increasing anger over those expatriations, and it became possible for expatriated women to apply for restoration of Swiss nationality. My mother did that. They had to prove continued contacts with Switzerland.

Subsequently offspring of those women, and their minor children (grandchildren of the women with restored nationality) became entitled to facilitated naturalisation on condition that they speak a Swiss language, have lived 3 years in Switzerland, and have Swiss contacts.

My impression, from my own rather casual participation in the process, is that -- at least in the late 1990s -- criteria were not too strictly applied. Certainly nobody ever grilled me in French (and never mind that my ancestral and, now, actual commune of origin is Argovian); I had the distinct impression that the Swiss consular officer in New York who interviewed me did not want to speak French and was satisfied that my having attended university in Belgium meant that I met the qualification.

Ironically my residence in Switzerland was mostly as a foreign diplomat, for about 2-1/2 years. And for the rest I noted that I'd been taking holidays in Switzerland for decades and aside from a few months spent with relatives in 1961 had no details to offer.

Nor could I list very many Swiss friends and relatives. Most of our family died without issue. I have a large family tree but only four living relatives' names of persons resident in Switzerland appear on it.

And, some say, there's the crux of the matter. If the Swiss are inherently anti-immigration, what better way to compensate for low birth rate than to repatriate the second and third generation of those who left Switzerland when economic times were hard? Although as regular readers of Swiss Review will know, there's been a problem: the third generation does not have a language test. Many third-generation migrant Swiss who came to Switzerland from Argentina when that country's economy collapsed did not in fact speak a Swiss language and were handicapped in further education and employment. (Of course, today, like Micheletti -- Spanish speaking Italian citizen from Argentina -- such migrants could use the EU treaties to advantage. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/smartapi/cg...doc=61990J0369 )

My children attended French lycées, so "speaking a Swiss language" is not an issue. But for our youngest daughter, a recent medical graduate in England, Switzerland has only a fraction of the population of London and remains "just a nice place to visit". Even though she travels on a Swiss passport in preference to any of the other three she is entitled to by reason of ancestry or place of birth.

I grew up in the footprint of the Swiss Benevolent Society of New York, an organisation that still exists but had to close the Swiss Home in Mount Kisco as the Swiss community diminished and anti-discrimination law anyway threatened its identity. Perhaps the Consulate General knew all that, but we didn't talk about it. Just handed over forms. If the experience of others on this (and other) threads is accurate I suppose I should have been surprised when my application was approved, but that was then and this is now.

Thank you for this detailed information and congratulations on becoming Swiss! I am now applying to become Swiss. I have filled out most of the application and am waiting on some letters of support. My husband is Swiss but we live out of the country... now we have been married long enough for me to apply.

I have a question: Is the rest of the interview in the language of the country in which the embassy lies? I had thought the entire interview was in a Swiss language, but the way you describe it above it sounds like maybe just that one section?

Also, has anyone else in this forum gone through the interview in New York? I am wondering how different they are at different embassies.

Thanks once again! Your description is the only one in any detail that I have been able to find!! I am getting very nervous as I get closer and closer to being ready to make the call to schedule the interview.

In my case (which I believe to be the same everywhere else), most of the interview was conducted in the local language (Spanish for me); the Swiss language section of the interview (French for me) only lasted 10 to 15 minutes.

I am very happy to be able to document my own experience, especially if that is of further use for other people. Don't be nervous about the interview, it really is not that difficult if you take the time to prepare for it. The questions on history, geography, politics and current events are quite basic, pretty much what you would expect anybody (who has ties to the country) to know. The embassy lady who conducted the interview was also very nice, so the atmosphere was quite relaxed; I believe this to be the case for many other people, from what I recall from reading this forum.

One trick that served me well was to know a little of all official languages in Switzerland. I can communicate in French at a medium level, but also understand a little German (from my family background), can read Italian (because it is quite similar to Spanish) and took the time to review a little Romansch (say, count from one to ten). When the lady at the embassy saw all this, she was quite impressed with my "language skills", even if my French turned out to be not really that great. So the trick basically is to convey the idea that you are interested in these things. The same applies for everything else in the interview: knowing a little William Tell; having an opinion on Swiss direct democracy vs "average" democracy everywhere else in the world; conveying the impact of visiting your ancestor's land more than a century after they left; etc. These things will spice up any discussion about history, politics or geography; I believe they made the difference in my case.

Good luck with your process and please do let us know how it moves forward. If I can be of any assistance, please don't hesitate to contact me.

These are fair anecdotes. But in real life (and I write this as a retired diplomat who served once as vice consul) it all depends on the personality of the person interviewing. There are "jobsworths" (you can Google that, it refers to Esther Rantzen's programme 'That's Life') and there are those who look for a solution that will satisfy the law and yet get you what you want.

As I have said in, I think, another thread I applied for and received expedited ('facilitated') naturalisation and the consular officer at the ConGen in New York City hardly 'interviewed' me. He asked if I spoke a national language and I pattered away in French (I have a PhD from a Belgian university and can be presumed to speak the language). And he had a record of my family on his computer going back to 1917. My mother and grandmother were active in the Swiss Benevolent Society.

Also I lived in Switzerland with my family, albeit as a foreign diplomat, and my children attended local schools. And this story is a decade old. So perhaps my experience is unhelpful to modern readers.

More important is the internalised prejudice of some: a noted Swiss law professor and a government minister opined to me (in French no less) at a dinner at the ISDC in Lausanne that only a 'native speaker of Schyzerdeutsch' could be a 'real Swiss'. So: you may be up against a 'nativist', but that is unlikely. And even if you are, the 'marge d'appréciation' of the person interviewing you is limited. The woman at the consular window here inn London told my wife to 'get lost' when she asked about facilitated naturalisation: too few Swiss friends. But she was also told that in our circumstances it was irrelevant for a UK passport holder.

I didn't take the application or the interview all that seriously; I filed the application to please my mother and wound up living much of the time in Switzerland. As my wife is an EU citizen she needs no documentation, but if she could come up with ten Swiss friends (I couldn't, and never did, on my application; my Swiss family mostly died 'without issue' and I have few living relatives -- 4 I think -- left in Aargau and Zug) perhaps she could apply.

Somebody mentioned Romansh. My uncle spoke Romansh. And Schwyzerdeutsch too. And he was married to a Swiss. But he lived in New York and was executive head of Room Service at the Plaza Hotel. But aside from Swiss 'soirées dansantes' he didn't want to know: his daughter, my cousin, speaks neither.

Of course, you are absolutely right. It is hard to provide anything beyond anecdotal evidence; all I know about this process of facilitated naturalization is what my experience was like and what everyone else shares (or does not) in these groups. And your point of view, more as a "trade insider", is certainly interesting.

I agree that much of this is luck; if not for anything else, then because of the person who will interview you. If your lot is to be interviewed by a nazi bigot, you are pretty much screwed. But it seems to me that there might be a hint of a uniform policy that the interviewers must (or should) apply.

Something else is the fact that some of the policies the government is looking to apply do switch with time. For example, when I had my interview in March 2008, I only stated (without having to prove anything) that I had visited Switzerland twice. I know for a fact that today they are asking for proof of these visits: plane tickets, stamped passports, hotel and car rental bills, receipts at shops, etc. I guess this is probably due to people "misrepresenting" the truth about their trips.

Yes, this is true; your luck of the draw, in a sense. But again, in my experience, the person interviewing you is only the first filter. The final decision is made at Bern, and I would be willing to bet that an official federal employee would never display that kind of provincial attitude. Besides, what would all the natives from la Suisse romande say to that?

Best regards.