Oh, and you may get a lower premium on many insurances (yes, your nationality is considered a risk factor, especially for car insurance).

Latest timeline - downhill to the finish line I hope!

April 2019: Gathered all documents, cost around 250chf
5.May 2019: Sent all papers to Kt. ZH
July 2019: received letter requesting additional document (son on application)
August 2019: Letter from Kt.ZH saying dossier sent the Gemeinde
September 2019: Letter from Gemeinde requesting one original language certificate.
October 2019: Letter stating knowledge test is prerequisite for interview and they had enrolled me for the exam. Bill for 180chf paid and learning guides /sample test received.
13 December 2019: Knowledge test completed under exam conditions
27 December 2019: Letter stating test passed (92/100), invite to be sent re town interview
13 August 2020:Letter received informing me that, due to COVID, the town to decide based on the documents/application alone. (no interview!)
08 September 2020: Informed that town will grant me "Gemeindebürgerrecht" (30 days after publication), bill for 500chf
21 October 2020: Confirmation from Kt. ZH that they have received my application back from the Gemeinde and processing could take a while. As others have mentioned, the letter explicitly permits moving within CH.
23 December 2020: Request from Kt. for residence confirmation, etc for our newborn child (not provided by the Gemeinde as they led me to believe)
12 January 2021: Confirmation of Kantonal approval, stated bill for 500chf to follow
25 January 2021: Bill for 500chf to Kanton ZH
08 February 2021: Bill for 100chf to SEM (Bund)

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So sayeth the 'Speed
* I do look like my avatar

Could it be, that you made a copy paste mistake and, given today's date, it should be:

Thanks for pointing it out, corrected :-)

For those who are curious, the Einbürgerung stats have been released (in DE) for 2020 . Previous year stats are here

Nationally the total for 2020 has dropped by around 18% since 2019, but in Kt. Zürich it is a 30% drop to the previous year. (ca.7'000 in 2020 vs ca. 8'600 in 2019.

I would say bottlenecks due to COVID, especially at the Gemeinde level, is the biggest factor here. Unfortunately the number of applications submitted are not mentioned, this would also be an interesting stat.

You'll notice the time will slow down to a crawl now.
This is either a relativistic effect due to increased downhill speed (time dilation), or a Swiss variant of Zeno's arrow paradox

I'm now checking for post even on Sundays.

In general yes, I guess Switzerland is too small (national workforce in comparison to the economic output) to create such limitations like US or France does - but anecdotally it happens - https://www.blick.ch/wirtschaft/auto...id8060795.html

It's pretty much guaranteed such things happen in most countries. A random example from https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/2007/50/de

4.3 Der Zugang zu klassifizierten Informationen ist nur Staatsangehörigen der Parteien gestattet, welche vorgängig eine Sicherheitsbescheinigung der entsprechenden Stufe erhalten haben und welche aufgrund ihrer Funktion und Stellung, basierend auf dem Grundsatz «Kenntnis nur wenn nötig»

Another milestone: my first voting pack arrived today. Yay!

I assume you are in the wave that does not need to send the document from SEM? Did you even get the document?

You are basically over the line. You will visit the very efficient passport office soon.

i remember getting my first one - yours is an important one too...mine was about the cow horns...so not that major but very swiss i guess

From what I understand this is an advance payment and, all going well, they'll send the approval straight to the canton in the next 2-3 months. In other words, the next correspondence I receive should be the money shot so to speak . Based on recent timelines posted here, that should be around June-July.

Ideally I'd like to give my oldest son his Swiss passport for his 3rd birthday

So true! It's gonna be a long 4 months or so.

On the last letter from the Kanton it stated they would give written information when the SEM issue their approval back to the Kanton. From what's been written here, could it be the case Kt.ZH generally combine this with the citizenship notification?

Getting there...

Feb 20 2020 - Submit application to Kanton ZH
Apr 09 2020 - Application sent by Kanton ZH to Gemeinde
Apr 21 2020 - Invoice from Gemeinde (CHF 1910)
Jun 09 2020 - Interview with Gemeinderat
Jun 19 2020 - Approval from Gemeinde
Jun 24 2020 - Names got posted in the local paper (public has 30 days to file a complain)
Aug 06 2020 - Application received by Kanton ZH back from Gemeinde
Sep 22 2020 - Invoice from Kanton ZH (CHF 1000)
Oct 29 2020 - Invoice from SEM (CHF 150)
Feb 16 2021 - Letter from Kanton ZH, in summary: SEM has granted approval, they will work on our application which can take up to 4 months

We got a letter from Kanton ZH today. It mentioned that SEM has granted their approval. And that Kanton will continue to process our application and that this could take 4 months.

So yes, in our case, citizenship notification would be another letter hopefully. These guys give out quite pessimistic date estimates. SEM said 8 months in their letter, but approved us in 3.5 months.

I am a little surprised this hasn't been quicker, but perhaps the latest COVID measures are impacting the SEM (and the Xmas break). I'm confident you'll get good news this month or next. This is especially based on kzs, who was 4 weeks ahead of you on the SEM bill and has been notified of his citizenship.

From those who have posted timeline in the last 12-18 months or so, the SEM bill => Citizenship notification has usually been between 3-6 months (with 4-5 months being usual).

In the meantime, after calling my Gemeinde and asking if I could pop in to pick up the application forms, we had our first appointment Wednesday last week. It was an informal sort of meet & greet meeting, with the whole family, the Naturalization employee, and the Gemeindepräsident (we live in a very small Gemeinde). After the usual introduction bits and questions they walked us through the process, while asking us some of the questions we should expect to have to answer to the Einbürgerungskomission when the time comes. They were super nice and polite; we didn't really expect anything different, to be honest.

It took me about a week to gather all the necessary documents (Wohnsitzbestätigung from the last 10 years, Familienstandregister Ausweis, letters of recommendation, our hand-written motivation letters, and all the filled-in forms). I will hand it all over tomorrow (hopefully I won't have missed anything...I did check 14 times).

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The internet makes it easy to be a jerk and forget the person we're talking to is a human. It also makes us see messages from awful people and assume they come from normal peers.

Small towns tend to be better if you are on their good side. References and a hand-written letter? You must live in one of the more conservative cantons It could be your hand-writing will be analysed by an expert, but not sure what the relevance would be in a citizenship application.

Caleb, we seem to be on a very similar timeline.

Normal naturalization of a child, not born in Switzerland, Kanton BS
Jan 5 2021: birth certificate, less than 6 months old, for registration in the Zivilstandsamt/civil registry office
Feb 2 2021: received the Personenstand document from the civil registry office
Feb 11 2021: sent the application to the Kanton
Feb 17 2021: confirmation of receipt from the Kanton, bill for 600 Fr, told to expect an interview in 5-7 months

When I got my first voting package I didn't realize you're supposed to reuse the envelope so I tore it open in such a manner that it was beyond repair. So I had to go and drop my ballots off at the voting booth personally. I'm sure they must have spotted as I was a first time voter as I didn't have a clue what to do.

Cool, will be good to get some insight into the process in BS. Interesting they hit you with the Kantonal bill right from the get-go!

lol...i did that too...but mine was way more complicated as i was in singapore still...took a long process to get a new envelope! now i am back here i can just walk down the road to my gemeinde for any drop offs etc...