Bern, Switzerland
Swiss voters this week rejected a proposal to grant automatic citizenship to the grandchildren of immigrants. Even people who were born in Switzerland and whose parents were born there are ineligible for citizenship unless they go through a cumbersome application process. “We don’t want Switzerland to be a doorway for all and sundry,” said Maria Angela Guyot of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party. Switzerland earlier dropped a requirement that applicants for citizenship have their homes inspected to see whether they conformed to Swiss standards of cleanliness, but the application is still lengthy and complicated. One in five Swiss residents is not a citizen; most of those are immigrants from Italy or the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
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