So you say you want to live in Switzerland?

Ali – I have heard that each country offers its own unique challenges to relocating foreigners. These are Darwinian puzzles to solve that test your ability to adapt and thus quickly weed out the weak-willed or ill-suited. I was recently told that the Motor Vehicle Administration is that survival-of-the-fittest experience for newcomers to the US.

 I would say that here in Zurich it is the residency permit process. It starts prior to your move with your Zurich-based employer submitting a dizzying number of documents and bits of information to the local government including: passport copies, credentials (resume or biosketch and proof of all academic degrees), and your parents full names and birthdates (because someone in the Swiss immigration office must be a big genealogy enthusiast).  In my case I also needed a letter of support from my current employer – Johns Hopkins – promising the local Zurich government that I would be coming back from Zurich in 1 year to a waiting job. The message here was clear: ‘Danke for coming but do go home in a year, bitte.’ 

After a couple months or more, you get a piece of paper in German that you then submit along with an application for a type B visa and your passports to the Swiss embassy. And after three trips to the Swiss embassy, logging 6 hours of driving to and from, you will have passports with lovely Swiss Visas!  Now once you arrive in Zurich you have 2 weeks to find your district immigration office and give them the following: passports with pretty visas, work contract from Zurich employer, birth certificate of daughter, marriage license, piece of paper in German that you got back in step 1, and full names of parents (because why the heck not!). Oh and there is also the small matter of the 200 CHF per person fee. Now for all this you get a stamped piece of paper that says Meldebestätigung für ausländische Personen. This is your temporary residency permit that is good for almost nothing. You then make an appointment to show up for photographs and fingerprints at the main immigration office for Zurich. Don’t forget to bring passports and your Bestätigung (that’s the useless temporary permit). Proof of health insurance is also needed at this point because Switzerland has Obamacare, i.e. mandated health insurance sold through private companies. 

Thus far we have made it through step 3 by sheer dumb luck – I threw our marriage license and Maya’s birth certificate into the suitcase on a whim. We have step 4 coming on the 25th of July at which point we will have proved our survival fitness and worthiness to enter Swiss society. On that great day we will get our shiny new Ausländerausweis or lucky foreigners ID, which is like the golden key to the city. We flash that baby and doors open, melted Swiss cheese pours into our outstretched fondue pots and the secret stash of ‘real’ Swiss chocolate (not the crap they sell to tourists) is revealed! Also at that point we can finally become initiated into the Swiss banking system – which I assume must be like sitting in a massage chair while money pours on your face.