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IMMIGRATION

Geneva runs out of permits for non-EU workers

Several Swiss cantons have exhausted their quotas of B permits available to specialist workers from non-EU countries wishing to work in Switzerland, it has emerged.

Published: 26 August 2016 10:32 CEST

Geneva runs out of permits for non-EU workers

File photo: The Local

The canton of Geneva highlighted the issue in a letter to federal justice minister Simonetta Sommaruga this week, saying in a statement it was “extremely worried” that it could no longer offer the work permit to “highly qualified non-European specialists”.

Following the yes vote in the anti-immigration referendum of February 2014, the federal government reduced the number of permits available to non-EU – so-called ‘third state’ – citizens in 2015 and 2016.

Geneva’s prescribed quota for 2015 was only enough to cover the needs of third state workers because the federal migration office (SEM) was able to carry over some unused permits from 2014’s quotas – held in a federal reserve – Geneva authorities said on Wednesday.

But this year Geneva had used up its quota of B permits (a renewable residency permit) by March, it said. And now the federal reserve is all gone too.

“The Senate is therefore no longer able to respond in a satisfactory manner to work permit applications lodged by companies in our canton.”

The situation will make new companies think twice about setting up in Geneva, it said, and risks companies already established there moving to places with more lenient conditions.

It is therefore asking the federal government to “very quickly take the decision” to raise the number of available permits for non-EU citizens.

Speaking to Le Tribune de Genève, Francois Longchamp, president of Geneva’s government, said the cities of Basel and Zurich were in the same position.

The cantons will have to tell non-EU workers “to come back next year”, he said.

In 2014, Geneva had a quota of 451 B permits and 327 L permits (a short-term permit) to dish out, against this year’s allocation of 307 and 167 respectively.

While this situation hits non-EU workers specifically, it will become a wider issue should Switzerland go ahead with implementing quotas on immigrants from EU countries.

The country has until February 2017 to find a way of honouring the 2014 anti-immigration initiative – which approved quotas on all immigration – whilst maintaining its relationship with the EU, which depends upon the free movement of people.

It is not yet clear how the issue of quotas will affect British nationals coming to live – or already living – in Switzerland once Britain leaves the EU and becomes a third state country.

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With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.