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How Switzerland’s strict immigration rules might have contributed to slow vaccination rollout

Since the start of the vaccination campaign in December 2020, cantons have experienced delays. One of reasons may be the shortage of qualified foreign workers in Switzerland.

Published: 26 April 2021 13:01 CEST

How Switzerland’s strict immigration rules might have contributed to slow vaccination rollout

Shortage of workers has caused delays in producton. Photo by GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP

One of the active ingredients in the Moderna vaccine is manufactured by Swiss company, Lonza, in its factory in Visp, Valais.

A reason cited for the delay in Moderna’s delivery is that Lonza lacks about 100 biotechnology specialists for the production of the base material.

The problem lies in Swiss immigration rules, which limit the number of workers allowed to come to Switzerland from non-EU/EFTA states, the latter including Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

“For us, it is important to employ people from Europe and all over the world,” Lonza’s Head of Global Operations Jörg Solèr said in an interview with Switzerland’s SonntagsZeitung newspaper.

However, the number of workers who are allowed to come to Switzerland from third countries — that is, from outside the EU/EFTA — is capped.

That’s because authorities want companies to privilege Switzerland-based employees over foreign ones. When a position can’t be filled by local workforce, employers can then hire people from the EU / EFTA, and only turn to third nations as a last resort.

Getting a work permit for them is not easy.

They can be employed in Switzerland according to a quota system. For 2021, the Federal Council set the number of these work permits at a maximum of 8,500. Only 4,500 of them are long-term B permits, and 4000 are short-term L permits, valid for up to a year.

This quota applies to all employees from third-nations, with the exception of the UK, who are allowed 3,500 work authorisations— 2,100 B permits and 1,400 L permits — of their own.

However, these numbers apply throughout Switzerland; the quota for individual cantons is much lower.

The Valais National Council is calling on the federal authorities to create exemptions from the current immigration rules for industries which depend on specialised employees but can’t recruit them in Switzerland or the EU.

“Many high-tech industries like Lonza can no longer find the workers they need in Switzerland or the EU. Quotas therefore do not protect Swiss jobs; on the contrary, they jeopardise the development and prosperity of Switzerland ”, said Valais MP Philippe Nantermod.

“The priority now is to produce the vaccine, not to limit immigration”, he added.

His motion will be discussed during the next parliamentary session in May.

In the meantime, given the urgency involved in getting the vaccine production back on track, the government is stepping in to find biotech experts for Lonza.

The Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA) is trying to locate specialised personnel among those employed by the federal administration and various universities.

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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 on 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.