The Swiss Federal Council said on Tuesday that an initiative proposed by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) up for a vote in May would end free movement and threaten the country’s economic prosperity.
An Italian man was denied Swiss citizenship because he failed the bear necessities - answering questions about local zoo animals. However a federal court in Switzerland has ruled that decision was unfair in a judgement which will impact future applicants.
The Swiss lower house of parliament on Tuesday rejected a proposed federal law that would have required all schoolchildren in Switzerland to shake hands with their teachers.
As children start the new school year, the secular canton of Geneva has issued guidelines for teachers on how to deal with religious issues in the classroom.
Switzerland should not cut itself off from the world. That's the message expressed by politicians speaking on the occasion of Swiss National Day on Monday.
Members of Switzerland's Socialist Party (SP) are volunteering to be “naturalization advisers” under a new campaign to help foreigners in the country become Swiss citizens.
A Muslim father was fined in Switzerland on Wednesday for refusing to allow his daughters to take swimming lessons at school, in the latest case exposing the challenges of integration in the alpine country.
Authorities in Basel have denied two Muslim teenage girls a Swiss passport because they refused to participate in school swimming lessons and residential camps on religious grounds.
The federal government is backing moves by the cantons, municipalities and employers’ groups to give priority to hiring refugees living in Switzerland over workers from outside the country.
<p>The far-right Swiss People's Party, the country's largest, on Tuesday filed a petition supporting a cap on immigration to <span class="il">Switzerland</span>, where more than a fifth of the population is foreign.</p>
<p><span lang="">Non-EU workers and their relatives will have to prove knowledge of one of Switzerland's national languages if they want to stay in the country.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The mayor of a small town in northern Switzerland has left office after positive comments he made about immigrants were met with insults and threats directed at his family.</p>
<p>Switzerland's asylum procedure, which can take years, should be "drastically" speeded up, Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said in an interview published on Saturday.</p>
<p>Nearly one in two Swiss believes there are too many foreigners in the country, but 80 percent say Switzerland would not be as economically successful without them, according to a poll published on Sunday.</p>
<p>The integration of foreigners is the top political issue for Swiss youth, overriding concerns about unemployment or climate change, a study released on Monday showed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Migrant children born in Switzerland are much less likely to go to university than Swiss children, mainly due to unfavorable conditions at home and language barriers, a study found.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">New figures show the number of asylum requests to Switzerland has increased by 51 percent in the last month</span></p>
<p>The Swiss Refugee Council has praised justice minister Simonetta Sommarug for a proposal it said would help speed up the process of granting or rejecting asylum. </p>
<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Swiss government has said a number of Swiss people train in Islamic militant camps abroad.</span></span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Applications for asylum in Switzerland rose 18.1 percent in the first quarter of 2011, official figures have shown.</span></p>
<p>Switzerland offers foreigners little protection against discrimination and counts among the worst countries in Europe for the integration of migrants, according to a recent study.</p>
<p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Items of clothing that cover the face, including burqas and niqabs, should not be banned in Switzerland, the country's upper house of parliament has decided.</span></p>
