Undocumented mother of Swiss children is allowed to remain in the country
Keystone-SDA
A mother of four Swiss children who has no documents is allowed to remain in Switzerland under the family reunification scheme. The Bern Administrative Court has upheld the woman’s appeal against a decision by the cantonal Security Directorate.
The judgement was published on Thursday. The Migration Service of the Canton of Bern had previously refused to grant the mother a residence permit because she was unable to produce valid identity documents from her home country. The only thing that is certain is that she comes from East Africa.
The Administrative Court concluded that the private interest in the mother remaining with her family clearly outweighs the public interest in obtaining unequivocal proof of her identity.
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According to the judgement, three of the four children have special educational needs. It would be unreasonable to expect the children and their working father to emigrate. The Office for Population Services was instructed to grant the mother a residence permit.
The woman had entered the United Kingdom in August 2008 and had applied for asylum there a total of four times without success. Following a linguistic analysis, the British authorities concluded that she was an Ethiopian national and not, as she had claimed, an Eritrean national.
In October 2021, she married her Swiss partner in the UK. He later moved back to Switzerland to take up a job. The children followed in stages. Eventually, the mother also entered Switzerland without the required visa.
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Translated from German, reviewed by an English Department journalist.
