Media release 13 December 2022
HEKS/EPER appeal helps ease family reunification
So far in Switzerland, it has been possible for temporarily admitted refugees to be joined by family members after a three-year waiting period, at the earliest. Following an appeal by a lawyer from the HEKS/EPER Legal Advice Centre (SAJE) in Lausanne, the Federal Administrative Court has now adapted its jurisprudence. Effective immediately, consideration of the right to family on a case-by-case basis must now begin before the end of the three-year period.
In 2016, an Eritrean mother and her then five-year-old son reached Switzerland after a traumatising journey, and applied for asylum. In the hope of reunification, she had always kept in touch with her husband, the father of her son, and who had also fled Eritrea. Despite her poor health, she managed to learn French and find a job. As her son's health was also problematic, she came to feel the need for her husband's support even more keenly. She filed an application for him to join her, but the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) rejected it on the grounds that the three-year waiting period for temporarily admitted persons had not yet expired.
HEKS