The Zurich administrative court recently had to deal with the case of the Nigerian. The crucial question: Was it just an affair or a parallel relationship?
The Nigerian had to give up his Swiss passport, but he can still stay in Switzerland.
It was spring in 2003 when a 46-year-old Nigerian entered Switzerland under a false identity and stated a false nationality. He asked for asylum. Unsuccessful. At the time, the federal government did not respond to his request and ordered immediate removal.
Twenty years later, the man still lives in Switzerland. After marrying a Swiss woman, he even obtained citizenship. But an infidelity and an illegitimate child got him into trouble and cost him his Swiss passport. A year ago, the authorities tried to expel him again.
But he resisted that. And successfully, as it now shows. In a recently published judgment, the Zurich Administrative Court ruled that he could keep his permanent residence permit.
This tangled story is all about how serious the extramarital relationship was. Was it just a fling or a parallel relationship?
Legally, “the concealment of a parallel relationship that competes with the marital union in Switzerland” leads to the revocation of the settlement permit. Even if the spouse has nothing against the extramarital relationship and “married life in the sense of a triangular relationship or ‘ménage-à-trois’ is continued in parallel”. This is what the administrative judges write in their verdict.
He conceals the birth of his son from the authorities
In order to unravel the entanglements in the story of the Nigerian, one must first look back at the beginning of his time in Switzerland: After his asylum application was rejected in 2003, in July 2004 he married a Swiss woman who was six years his senior and had two children from another relationship . He is granted a residence permit and five years later a settlement permit. In September 2010 he also received Swiss citizenship. What the authorities didn’t know at the time: in autumn 2006 he fathered an illegitimate child in Nigeria.
This became a problem for him when he divorced his wife in 2014 and married his son’s mother two years later. The Nigerian and their second child later travel to Switzerland, where the family wants to live from now on. But the State Secretariat for Migration has something against it. It declares the naturalization null and void because the marriage to the Swiss woman was no longer stable and future-oriented during the naturalization process. He also concealed the birth of his son from the authorities. The decision to revoke his Swiss citizenship was later supported by the Federal Administrative Court.
However, the Zurich Migration Office then goes one step further. The Nigerian should not only give up his Swiss passport, he and his family should also leave the country by November 2021. From the point of view of the Zurich migration authorities, there was no doubt that the Nigerian had had a parallel relationship for years, which at the latest started to conceive the child.
However, the administrative court sees it differently. That is just a hypothesis that is not supported by the files or by the statements of those affected.
Ultimately, the decisive factor for the court is whether the Nigerian was in a parallel relationship at the time the application for a settlement permit was made in the summer of 2009. To find out, the court questioned the 46-year-old, his wife and his ex-wife, among other things.
Court: “A real, monogamous relationship”
The judges describe the Nigerian’s relationship with his current wife as follows: The two met in 2006 on the phone in Nigeria. At the time, the woman was working in customer service for an electricity company. Then there was a meeting and a brief affair. Weeks later, the woman was treated for fever in the hospital, and the doctors found out that she was pregnant.
By then, the Nigerian had long since returned to Switzerland. The woman told him on the phone that she was going to have a child from him. He is said to have been terribly upset about it and advised her to have an abortion. He also denied being the child’s father. It wasn’t until three years later that there was a brief reunion. However, they only resumed regular contact in 2012 after he separated from his wife in Switzerland.
His ex-wife thinks this is plausible. Before the judges, she testified that she did not believe that her then husband had a parallel relationship with his current wife during their marriage. At the time, he did not travel to Nigeria frequently or for long periods of time. The separation between them did not come about because of his affair or the illegitimate child. They would have had many problems, be it of a financial nature or with their pre-marital children who lived with them in the same household. The desire to separate was later finally clear from her.
For the court, based on the statements, it is clear that the marriage to the ex-wife was still alive at the decisive time and that a “real, monogamous relationship” can be assumed. This is not the only reason why the withdrawal of the residence permit should be rejected. From the point of view of the court, this would also be disproportionate.
The person concerned has been living in Switzerland for almost twenty years, speaks standard German fluently, works full-time and only received social assistance for a short time together with his ex-wife. He was also not guilty of any criminal offenses. His children are also well integrated. At the request of the court, the school directors said that with their “impeccable and positive behavior, they are impressive role models, especially for other children with a migration background”.
The family members should therefore be granted a settlement permit again. The judgment of the court has now become final and thus probably marks the end of this story.