Status S procedures for refugees take an average of three months – News

The S status was intended to help refugees quickly and unbureaucratically. But the procedures are becoming increasingly longer and more complex.

Refugees from Ukraine with S status should receive protection quickly and unbureaucratically. At the beginning it worked well. At the beginning of 2023, around 97 percent of the applications were approved. They were answered within two weeks on average.

Current federal figures show: That has changed. Since the beginning of the year, the duration of the procedure has multiplied. And the responsible State Secretariat for Migration SEM is piling up more and more unprocessed applications. The proportion of rejected applications is also increasing.

In January of this year, every third decision was negative. Even over the entire first quarter, the so-called protection rate is only around 80 percent. One in five Status S applications is therefore rejected.

Anyone who had protection elsewhere will not receive S status

According to media spokeswoman Magdalena Rast from SEM, this is due to the fact that an increasing number of applicants are applying for S status who have already received protection status in other countries. “These people will therefore no longer receive protection status in Switzerland.” Since last autumn, Switzerland has been increasingly rejecting applications for protection.

And a second element has been added: the Swiss authorities are taking a closer look. At the beginning of the year, fake and illegally acquired Ukrainian passports made headlines. There was a suspicion that not everyone who applied for protection in this country was actually entitled to it.

S procedures take almost three months

The SEM writes that the clarifications have become much more complex. “The additional time required to process the applications is enormous.”

This also means that fewer and fewer incoming applications can be processed in a timely manner. While a procedure took around two weeks until the beginning of 2023, the SEM says it now needs an average of almost three months until an S application is answered.

As a result, the pending tasks are constantly increasing. There are now 6,376 pending cases – almost the same number as shortly after the outbreak of the war. And the trend continues to clearly point upwards.

In SEM it means being aware of the challenge. “The number of pending cases is high,” says Magdalena Rast. 38 full-time positions are being used to reduce these. “A further increase is planned until the summer.”

Centralized status S federal asylum center

In addition to more staff for status S applications, the SEM has also made organizational adjustments. Since the beginning of the year, the Status S procedures have been concentrated in the Federal Asylum Center in Bern and are only carried out there.

Legend:

In January, every third decision regarding a protection quota was negative.

KEYSTONE/Jean-Christophe Bott

The federal government says that for many people from Ukraine, the status is still a quick route to the protection they hope for. However, this path is no longer as quick and unbureaucratic as it was at the beginning of the Ukraine war. And as the procedures become more and more complex, the question increasingly arises as to whether the special S procedure still makes sense alongside the regular asylum procedure.