Foreigners in Switzerland

• One in three people in Switzerland is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants – this amount to two million people.
• One in five inhabitants of Switzerland is a foreign national – this amount to nearly 1.5 million people.
• One in 274 people in Switzerland are a recognised as a refugee – this amount to 26,500 people.
• One in 111 people in Switzerland is an asylum-seeker – this amounts to 65'000.
• One in four marriages in Switzerland is bi-national – this amounts to more than 10,000 Swiss/foreign weddings every year.
• One quarter of the entire volume of work in Switzerland is carried out by gainfully employed foreign nationals – this amount to almost two thousand million hours a year.
• In the hospitality industry, one out of two employees is a foreign national – this amount to more than 100,000 people.
• One in twelve Swiss nationals lives abroad - this amounts to over 500,000 people.
• People from 196 countries live in Switzerland – most foreign nationals come from Italy: some 300,000 people.
• In Switzerland, the fertility rate is 1.48 children per woman – this is a third less than would be necessary for the long-term constancy of the total population.
• Without naturalizations the number of Swiss nationals would have been on the decrease since as early as 1993.
• The old people's homes and hospitals of the City of Zurich employ people from 87 different nations. Without immigrants, care, kitchen, and cleaning and maintenance work would be unthinkable.
• The cheese most eaten in Switzerland is neither Emmental nor Gruyere, but Mozzarella – last year, this amounted to 2.1 kilograms per head (meanwhile chiefly from Swiss production).
• The most frequent names of new-born children in Switzerland are no longer Karin and Christoph today, but Laura und Luca – in the last two years alone, more than 1,000 boys and 1,000 girls were given these names.
• 40 per cent of the members of junior football teams do not hold a Swiss passport – this amount to some 50,000 youngsters.
• Almost half the Swiss national football team has foreign roots – Captain Jörg Stiel was originally German, Ricardo Cabanas was Spanish, the Yakin brothers are of Turkish origin, and Mario Canta-luppi has Italian ancestors.

In a Nnutshell
In Switzerland, one person in five is a foreign national, among gainfully employed people even one in four; one in three of us has foreign roots; in the hospitality industry, one out of two employees is not a Swiss national; and in the world at large, all of us foreigners – almost everywhere.