Swiss. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
Her presidential campaign might have been a disappointment, but who says there’s no such thing as a consolation prize?
Helvetian people everywhere, know this: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) now officially walks among you as a full citizen of Switzerland. The firebrand member of Congress with propensities for looking off-camera, making greatly exaggerated policy statements and questioning the loyalty of her colleagues, became a citizen of the landlocked European state on March 19, Politico reported yesterday.
But how did Bachmann, an American lawmaker of Norwegian extraction, gain the acceptance of the Swiss, who are among the world’s stingiest when it comes to granting naturalized citizenship? Her husband, Marcus, who as the son of two Swiss immigrants, was eligible for Swiss citizenship since birth, but he only just registered for it in February, Politico found.
Bachmann’s office confirmed that the congresswoman had received Swiss citizenship, and attributed the decision to her children.
“Congresswoman Bachmann’s husband is of Swiss descent, so she has been eligible for dual-citizenship since they got married in 1978. However, recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family,” said Bachmann spokesperson Becky Rogness.
According to Swiss law, children who are born to at least one Swiss parent if the parents are married or a single Swiss mother count as natural-born citizens. That takes care of Marcus Bachmann. But there are two avenues by which non-Swiss spouses can gain citizenship.
The first route toward facilitated naturalization requires one to live in Switzerland for five years, show compliance with Swiss law and prove that one shows no threat to the proudly neutral state’s security. Michele Bachmann, best we can tell, does not meet this rubric. (Because she never lived there.) But there’s also a way that foregoes the requirement to go native. Residents of other countries who are married to Swiss citizens for at least six years (the Bachmanns married in 1978) can apply for naturalization after showing “close ties to Switzerland.”
Exactly what constituted Bachmann’s close ties were not reported by Politico, and the Federal Office for Migration’s website doesn’t specify what would satisfy the requirement. But that didn’t stop Schweizer Fernsehen, Switzerland’s largest German-language television network, from interviewing its new compatriot:
Yes, Bachmann, who suggested that last summer’s Virginia earthquake and Hurricane Irene were “divine warnings” to our fair city, is a citizen of sane, demure Switzerland. She’s even eligible to run for office there!
But how are longtime Swiss citizens taking the news? We asked the closest one we could find, which—whaddya know?—turned out to be this site’s editor, Martin Austermuhle, who was born in Switzerland to a Swiss mother.
“The Swiss have a proud 700-year-old tradition of neutrality, but das ist bullshit,” Austermuhle says. “I’d say it’s safe to say that we have our lederhosen in a bind, and yeah, we’re going to be asking some pointed questions of our government officials. (In our four official languages, of course.)”
