Délits de Séjours

You don’t have a license, you don’t have a job. You have no job, you have no money. You don’t have money, you don’t have housing. You’ve got no health insurance, you’ve got… you’ve got nothing! That’s no way to live. Frankly, it’s no life. And that’s it. So, Papyrus, you need to prove that you earn money, that you have an employer who can prove that you’ve been working with him for years, tac tac… and me, I don’t work, you see?

For example, if I have to go outside Geneva, I’m always scared to death. Even on the train, I always have my ticket. But even with a ticket, I’m always afraid of identity checks. All it takes is one check and I end up in Champ-Dollon (Geneva prison) and get deported. Because I’ve been given a notice of expulsion, if I’m stopped, I’ll be held in administrative detention until I can find a charter or agree to board a plane voluntarily. A charter is a special flight on which migrants are deported in groups of ten or twenty, and handed over to the authorities in their country of origin. They put the people in administrative detention while they do what’s necessary: get everyone’s passports, organize the flights, obtain the “laissez-passer” as they call it. Because I can’t have a passport if I want to go back home.

It’s a really huge source of worry, but even more than going back to my country, it’s my health that worries me. My biggest fear is that I’ll end up on the street and won’t be able to pay my rent, that I won’t be able to stay dignified and won’t have access to healthcare. This fear has a direct impact, creating a vicious circle. I have a chronic illness that requires a healthy lifestyle with as little stress as possible. But without access to healthcare, you’re bound to feel stressed, and that has an impact on your health. So it’s a vicious circle.

I left Algeria in 2008 to study in France. At first, I had a student permit, but in the meantime, a political decision to reduce the number of residence permits granted to students meant I lost my right to stay. I was expelled from my school and lost my job. I started looking for an equivalent school in Europe that was just as reputable, and that’s how the choice of Geneva came about.

After passing the Geneva entrance exam and validating my registration, I began my studies. A lawyer had recommended that I apply for a permit, knowing that the worst that could happen was to be refused. So I applied to Geneva, who gave me their approval for a one-year permit. Except that a second approval was needed to validate the permit, that of the SEM (Secrétariat d’Etat au Migrations), which refused to issue it to me. Following the refusal, I lodged an appeal, and a whole procedure ensued.

I live in constant fear of a dramatic ending. If I get arrested by the police and expelled, it will really be a failure. I tell myself that there are other students from elsewhere who may have succeeded, who may have had a different path to mine. So I feel guilty, I tell myself that maybe I wasn’t good enough. Maybe I didn’t make the right choices. I feel very guilty even though I know that Switzerland is one of the most restrictive countries in terms of immigration. If it had been another country, a little more tolerant, I might have had a different path. But if the school I went to here existed elsewhere, Switzerland would have been the last country I would have thought of. It was really access to training that interested me first and foremost.

You always have to meet criteria for everything. You’re always in a test phase at work, with no security, so no stability – economic, moral or emotional – in any area. You can’t plan for the long term, because you don’t know if you’ll have to leave Switzerland tomorrow. I can’t have a house, I can’t take things long-term either. Not having the right to live because you don’t have a permit, or living invisibly in society.
For example, you need a credit card for a lot of things, like signing my son up for activities. The right to get sick, to be able to recover if you are sick, you don’t have, because that becomes a lost day, unpaid – so an even smaller salary – and we can’t afford that.