Unaccompanied minors benefit from special protection in Switzerland, which is lifted once they reach the age of majority. As part of the special page of the Forum program dedicated to asylum, RTS collected the testimony of two of them.
Eliseu arrived alone from Angola when he was a teenager. However, the Confederation refused to grant him refugee status. “At the age of 18, as I came of age, my status changed. I was no longer an unaccompanied minor arriving in Switzerland and looking for support, and they decided to send me back,” he says.
“Except that we appealed, and since then it’s been appeal after appeal.” Faced with this perpetual uncertainty, Eliseu cannot live peacefully. “Physically, it’s fine, but mentally it’s the problem. Staying inactive without working, without being able to do training (…) it’s a life full of suffering. I wonder who I should be.”
Often, the options that an undocumented migrant has to meet his or her needs is trafficking on the street.
Eliseu, in appeal proceedings against the decision to dismiss him
“I don’t even dare think about tomorrow, because I’ve been living in this situation for 10 years. If I fill myself with a lot of hope, I could collapse very quickly,” explains the man who dreams of becoming a lawyer or doctor.
But this prospect seems very distant for Eliseu. “When you’re an undocumented immigrant (…) you don’t earn your living and you have to fend for yourself. And often, the options that an undocumented immigrant has to be able to provide for his or her needs are the traffic in the street.”
>> Eliseu’s testimony: Eliseu’s testimony / News in video / 2 min. / yesterday at 5:35 p.m.
Study medicine at university
Sarah, for her part, experienced a completely different trajectory. She fled her country in the hands of the Taliban with her father, who was threatened with death. “They forced us to stop school, otherwise we would be killed,” she explains. “In Afghanistan, they say that Switzerland is the image of paradise. It’s green, it’s beautiful.”
We, the migrants, were pushed to do apprenticeships, which was not at all my goal. And I fought to go to the gym
Sarah, asylum seeker who arrived as an unaccompanied minor
Arriving as an unaccompanied minor, Sarah now has asylum seeker status and has been studying at the gymnasium for four years. “I started with general knowledge, but given my grades, which were good, I moved on to maturity. Currently, I am in the third year of maturity.”
This journey is far from self-evident. “We, the migrants, were pushed to do apprenticeships, which was not my goal at all. And I fought to go to the gym.” And Sarah doesn’t plan to stop there: “Later, I would like to study medicine. I signed up for it.” She has no trouble projecting herself: “In five years, I see myself at university studying like a madwoman.”
>> Sarah’s testimony: Sarah’s testimony / News on video / 2 min. / yesterday at 5:36 p.m. >> See also the big debate on asylum in the Forum show: The big debate – is Switzerland a land of asylum? / Forum / 28 min. / yesterday at 6:10 p.m.
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