Facts
The Italian national [X.] , born 1955, entered Switzerland in 1965 and was granted a settlement permit in 1988. After separating from her husband and giving birth to her son, she returned to Switzerland in 1978. In 1995, she was issued a Swiss passport, although the naturalization procedure had not yet been completed. In 1997, she was convicted in Germany for narcotics offenses and served a prison sentence until October 1998. Upon her return to Switzerland, it was found that her settlement permit had expired, as she had been abroad for more than six months without applying for an extension.
The appellant claimed that she had assumed in good faith that she was a Swiss citizen and therefore had not applied for an extension. The Appeal Court in Foreigners' Law of the Canton of Aargau dismissed her appeal, as she had not filed an extension application within the first six months of her stay abroad.
Considerations
The Federal Court annulled the judgment of the Appeal Court and remitted the case for a new decision. It found that the appellant had assumed in good faith that she was a Swiss citizen and therefore did not have to file an extension application within the first six months of her stay abroad. The Court decided that the lower courts had wrongly failed to rule on the extension of the deadline under Art. 9 para. 3 lit. c RSFNA and that the case should be remitted to the cantonal aliens' police.
The Federal Court emphasized that the extension of the deadline should be granted for stays abroad that are by their nature only temporary. However, it was to be examined…