A migrant from Cameroon faces deportation from Switzerland after failing integrate, despite being in the country for ten years.
The African migrant, who has committed several crimes since moving to Switzerland, has been judged by a court in Bern as failing to properly integrate into Swiss society and has been ordered to leave the country, French-language newspaper Le Nouvelliste reports.
The African man was convicted of robbery in 2015 and sentenced to 34 months in prison and is said to be heavily indebted as well. Over the course of his ten-year stay in Switzerland, he is said to have cost taxpayers 200,000 Swiss Francs ($205,655/£169,350) in social assistance payments.
While he is said to have had a girlfriend at one point, the migrant never married while living in Switzerland, nor did he have any children.
The judges in the case also noted that he has family in his native Cameroon and has no problem speaking the local language. The area of the country where he is originally from is also not said to be dangerous for him to return to.
In 2017, Switzerland deported 1,039 foreign criminals, with African migrants making up the second largest group after migrants from the Balkan region.
The deportations pale in comparison to the total number of foreigners convicted of misdemeanours or felonies during that year which stood at 9,529. The largest group overall being North Africans who were convicted of 1,340 crimes that year.
Earlier this year, the Swiss government announced it would be increasing deportations and enacting a tougher stance on those convicted of terrorism saying that they would deport terrorists to their country of origin regardless of whether they face the death penalty at home.
Left-wing politicians were outraged by the move and said it could violate a number of conventions including the Geneva Convention.
In spite of this, the Swiss Council of States ruled that Swiss national security was more important than Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter’s constitutional arguments.
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