First Residence Permits Issued to U.S. Citizens · Switzerland

## What this measures

The number of first residence permits in Switzerland issued to citizens of the United States in a calendar year: a new permit valid for at least three months, granted to a person who did not hold a permit in the same country in the previous six months. Any reason (family, education, work, other) and any length of validity.

## Why it matters

It is the cleanest official count of Americans moving to Europe. A first permit is a legal act, not a survey answer or a search spike: the person applied, qualified and arrived.

## How to read it

Higher means more Americans taking up residence in Switzerland. Between about 4,200 and 4,850 permits a year since 2015 (4,583 in 2025); 5,257 in 2013 is the most in records back to 2012. Switzerland did not report 2019 or 2020 to Eurostat, so those years are gaps.

## What it does not say

It counts permits, not people who stayed: a one-year study permit and a settlement permit each count once. Renewals and permits under six months old in the same country are excluded. Dual citizens entering on a European passport never appear. Reference years are reported with about a nine-month lag, and member states revise.

## Source

Eurostat, dataset migr_resfirst ("First permits by reason, length of validity and citizenship"), citizenship = United States, geo = CH, reason = TOTAL, duration = TOTAL. Annual, reference year = calendar year, dated 31 December. Palanor reads it from the Eurostat JSON dissemination API every day and rewrites the last eight years so revisions carry through.

Source: Eurostat (migr_resfirst). Eurostat data may be reused for commercial and non-commercial purposes with acknowledgement of the source; this series covers EU and EFTA countries only, which the reuse policy allows.