DNA test for Switzerland asylum-seekers

File photo shows two guards speaking together while asylum-seekers stand in the background in a refugee facility in Switzerland.

Certain Swiss Cantons are demanding systematic DNA tests on asylum-seekers who seek to be reunited with family members living in Switzerland.

Iris Rivas, head of migration services in the canton of Bern, said that the reason for DNA tests are that official papers from several countries are easily forged, Swiss newspaper Schweiz Am Sonntag reported Sunday.

Å“Identity papers or birth certificates must be considered as suspect” when presented by people seeking residence under the family reunification program, Rivas said.

The demand is also supported by the canton of Lucerneâ„¢s migration chief Alexander Lieb, who said, Å“Identity control in the case of family reunification is too lax.”

Under current Swiss law, DNA tests are allowed on a case-by-case basis when there is serious doubt that a claimant belongs to the same family.

Meanwhile, Switzerland has recently come under fire for its treatment of asylum seekers, including segregation and poor living conditions.

Police dismantled a protest camp this week at the Solothurn train station in the northwestern part of the country, where a group of ten asylum seekers protested against their living conditions in a subterranean bunker, describing it as Å“unworthy of a human being.”

The decision to end the rally was taken after police feared the demonstrators would be attacked by local residents who were outraged by the protest.

In the beginning of August, the town of Bremgarten, located west of Zurich, imposed rules denying asylum-seekers to access certain public facilities, including the public pool, gyms and even the town library and churches.

In addition, Swiss citizens voted overwhelmingly in a referendum in June to apply stricter asylum criteria, notably the removal of military desertion as a valid reason for asylum.

Switzerland is among the European countries, which receives the highest number of asylum-seekers in proportion to its population.

However, only fewer than 20 percent are granted asylum in the country in a process than can take several years.

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Republished from: Press TV