Integration is important

Stuff reports:

When a Muslim couple sat down for a meeting with a municipal commission in the Swiss city of Lausanne, their interviewers found that they “showed great difficulty in answering questions asked by people of the opposite sex,” the city’s mayor said.

So they were both denied Swiss citizenship.

Mayor Gregoire Junod told Agence France-Presse on Friday that the man and woman declined to shake hands with people of the opposite sex and that their behaviour during the interview signalled to the three-person commission interviewing them that they had not adequately integrated into Switzerland.

Quite sensible. If you can’t bare to even shake hands with someone, you are highly unlikely to integrate. Far better to live in a country where shaking hands with the opposite sex is not a cultural norm.

Swiss teachers often expect their students to shake their hands in a move that is considered to signal respect for their authority. But in 2016, two male students from Syria refused to greet their female teacher in that way. The teenagers’ parents then faced fines of around US$5,000 (NZ$7535), after the region’s educational authorities said “a teacher has a right to demand a handshake.”

Again highly unlikely to integrate.