Investors Are an Exception to a Qualification Rule, Not a Programme With a Price
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Jamaica on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
195 exceptions recorded across 74 countries · none match Jamaica to Switzerland · Residency through investment
Switzerland has no investor residence programme and names no sum. What it has is one line in article 23 of the Foreign Nationals Act. Paragraph 1 says short-stay and residence permits for work may be granted only to executives, specialists and other qualified workers; paragraph 3 then lists five kinds of people who may be admitted in derogation from that, and the first of them is "investors and entrepreneurs who preserve or create jobs". Everything else still applies: the admission must serve the overall economic interest, the pay and conditions must be customary, there must be appropriate housing, and the permit comes out of the canton's or the Confederation's annual quota. The implementing ordinance adds nothing - it contains no article implementing article 23(3) and no investment threshold anywhere. The test is jobs preserved or created, assessed by a canton, and no amount of money satisfies it on its own.
At a glance
- Minimum investment
- None stated in article 23 of the Ausländer- und Integrationsgesetz or anywhere in the Verordnung über Zulassung, Aufenthalt und Erwerbstätigkeit
The statutory test is qualitative: investors and entrepreneurs "die Arbeitsplätze erhalten oder neue schaffen" - who preserve or create jobs. The ordinance contains no article implementing article 23(3) and no threshold.
- What the provision actually does
- It exempts investors from the rule that only executives, specialists and other qualified workers may be admitted
AIG article 23(1) states the rule and article 23(3) the derogation. Being an investor removes one obstacle; it does not remove the others.
- Conditions that still apply
- Overall economic interest, customary pay and conditions, appropriate housing, and the annual quota
AIG articles 18 and 19 for the economic interest, article 22 for pay and conditions, article 24 for housing, and article 20 with VZAE Annexes 1 and 2 for the quota.
- Who decides
- The canton, within its own quota; the federal migration secretariat where the Confederation's quota is used
AIG article 40(1) and (3). There is no national investor desk and no national published criterion.
- Buying property instead
- Not a route to residence, and separately restricted
The acquisition of real estate by people abroad is governed by its own federal Act (BewG, SR 211.412.41), which has not been read for this record. Nothing in the admission Act or ordinance makes a property purchase a ground of admission.
Requirements
- An investment or an enterprise that preserves existing jobs or creates new ones
- Admission in the overall economic interest of Switzerland
- Customary pay and working conditions for any employment involved
- Appropriate housing
- A unit of the annual quota for short-stay or residence permits
- A decision by the canton, with federal approval where the federal quota is used
Country-level policy
No country in this corpus distributes migration decisions the way Switzerland does, and nothing else about the Swiss system makes sense without it. The Confederation writes the Act and the ordinances; the cantons grant the permits. Article 40(1) of the Foreign Nationals Act says the permits under articles 32 to 35 and 37 to 39 are granted by the cantons, reserving federal competence for the quota, for derogations from the admission conditions and for the approval procedure. Where there is no right to work, the labour-market pre-decision is a cantonal act too. The federal migration secretariat sits behind it rather than in front: the Federal Council decides which cases must be submitted to it for approval, and it may refuse approval of a cantonal decision, time-limit it, or attach conditions. The same split runs through naturalisation, where the Confederation authorises and the canton decides, through health insurance, where the cantons enforce the duty and may reduce premiums, and through the quota itself, which is divided among the twenty-six cantons before anyone applies.
Swiss federal law is published simultaneously in German, French and Italian, and for enactments the three versions are binding in the same way. No version prevails, which is the opposite of the arrangement in Malta, where the Constitution makes the Maltese text prevail over the English. That decides what this site quotes and how: any one of the three is the law, so the quotations in these records are in German, and the French and Italian versions of the same articles say the same thing with equal force. The second question the publication Act settles is the status of the platform. Article 1a says publication happens centrally through one publicly accessible online platform; article 15 then says the version published in the official compilation is authoritative for federal enactments, and that the version published on the publication platform is authoritative. Swiss consolidated texts are therefore not unofficial in the way Austria's RIS consolidations are, where the authentic text is only the one in the federal gazette.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Jamaica
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«Investorinnen und Investoren sowie Unternehmerinnen und Unternehmer, die Arbeitsplätze erhalten oder neue schaffen;»Our translation - not official
investors and entrepreneurs who preserve jobs or create new ones;
The whole of the investor route in Swiss law, in eleven words. The relative clause is the test, and it is about employment rather than about capital.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Switzerland's single publication platform for federal law, carrying the Amtliche Sammlung (AS), the Systematische Sammlung (SR) and the Bundesblatt. It is the platform article 1a of the Publikationsgesetz (SR 170.512) requires, and article 15 of that Act makes the version published on it massgebend - so unlike most consolidations in this corpus, Fedlex's text is authoritative rather than a convenience copy. Article 14(1) of the same Act requires simultaneous publication in German, French and Italian and makes all three versions of an enactment binding in the same way. The reader-facing address `https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<lang>` is an Angular shell containing no text: every such address returns the same 77,151-byte page. The text lives in the filestore, at `https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<YYYYMMDD>/<lang>/html/...html`, where YYYYMMDD is the consolidation's date of applicability and cannot be guessed. The way to resolve an SR number to that address is the SPARQL endpoint at https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/sparqlendpoint, matching jolux:classifiedByTaxonomyEntry/skos:notation against the SR number and taking the jolux:Consolidation whose jolux:dateApplicability is the latest one not after today.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for cantonal or communal law, which is the half of Swiss migration practice a resident actually meets: permits are granted by the cantons under article 40 of the AIG, the naturalisation residence requirement is set by each canton between two and five years under article 18 of the BüG, cantonal and communal income tax is outside the DBG entirely, and health insurance premium reductions are cantonal. Twenty-six cantons publish separately and none of them is here. It carries no case law - the Federal Supreme Court publishes at bger.ch - and no administrative guidance, which matters concretely: the list of states whose driving licences exchange without a control drive is a Federal Roads Office document issued under article 150(5)(e) of the VZV and is not in the classified compilation. Two traps in the platform itself. Fedlex serves consolidations that are not yet in force - SR 142.20 carried texts dated 2026-11-01 and 2027-01-01 alongside the one in force on 2026-10-11 - so taking the newest row returns a text that is not the law. And English translations published under article 13a(1)(d) of the Publikationsgesetz are translations of official publications and are not among the three binding versions, so nothing may be quoted from them as law.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Kurzaufenthalts- und Aufenthaltsbewilligungen zur Ausübung einer Erwerbstätigkeit können nur Führungskräften, Spezialistinnen und Spezialisten und anderen qualifizierten Arbeitskräften erteilt werden.»Our translation - not official
Short-stay and residence permits for gainful employment may be granted only to executives, specialists and other qualified workers.
The rule the investor provision derogates from. Reading article 23(3)(a) without this one makes it look like a route; read together, it is an exemption from a qualification filter.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Switzerland's single publication platform for federal law, carrying the Amtliche Sammlung (AS), the Systematische Sammlung (SR) and the Bundesblatt. It is the platform article 1a of the Publikationsgesetz (SR 170.512) requires, and article 15 of that Act makes the version published on it massgebend - so unlike most consolidations in this corpus, Fedlex's text is authoritative rather than a convenience copy. Article 14(1) of the same Act requires simultaneous publication in German, French and Italian and makes all three versions of an enactment binding in the same way. The reader-facing address `https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<lang>` is an Angular shell containing no text: every such address returns the same 77,151-byte page. The text lives in the filestore, at `https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<YYYYMMDD>/<lang>/html/...html`, where YYYYMMDD is the consolidation's date of applicability and cannot be guessed. The way to resolve an SR number to that address is the SPARQL endpoint at https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/sparqlendpoint, matching jolux:classifiedByTaxonomyEntry/skos:notation against the SR number and taking the jolux:Consolidation whose jolux:dateApplicability is the latest one not after today.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for cantonal or communal law, which is the half of Swiss migration practice a resident actually meets: permits are granted by the cantons under article 40 of the AIG, the naturalisation residence requirement is set by each canton between two and five years under article 18 of the BüG, cantonal and communal income tax is outside the DBG entirely, and health insurance premium reductions are cantonal. Twenty-six cantons publish separately and none of them is here. It carries no case law - the Federal Supreme Court publishes at bger.ch - and no administrative guidance, which matters concretely: the list of states whose driving licences exchange without a control drive is a Federal Roads Office document issued under article 150(5)(e) of the VZV and is not in the classified compilation. Two traps in the platform itself. Fedlex serves consolidations that are not yet in force - SR 142.20 carried texts dated 2026-11-01 and 2027-01-01 alongside the one in force on 2026-10-11 - so taking the newest row returns a text that is not the law. And English translations published under article 13a(1)(d) of the Publikationsgesetz are translations of official publications and are not among the three binding versions, so nothing may be quoted from them as law.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«eine ausreichende, eigenständige Existenzgrundlage vorhanden ist; und»Our translation - not official
a sufficient, independent basis of existence is present; and
From the article on self-employment, which is how most investor cases arrive. Letter b requires the necessary financial and operational conditions to be met, and letter d applies articles 20 and 23 to 25 - so the quota and the housing condition reach the self-employed too.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Switzerland's single publication platform for federal law, carrying the Amtliche Sammlung (AS), the Systematische Sammlung (SR) and the Bundesblatt. It is the platform article 1a of the Publikationsgesetz (SR 170.512) requires, and article 15 of that Act makes the version published on it massgebend - so unlike most consolidations in this corpus, Fedlex's text is authoritative rather than a convenience copy. Article 14(1) of the same Act requires simultaneous publication in German, French and Italian and makes all three versions of an enactment binding in the same way. The reader-facing address `https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<lang>` is an Angular shell containing no text: every such address returns the same 77,151-byte page. The text lives in the filestore, at `https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<YYYYMMDD>/<lang>/html/...html`, where YYYYMMDD is the consolidation's date of applicability and cannot be guessed. The way to resolve an SR number to that address is the SPARQL endpoint at https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/sparqlendpoint, matching jolux:classifiedByTaxonomyEntry/skos:notation against the SR number and taking the jolux:Consolidation whose jolux:dateApplicability is the latest one not after today.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for cantonal or communal law, which is the half of Swiss migration practice a resident actually meets: permits are granted by the cantons under article 40 of the AIG, the naturalisation residence requirement is set by each canton between two and five years under article 18 of the BüG, cantonal and communal income tax is outside the DBG entirely, and health insurance premium reductions are cantonal. Twenty-six cantons publish separately and none of them is here. It carries no case law - the Federal Supreme Court publishes at bger.ch - and no administrative guidance, which matters concretely: the list of states whose driving licences exchange without a control drive is a Federal Roads Office document issued under article 150(5)(e) of the VZV and is not in the classified compilation. Two traps in the platform itself. Fedlex serves consolidations that are not yet in force - SR 142.20 carried texts dated 2026-11-01 and 2027-01-01 alongside the one in force on 2026-10-11 - so taking the newest row returns a text that is not the law. And English translations published under article 13a(1)(d) of the Publikationsgesetz are translations of official publications and are not among the three binding versions, so nothing may be quoted from them as law.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Ausländerinnen und Ausländer können zur Ausübung einer Erwerbstätigkeit nur zugelassen werden, wenn sie über eine bedarfsgerechte Wohnung verfügen.»Our translation - not official
Foreign nationals may be admitted to gainful employment only if they have a flat appropriate to their needs.
Article 23(3) derogates from article 23 only. The housing condition in article 24 is not among the provisions it displaces.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Switzerland's single publication platform for federal law, carrying the Amtliche Sammlung (AS), the Systematische Sammlung (SR) and the Bundesblatt. It is the platform article 1a of the Publikationsgesetz (SR 170.512) requires, and article 15 of that Act makes the version published on it massgebend - so unlike most consolidations in this corpus, Fedlex's text is authoritative rather than a convenience copy. Article 14(1) of the same Act requires simultaneous publication in German, French and Italian and makes all three versions of an enactment binding in the same way. The reader-facing address `https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<lang>` is an Angular shell containing no text: every such address returns the same 77,151-byte page. The text lives in the filestore, at `https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<YYYYMMDD>/<lang>/html/...html`, where YYYYMMDD is the consolidation's date of applicability and cannot be guessed. The way to resolve an SR number to that address is the SPARQL endpoint at https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/sparqlendpoint, matching jolux:classifiedByTaxonomyEntry/skos:notation against the SR number and taking the jolux:Consolidation whose jolux:dateApplicability is the latest one not after today.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for cantonal or communal law, which is the half of Swiss migration practice a resident actually meets: permits are granted by the cantons under article 40 of the AIG, the naturalisation residence requirement is set by each canton between two and five years under article 18 of the BüG, cantonal and communal income tax is outside the DBG entirely, and health insurance premium reductions are cantonal. Twenty-six cantons publish separately and none of them is here. It carries no case law - the Federal Supreme Court publishes at bger.ch - and no administrative guidance, which matters concretely: the list of states whose driving licences exchange without a control drive is a Federal Roads Office document issued under article 150(5)(e) of the VZV and is not in the classified compilation. Two traps in the platform itself. Fedlex serves consolidations that are not yet in force - SR 142.20 carried texts dated 2026-11-01 and 2027-01-01 alongside the one in force on 2026-10-11 - so taking the newest row returns a text that is not the law. And English translations published under article 13a(1)(d) of the Publikationsgesetz are translations of official publications and are not among the three binding versions, so nothing may be quoted from them as law.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The absence of a threshold is bounded by what was read: article 23 of the Act, the admission chapter around it, and the whole of the admission chapter of the VZAE, which contains no article implementing article 23(3) and no figure. Cantons publish expectations of their own and those are not in either instrument.
What is sometimes presented as a Swiss investor route is usually the tax arrangement in article 14 of the federal direct tax Act. That decides how a person is taxed after they are admitted, requires them not to work in Switzerland, and confers no right to be admitted at all - which is the opposite of what an investor permit under article 23(3)(a) involves.
A permit under this provision still comes out of the quota, so the question is not only whether the case is strong but whether the canton has units left in the year. The 2026 figures are on this country's work record.
A Union or EFTA national needs none of this. Annex I article 12 of the free movement agreement gives a self-employed person a permit of at least five years on proof that they are established or intend to establish themselves, with no job-creation test and no quota.
- consolidatesAusländer- und Integrationsgesetz (AIG), SR 142.20, consolidated text in force from 12 June 2026
Fedlex, Bundeskanzlei der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft · consolidated to 2026-06-12
About this source
Switzerland's single publication platform for federal law, carrying the Amtliche Sammlung (AS), the Systematische Sammlung (SR) and the Bundesblatt. It is the platform article 1a of the Publikationsgesetz (SR 170.512) requires, and article 15 of that Act makes the version published on it massgebend - so unlike most consolidations in this corpus, Fedlex's text is authoritative rather than a convenience copy. Article 14(1) of the same Act requires simultaneous publication in German, French and Italian and makes all three versions of an enactment binding in the same way. The reader-facing address `https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<lang>` is an Angular shell containing no text: every such address returns the same 77,151-byte page. The text lives in the filestore, at `https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/<a>/<b>/<YYYYMMDD>/<lang>/html/...html`, where YYYYMMDD is the consolidation's date of applicability and cannot be guessed. The way to resolve an SR number to that address is the SPARQL endpoint at https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/sparqlendpoint, matching jolux:classifiedByTaxonomyEntry/skos:notation against the SR number and taking the jolux:Consolidation whose jolux:dateApplicability is the latest one not after today.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for cantonal or communal law, which is the half of Swiss migration practice a resident actually meets: permits are granted by the cantons under article 40 of the AIG, the naturalisation residence requirement is set by each canton between two and five years under article 18 of the BüG, cantonal and communal income tax is outside the DBG entirely, and health insurance premium reductions are cantonal. Twenty-six cantons publish separately and none of them is here. It carries no case law - the Federal Supreme Court publishes at bger.ch - and no administrative guidance, which matters concretely: the list of states whose driving licences exchange without a control drive is a Federal Roads Office document issued under article 150(5)(e) of the VZV and is not in the classified compilation. Two traps in the platform itself. Fedlex serves consolidations that are not yet in force - SR 142.20 carried texts dated 2026-11-01 and 2027-01-01 alongside the one in force on 2026-10-11 - so taking the newest row returns a text that is not the law. And English translations published under article 13a(1)(d) of the Publikationsgesetz are translations of official publications and are not among the three binding versions, so nothing may be quoted from them as law.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source