Switzerland to restrict EU immigration

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22285886

by youngerdryas • 13 years ago

38 79 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

corin_• 13 years ago

> EU officials have always told Switzerland it cannot cherry pick only those parts of European policy it likes best.

Surely that's the exact reason they are not a member of the European Union, and exactly what they can do.

bradleyjg2• 13 years ago

Certainly they can. But then the EU can quit treating Switzerland like a quasi-member, and instead treat them like a they do e.g. Turkey.

Kudzu_Bob22• 13 years ago

Why? Because they're not as multicultural as the rest of Europe? Because they dare to live in a way that suits themselves?

The promoters of diversity ueber alles certainly are in touch with their inner totalitarian these days.

nickik2• 13 years ago

In theory that is true, and it is very nice. The problem just is that the EU is all around Switzerland, they have a huge stick they can use.

If there where more countrys like Switzerland it would be closer to theory.

RivieraKid3• 13 years ago

Totally understandable decesion, don't see anything wrong about it.

a_c_s• 13 years ago

You mean except for the part where they previously agreed not to do so?

zimbatm• 13 years ago

You mean before they started getting 80k immigrants a year ?

EDIT: 80k / year represents ~1% of the actual population

RivieraKid3• 13 years ago

If it was more than an informal agreement, then yes, except for that I don't see a problem.

jvm• 13 years ago

When they made the agreement, they included a "safeguard clause" indicating that the deal would be off if immigration exceeded a particular amount. It has.

I'm completely against the policy, but it's not a violation of the agreement.

jsnell• 13 years ago

It might be understandable. It might not even be surprising -- it's only a few years since Switzerland last tried to pull off a "let's cut all the permit quotas drastically" trick. But it's also very short-sighted.

There aren't a lot of reasons to actually start new business in Switzerland (awkward regulatory environment, tiny internal market, very high costs). A mostly sane immigration policy has been one of the main things the country has going for it. Sudden changes in the policy make for an increasingly hostile business environment.

oellegaard3• 13 years ago

Indeed. This could force Google to move its EU HQ to some other country.

RivieraKid3• 13 years ago

Immigration is not entirely positive, it has complex effects on the society and economy. I don't know whether 80 000 per year is the optimal limit, but I oppose to the idea that foreigners have moral right for immigration. It's a democratic decision, they may be wrong, but it's them who's best positioned to decide what's best for them.

shell0x• 13 years ago

Switzerland seems to be the only country in Europe which gets it right. They also have a 'real' democracy(grassroots democracy), which is a huge advantage, because people can vote for nearly everything.

oellegaard3• 13 years ago

How is that an advantage? Sure, they get to vote on roundabouts in the city, but having that many votes have also led to one of the lowest participation rates, when they vote, in Europe.

nickik2• 13 years ago

Most people dont care about most of the things and so they dont vote most of the time. Some people vote only on the lower levels, some only on the highest.

I myself do normally not vote on village level (5000 people) because the matters are quite trival, while I vote on the level that involve things like immigration. I know other people that do to opposit because truth is that the village level things probeblly still have a bigger impact on your live then the country wide things.

If there is a vote on something really importent that a lot of people feel is importent participation rates shoots up quite a bit.

Kudzu_Bob22• 13 years ago

You seem to think that participation is an end in itself. By that metric, Belgium is doing splendidly, whereas Switzerland is a failure.

Meanwhile, on Planet Earth, Switzerland is a marvelous country, while Belgium is on the verge of splitting up.

oellegaard3• 13 years ago

I used to live in Switzerland for two years. Switzerland depends on foreigners for high-skilled jobs - they simply have a higher demand for high-skilled people than they currently produce. It seems like a super stupid idea to limit that.

alanbyrne• 13 years ago

I wonder what this means for us Swiss citizens working in other EU member countries. Will they reciprocally boot us out?

jcfrei3• 13 years ago

I feel more and more ashamed as a swiss citizen - seeing xenophobia on the rise across the country. it is disheartening to see the growing populism among our politicians, mindlessly fueling the fears in the swiss population and focusing the political deliberations on topics such as immigration, asylum-seekers and highway taxes instead of the real issues in this country.

the swiss citizen need to wake up and realize which century they are in. in the 21st century few swiss people understand the implications of globalization and that immigration for better or worse is inevitable. as a matter of fact the economy of this country would not stand as strong without the constant influx of immigrants. it is time we acknowledge this fact and leave our resentments towards europe behind.

for those who are interested, you'll find more extensive remarks in my blog: http://jcfrei.com

schoper• 13 years ago

Even if it were true that "the economy of this country would not stand as strong without the constant influx of immigrants" -- and it's not true, it's foolish -- you would still want to consider before selling your birthright for the bowl of red.

Kudzu_Bob22• 13 years ago

Some people seem to think that whatever is good for the stock market is good for the country, because the country IS the stock market.

phaet0n• 13 years ago

What exactly is jcfrei's birthright? Or yours, or mine for that matter?

I'm going to get out my raclette and chillout for a bit...

hugh4life• 13 years ago

Do you want free migration or do you want a swiss people to actually exist?

__--__• 13 years ago

I feel this message always gets lost in the sea of "but diversification is doubleplusgood!" You can't have a culturally diverse population and still have a singular national identity.

Have you read about the Lombard invasion of northern Italy in the 6th century? It was essentially a massive, unopposed migration, but the effect was the same as an invasion - the Lomards ruled northern Italy for centuries.

SeoxyS2• 13 years ago

I'm a Swiss citizen living in San Francisco, and while I don't necessarily agree with restrictive immigration policies (I'm in the process on getting a US green card – don't get me started on how stressful that is), I also don't see anything particularly wrong with it either.

Immigration in Switzerland is a big issue. Switzerland is tiny and is getting a little over-crowded. We don't have mega-cities, real estate prices are through the roof, and new building permits are very restricted due to regulation meant to preserve Switzerland's beautiful old cities.

When I grew up, Switzerland's population was 7 million. Now it's 8. That almost 9% growth. The country hasn't gotten any bigger, though. While there benefits to diversifying our culture, and bringing in skilled workers to contribute to the economy; the average immigrant is probably a net detriment to the country, because an influx of people puts a strain on Switzerland's public services and its real estate market (Y'all think San Francisco rents are bad? Try renting an apartment in Zurich!).

If you believe in the principle behind countries (a group of people coming together to form a society that, like Capitalism, does what is in its best interest), then you should understand the decision. If not, well, that's an entirely different argument.

Personally, I'd like immigration to be merit based. Ie., immigrants would have to demonstrate that they'd be a net asset to the country, in some fashion.

guelo4• 13 years ago

Sounds like you agree with immigration only when it benefits you personally.

jcfrei3• 13 years ago

The argument about increasing rents is one I've heard quite a few times however correlation and causation are not entirely clear (this blog goes into more detail: http://politblog.tagesanzeiger.ch/blog/index.php/tag/miete/?... (in german)). on top of that the available land for building would be more than sufficient for 8 mil. and more people. take a look at singapore, which is half the size of the canton of zurich but has three times more inhabitants (5.3 mil.). needless to say we would need to revise a lot of the very restrictive building codes here.

Anyway, the whole discussion about immigration really becomes absurd when you consider that most immigrants are not unskilled, minimum wage workers, but mostly highly skilled professionals. in some areas our economy is in desperate need of those professionals - for example in the health care sector - and dismissing those professionals would be the really foolish thing to do.

zik• 13 years ago

> When I grew up, Switzerland's population was 7 million. Now it's 8. That almost 9% growth.

Switzerland's projected population growth for 2000-2050 is 1.8%.

Just for comparison Australia's population growth over the same period is 28.9%.

Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/compare/Australia/Switzerland/Pe...

PommeDeTerre2• 13 years ago

Have you ever considered that immigration to Switzerland may also be harming the countries where these people are coming from?

Many countries, especially third-world countries, are in desperate need of well-educated, talented people. We're talking about doctors, engineers, and even educators. These are the kind of people who are essential to providing or creating the infrastructure of a modern society.

As long as these people keep leaving their native countries, and as long as more prosperous western nations keep accepting them, it will become more and more difficult for the situation to improve in the countries they emigrated from.

jcfrei3• 13 years ago

You are right, but there's nothing we can or should do about that. I only know of a few countries which forcefully try to keep emigration down, most notably north korea.

In an ideal world every individual would be free to pursue happiness in whatever country it desires to, regardless of nationality (I believe that idea has been mentioned before in the constitution of some rather prosperous nation...)

Gormo3• 13 years ago

What are you saying here? That people should be forcibly confined in places they don't want to live in order to fulfill someone else's desire to create a "modern society"?

I hope you recognize the frightening implications of your point.

agilebyte• 13 years ago

So is the problem essentially the rising cost of real estate? See I was under the impression that IF you structure your economy correctly and you have net surplus (of money) and IF you draw immigrants from all social strata, surely these people will just continue in the trend? Some will be workers, some employers, some have nots? The only problem would be a country getting cramped so it costs more to build the same type of buildings, roads etc.

mjn• 13 years ago

From what I've read of it, a lot of it is cultural as well. Outside a few liberal, cosmopolitan parts of society (whether left-liberal or right-liberal), many Swiss just don't want more than a handful of immigrants, and like maintaining a closed, stable Nation of people whose great-great-grandfathers were Swiss. This even (perhaps especially) extends to negative sentiment directed at German immigrants by Swiss-Germans.

One paper I ran across (via Wikipedia) suggested that negative sentiment directed at Germans might be due to their similarity: if the objective cultural difference between two groups is not huge, then an influx of immigration is particularly threatening, because it might erase the fragile boundary: http://img2.tapuz.co.il/CommunaFiles/44893554.pdf

return0• 13 years ago

I wonder if they will extend this to the immigration of capital.

wsc9812• 13 years ago

I think this policy makes perfect sense. In the Netherlands we've put the borders wide open since the early 90s and perhaps even earlier due to EU legislation. Overall the results have been terrible. These are some of the issues we deal with nowadays:

- many immigrants are on welfare, this puts a huge economic pressure on our country.

- many immigrants of Middle-Eastern descent put a huge pressure on our healthcare (e.g. very many visits to our general practitioners).

- the culture of many Middle-Eastern immigrants doesn't merge very well with our Western culture. E.g. in Marrocan culture boys are generally higher regarded as girls. Additionally these boys are one of our biggest problem groups (very high criminality). Mothers don't have the means to correct these boys.

- I should note Marrocan girls seem to do pretty well in the Netherlands, low criminality and generally hard working students at school with good grades.

It's interesting when browsing fora of Dutch-Marrocan people (for example http.maroc.nl) you often see posts of Marrocan girls looking for converted (to Islam) Dutch guys to wed. These girls often prefer converted Dutch partner because the girls themselves would have more freedom in such a relation.

Many of these immigrants live close to each other. Since many woman don't work and are not allowed to leave home by themselves except for shopping / visiting the doctor, they often don't learn the Dutch language which results in them being socially excluded from the Dutch society.

In my opinion our own government failed big time on this. We should have had limited immigration from the start (early 70s or 80s perhaps?) and when people would come we should have made sure immigrants would be spread around cities, not living close to each other in "ghettos". This would have forced many immigrants to integrate better in our society.

Either way, I think unlimited immigration puts huge strains on society and eventually destabilises society as a whole because of culture clashes.

anigbrowl3• 13 years ago

It takes a few generations for these things to work themselves out. I imagine the former Dutch colonies would have preferred a more limited subjugation as well, but you can't always have what you want.

kintamanimatt3• 13 years ago

This is really quite xenophobic. The majority of migration is going to be from the EU [1], and despite Europe's integration by way of treaties, I'm under the impression that someone fresh off the boat (metaphorically speaking) can't just suddenly claim all the welfare there is. Immigrants from non-EU countries have to be able to show their ability to support themselves before they're granted a visa, so I highly doubt they're a huge burden on society too.

Only something like 2.16% of population is from Morocco [2] and I really doubt they're the result of society's ills. While I can't find statistics, I highly doubt these people are draining the country's coffers through welfare payments. Also, why do you think they're constantly seeking health care? Even if they are, you seem to be saying they're unnecessarily visiting the doctor and are hypochondriacs; again, I struggle to understand why this would be the case just because they're from the middle east. Do you have any statistics available that demonstrate middle-eastern immigrants visit their GP more than born and bred Dutch, and are feigning illness? (I'm not saying it's untrue, I just can't find anything to support or refute your claim.)

The thing with the freedom of movement provisions is it works both ways: the Dutch are just as able to leave and move to another EU nation as other EU nationals are able to move to the Netherlands. Quite a good number of Dutch emigrate both to within and outside the EU, which is fair and fine.

Immigration, at least in the US, can be argued to have quite a positive effect on society. [3] I see no reason for this not to apply to the Netherlands.

What your argument really seems to boil down to is that there are people from a different tribe that are living among your tribe and, by way of confirmation bias, you notice all the things they do wrong.

No society is perfect and not all immigrants are going to integrate into society or be a net benefit, but many more will be. Relatively speaking, the Netherlands has its shit together and I fail to see any evidence that supports your claim that the Dutch standard of living is being significantly eroded because of brown people.

[1] http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/bevolking/publicaties/ar...

[2] http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/Download/Population__origin_2...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/opinion/the-beneficial-imp...

Kudzu_Bob22• 13 years ago

What you call xenophobic, others call noticing what is right in front of their noses.

wsc9812• 13 years ago

Reasons why these kinds of people put so much pressure on our welfare and health systems are partly because they have so much trouble integrating into our society. Part of the problem is, as I've explained, our own government that didn't spread immigrants around country but allowed them to live close to one another. Now we have closed badly integrated societies ("ghettos") in some of our bigger and even smaller cities. One city where this problem with especially the Marrocan population is very clear is Gouda, but the same kinds of problems exist in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, etc...

Criminality among (especially) boys of Moroccan descent is disproportionate with regards to the size of the population:

[0] http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2624/moroccan-crime-nether...

We've imported a lot of berber people from Morocco. Within the berber culture a lot of marriages happen between closely related family members, resulting in a worse gene pool. This could be partly the cause for the berber immigrants health issues. The following articles might be of interest to you:

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC449726/

[2] http://books.google.nl/books?id=HDIa0tyllqgC&lpg=PA455&#...

In the end I don't think multicultural societies can really exist. There needs to be a leading culture and people should be encouraged to adopt (parts of) the leading culture or blend it with their own culture. Without a leading culture the social cohesion slowly erodes. And this is why I think Switzerland made a very wise decision in limiting immigration. Immigrants need time to integrate and the society should be able to deal with the strain of the immigrants until they're well integrated, otherwise it results in "dweilen met de kraan open."

Switzerland to restrict EU immigration

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