This law was not backed by the party that usually campaigns for harsher immigration laws. The reason is that this party just recently managed to pass an immigration law so harsh it's incompatible with Switzerland's treaties with the EU. All through the campaign they said if the law would pass then we would just renegotiate the treaties. Nine months later no one knows yet how to convince the EU of accepting to change the treaties, or how to interpret that law in way the EU won't mind. And there seems to be a wide agreement that people want to keep the treaties. So we have this huge unsolved problem and on top of that we have to vote on an insanely restrictive immigration law that goes much further than the last one, and doesn't even really pretend it won't harm the economy.
When you vote you get a little brochure with the recommendations of the different parties. Here in Geneva every single party, even the most rabid racists, recommended to vote no. I think it's the first time in my life I saw this unanimity.
The EU will not change those treaties, because it has no real reason to.
And especially now: How do you refuse something to David Cameron's UK (a big member state), but hand it to Switzerland (a small non-member state)?
In the case of the UK, it would demolish the very core idea and foundation of the EU. This UK parallel makes it very, very unlikely that the EU would give anything to Switzerland that could even only hint at flexibility in this matter.
The "best" outcome Switzerland can hope for (unless they repeal that immigration reform) is a state where Switzerland is in breach of the treaties, but the EU looks the other way, either on purpose, or because the member states cannot agree on a way to handle the situation. This couldn't last forever, though.
And by the way: Trying to have a treaty re-negotiated has already worked out not so very well for Switzerland in the case of Zurich airport. ;-)
Although I have to admit, we Germans basically did the same thing to Switzerland in the case of the CDs with tax data. It is a shitty thing to do.
Heh, true, if the Swiss were to be allowed a renegotiation, all the arguments about how the UK either wouldn't be allowed to do the same, or wouldn't be allowed to leave the EU, change it's laws and occupy a common market position like Switzerland ... well they'd all look like lies!
The next few years are going to be interesting for the EU. The Brits are looking at trying to stop total free movement (or at least end social protections for those that do), the Germans have actually been looking at something similar (restrictions on access to Social Security). The UK is also currently in the grip of some sort of polarisation of politics with the right wing making gains in unexpected places (UKIP), and a serious public dialog about leaving the EU entirely. France is in the grips of a major swing to the right (The Front National would probably win a presidential election if one were held now)...
Nothing, but discussing "How do you refuse something to David Cameron's UK (a big member state), but hand it to (a non member state)" is kind of obvious no?
The EU cannot tell Britain that free movement of people is essential enough to see them leave the Union, but then hand it to Switzerland, just because they ask nicely.
Those bilaterals with Switzerland are not some totally unrelated treaties, they are more like "EU membership light".
Yes, the EU needs the UK and Switzerland, and they both don't want to commit fully to it in one way or another (like the UK not using the Euro - good for them btw)
True, they can't let CH slip on that, at the same time, they'll probably do come with a compromise (or look the other way in some aspects)
Switzerland? You're joking, right? Nobody wants to hurt Switzerland, or give them a hard time, but if they turn away, the reaction will mostly be a shrug.
Just because some crazy people created very offensive posters, we shouldn't assume that the general swiss population is so anti-immigration (and racist).
Those posters (the first two anyway) came from the largest and most powerful swiss political party. I don't mean to say that the swiss are racist, but we can safely say that there is quite serious tension in any country whose largest party is putting out posters with white sheep kicking out black sheep.
Any swiss people reading: does the phrase "black sheep" have the same meaning in the various swiss languages as it does in english?
I remember reading from an SVP/UDC official that they picked the black sheep imagery not because it is racist, no no, how dare you, but precisely because the expression works in all national languages.
There were people from the far left wing that tried to establish that it was meant literally, which would then become racist. But that looked so far fetched that it wasn't part of the official strategy of the far left parties.
...it's racist no matter what. It has a connotation (even if it's unintentional which I entirely doubt) of racism, and the overt message (our unifed in-group needs to expel members of this out-group from our space) is racist.
I literally do not see how you could look at this and not see racism. Is your concept of racism limited to overt statements of the form "People whose skin colours are different from mine are bad"?
In fairness to the UDP, they do also appear to have a poster design involving nice, happy, multi-racial Swiss people holding hands, but I bet the ones involving saying NON to scary dark foreign things (and there are a lot of designs that fit this pattern which don't involve sheep metaphors) appear on more billboards.
When even the Daily Mail - the most-widely read source of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the UK - observes that your campaigns look like they might be jumping on popular racist sentiment, they probably are
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480493/Proposed-Swis...
There has been a lot of strong anti-immigrant/foreigner sentiment floating around recently in the media. This one was actually predicted to be closer to a 50/50 vote.
Frankly the proposal was very harsh and I think a lot of people saw through the other tactics it employed to garner favour. Switzerland is a cultural melting pot and a lot of people can relate negatively to the consequences of this proposal. I believe Cheap labour was not on many minds. This proposal seems to be the result of a very vocal minority and does not address real problems of a majority.
As for why I voted against it, good intentions. Keep in mind this is a single data point from a Swiss who has lived in Japan most of their lives.
Why? Because in Switzerland almost all you need is 100'000 signatures and we have to vote. And this is the response from the voters. I know no one who even remotely considered voting yes.
We have a lot "emotionally votings" recently and it really starts to annoy me. I don't like how this anti everything is starting to grow.
edit: of course it's 100'000 and not 50'000, thank you thallian
Studies have shown that in the UK immigrant populations pay more in taxes than they pull out in benefits, I imagine it's the same in Switzerland, despite what neo-fascists might want to believe.
Population growth in Switzerland is currently at 0.6%, so immigration can help supplement this.
Basically there's no good reason to limit immigration.
As in most Western European countries, there are some very good reasons to limit specific immigration.
Specifically the immigration of people that are hostile to the local culture, and act out that hostility through various forms of aggression.
Citing immigrant population statistics is tried and proven way to cloud the issue. In the Netherlands for instance, the largest groups of immigrants are Germans. You don't really believe the immigration debate is about them, do you?
I'm guessing a fairly large part of the UK immigrant population is Western European. Those, plus migrant workers in science, technology and finance, kind of skew the stats.
Calling everybody who points out that there's also another group of immigrants who's net contribution isn't exactly positive "neo-fascists" is extremely counterproductive.
> Citing immigrant population statistics is tried and proven way to cloud the issue. In the Netherlands for instance, the largest groups of immigrants are Germans. You don't really believe the immigration debate is about them, do you?
> Studies have shown that in the UK immigrant populations pay more in taxes than they pull out in benefits, I imagine it's the same in Switzerland, despite what neo-fascists might want to believe.
It doesnt say anything about the real cost of immigration.All I know is that the british people are getting less and less benefits per people,their healthcare system is being privatized and education is getting more and more expensive,without the "neo-fascists" in power. The ruling elite is doing everything so that more and more people want to vote for what you call "neo-fascists".
And frankly there is no "neo-fascists".It's the bogeyman the elite uses in order to scare off people and make sure they vote "the right way".Fortunatly less and less people are falling for that scam.
> their healthcare system is being privatized and education is getting more and more expensive,without the "neo-fascists" in power.
Huhwhat? The recent damage to the benefit and healthcare system and the huge increase in university fees both happened under the current Conservative government, not because of immigration but because of policy. Turns out the left-right axis is real, and the far right really is further to the right (e.g. UKIP's deputy leader recently said that he couldn't see the NHS surviving in its current form because it didn't have any free-market competition).
The party that I think he will be referring to is UKIP, which is pretty much like the current government just with more extreme attitudes to government.
>> Studies have shown that in the UK immigrant populations pay more in taxes than they pull out in benefits, I imagine it's the same in Switzerland, despite what neo-fascists might want to believe.
It's not this clean cut.
They used some interesting methodologies to come up with a figure of 5 billion net contribution from the immigrant population.
Taken alone this does not mean "more immigrants good" as it doesn't break down that group. What does it look like if we look specifically at skilled migration from outside of the EU on Tier 2 visas etc, compared to the figures for migration from within the EU (which requires nothing more than moving)? What about the refugee populations? Their economic impact is of very little concern - we take them because they are in need - but it might at least be interesting for the sake of comparison to know how it all works out.
There are also concerns in the UK that this didn't take into account the strains on infrastructure and transport. And that wage suppression is another effect of importing vast numbers of people. This in itself may be good for business but bad for people, and may have knock-on economic effects as those who already have the least spending power find it gets even smaller.
Just saying 'immigration contributed 5 billion quid last year' doesn't actually say a lot.
To put it blindly immigration from western countries, asian countries and north america good, imigration from south america, the middle east and africa bad.
They already have serious problems with the EU, because of the immigration referendum before this one, back in February, I think.
They are still scrambling to find a way to reconcile their obligations under their treaties with the EU and their obligations under that referendum. And noone has found a way, yet.
Good intentions? Open hearted?
Or looking for cheap labor?
(I'm actually asking, no clue about Swiss culture)