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> In Switzerland, about 30% of the population are foreign born Not really true, it's around 23% and on about 1,900,000 immigrants, over 85% are Europeans, 300,

> In Switzerland, about 30% of the population are foreign born Not really true, it's around 23% and on about 1,900,000 immigrants, over 85% are Europeans, 300,000 are Italians, 295,000 are Germans and 110,000 are French, which are not really immigrants in the real sense being official languages in Switzerland (Italians were over 450,000 in the 80s, so there are less Italians than before in Switzerland). On the other side Germans were very few in the 80s and are now the second largest group, due to tax benefits Swiss banks can guarantuee to very rich people (Switzerland is basically a tax heaven, that's the main drive for immigration, they are not really having an "immigration problem" like other countries in Europe are facing). One popular example of such auto inflicted "immigration" is Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA founder, who lived in Switzerland for 40 years or Carlo De Benedetti, industrialist and media publisher, who's born Italian but naturalized Swiss citizen . One other point to consider is that immigration in Switzerland is also due U.N. agencies being there. The third and last point: Switzerland is surrounded by Alps, immigrant go there using planes, they are not the kind of immigrants that come to Europe on shitty boats in the Mediterranean sea.

skissane 6y ago
> on about 1,900,000 immigrants, over 85% are Europeans, 300,000 are Italians, 295,000 are Germans and 110,000 are French, which are not really immigrants in the real sense being official languages in Switzerland Who ever said that immigrants don't count as immigrants if they already speak the national language? My mother's family immigrated from the UK to Australia when she was a child. They all spoke English as a native language. That fact didn't make them any less "immigrants". Back then (early 1950s), the vast majority of immigrants to Australia were native English speakers and had always been (back to the very start of European colonisation). It was only in the subsequent decades that immigration to Australia diversified and native English-speakers became a successively smaller percentage of all immigrants. But even today, the number one country of birth for foreign-born Australians remains England; China and India are in the second and third spots, respectively; New Zealand fourth. (Australian immigration statistics treat the four constituent countries of the UK separately.) https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/3412.0Media%20Release12018-19 https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/3412.0Media%...
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  > My mother's family immigrated from the UK to Australia when she was a child See my response here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108135 Full disclosure, my uncle went to live in Switzerland in the 70s because Canton Ticino is Italian, people living there were and still are Italian and they chose to have Italian as official language, because it was their language. Italy and Canton Ticino share a common border and speak the same language. Same thing on the French side, a little less on the German one. UK and Australia aren't even on the same side of the planet! Whereas the border between Italy and Switzerland if you pass with an Italian plate or document is virtually non existent. I used to go skiing in Livigno and it is faster to got through Switzerland, most of the times they didn't even stop us. They saw the vignette on the windshield and didn't even bother to go out in the cold to check. I don't consider a French person in Italy an immigrant, but a fellow European. Switzerland is basically part of the EU without the Euro. They adhered to the free trade market in 1972, entered EFTA in 1992, they are part of Schengen since 2008, EU is the largest trading partner for Switzerland importing ~50 billions of goods and services, accounting for ~7% of Swiss GDP, why in the hell some Swiss think that Europeans (especially those coming from bordering countries) are immigrants is incomprehensible to me...
  - skissane 6y ago
    I think maybe the issue is that the word "immigrant" means informally different things to different people, and something else again officially. A person from country A who voluntarily moves to country B with the intention of staying there permanently is officially an "immigrant". That's the international standard definition used in immigration statistics, so we can compare immigration statistics between different countries. As far as the official definition goes, it doesn't matter whether the source and destination countries have a common border or are on other sides of the planet, whether they speak the same language or not, whether they are culturally alike or culturally dissimilar. Now if you are talking about what "immigrant" means informally, that's something which varies in different countries. In Australia, you get anti-immigrant sentiment, and a lot of Australians respond to that anti-immigrant sentiment by saying "we are all immigrants! (except for the Indigenous)". In Europe, I think the term "immigrant" has a more negative connotation. That method of "reclaiming" it doesn't work if your ancestors have lived in the same place so long that nobody is really sure when they immigrated to it, but whenever it was, it was likely thousands of year ago. Hence the term tends to be associated more with immigrants from poorer countries, whereas immigrants from richer countries don't want to be called that, and others don't want to call them that, even if that's technically what they are. > Switzerland is basically part of the EU without the Euro. Well, Denmark and Sweden are officially part of the EU without the Euro. Switzerland is not officially part of either the EU or the EEA. Although a messy system of piecemeal bilateral deals makes it a quasi-member of the EEA. > why in the hell some Swiss think that Europeans (especially those coming from bordering countries) are immigrants is incomprehensible to me... Because by the formal official definition of the term they are, even if by many people's informal definitions they are not.
microtherion 6y ago
> Not really true, [foreign born population] is around 23% Yes, it is true: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/migration-integration/by-place-birth.html https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/m... The discrepancy between our numbers is most likely that about a third of the foreign born population of Switzerland is naturalized. The number you're citing is foreign NATIONALS. But naturalized immigrants still are foreign born. > [Italians, Germans, and French] are not really immigrants They were born in one country, and moved to another, which makes them immigrants. Whether they speak a national language is immaterial (and, in the case of Germans, the spoken language in Switzerland is not all that close to many German dialects). Is an Asian Indian or a Kenyan in the US "not really an immigrant" if they speak fluent English? > tax benefits Swiss banks can guarantuee to very rich people Swiss banks used to be fairly powerful, but I can assure you that this power did not quite extend to setting tax rates for individuals. You're probably thinking of Lump-sum tax agreements, which do exist, but only for about 5000 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump-sum_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump-sum_tax > a tax heaven, that's the main drive for immigration There are certainly a good number of wealthy immigrants for which this is true, but for the vast majority, I'd think that high wages are the main driver. This is true both for countries like Portugal, whose immigrants typically take low skilled jobs, and countries like Germany, where many immigrants are in high skilled professions. > immigration in Switzerland is also due U.N. agencies being there True, but not numerically all that significant on a national level. > not the kind of immigrants that come to Europe on shitty boats I can assure you that Switzerland still has more of those than billionaires coming for the tax benefits.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  > They were born in one country, and moved to another That's a moot point in my opinion, Italians in Switzerland come mainly from the areas near the border (I used to live half an hour away from Lugano). And there's a big difference: Italian is an official language in canton of Ticino (southern Switzerland) because the population is in large percentage of Italian heritage, it was formed by occupying Italian cities, and is an independent self governed Region inside the Helvetic Republic (formerly Helvetic confederation) where Italian is the solely official language. Kenya uses English as national language because it was colonized by UK, but their original language is Swahili. Kenya and US don't share a border where both countries use the same official language.

skissane 6y ago

> on about 1,900,000 immigrants, over 85% are Europeans, 300,000 are Italians, 295,000 are Germans and 110,000 are French, which are not really immigrants in the real sense being official languages in Switzerland Who ever said that immigrants don't count as immigrants if they already speak the national language? My mother's family immigrated from the UK to Australia when she was a child. They all spoke English as a native language. That fact didn't make them any less "immigrants". Back then (early 1950s), the vast majority of immigrants to Australia were native English speakers and had always been (back to the very start of European colonisation). It was only in the subsequent decades that immigration to Australia diversified and native English-speakers became a successively smaller percentage of all immigrants. But even today, the number one country of birth for foreign-born Australians remains England; China and India are in the second and third spots, respectively; New Zealand fourth. (Australian immigration statistics treat the four constituent countries of the UK separately.) https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/3412.0Media%20Release12018-19 https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/3412.0Media%...

romanoderoma 6y ago
> My mother's family immigrated from the UK to Australia when she was a child See my response here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108135 Full disclosure, my uncle went to live in Switzerland in the 70s because Canton Ticino is Italian, people living there were and still are Italian and they chose to have Italian as official language, because it was their language. Italy and Canton Ticino share a common border and speak the same language. Same thing on the French side, a little less on the German one. UK and Australia aren't even on the same side of the planet! Whereas the border between Italy and Switzerland if you pass with an Italian plate or document is virtually non existent. I used to go skiing in Livigno and it is faster to got through Switzerland, most of the times they didn't even stop us. They saw the vignette on the windshield and didn't even bother to go out in the cold to check. I don't consider a French person in Italy an immigrant, but a fellow European. Switzerland is basically part of the EU without the Euro. They adhered to the free trade market in 1972, entered EFTA in 1992, they are part of Schengen since 2008, EU is the largest trading partner for Switzerland importing ~50 billions of goods and services, accounting for ~7% of Swiss GDP, why in the hell some Swiss think that Europeans (especially those coming from bordering countries) are immigrants is incomprehensible to me...
- skissane 6y ago
  I think maybe the issue is that the word "immigrant" means informally different things to different people, and something else again officially. A person from country A who voluntarily moves to country B with the intention of staying there permanently is officially an "immigrant". That's the international standard definition used in immigration statistics, so we can compare immigration statistics between different countries. As far as the official definition goes, it doesn't matter whether the source and destination countries have a common border or are on other sides of the planet, whether they speak the same language or not, whether they are culturally alike or culturally dissimilar. Now if you are talking about what "immigrant" means informally, that's something which varies in different countries. In Australia, you get anti-immigrant sentiment, and a lot of Australians respond to that anti-immigrant sentiment by saying "we are all immigrants! (except for the Indigenous)". In Europe, I think the term "immigrant" has a more negative connotation. That method of "reclaiming" it doesn't work if your ancestors have lived in the same place so long that nobody is really sure when they immigrated to it, but whenever it was, it was likely thousands of year ago. Hence the term tends to be associated more with immigrants from poorer countries, whereas immigrants from richer countries don't want to be called that, and others don't want to call them that, even if that's technically what they are. > Switzerland is basically part of the EU without the Euro. Well, Denmark and Sweden are officially part of the EU without the Euro. Switzerland is not officially part of either the EU or the EEA. Although a messy system of piecemeal bilateral deals makes it a quasi-member of the EEA. > why in the hell some Swiss think that Europeans (especially those coming from bordering countries) are immigrants is incomprehensible to me... Because by the formal official definition of the term they are, even if by many people's informal definitions they are not.

microtherion 6y ago

> Not really true, [foreign born population] is around 23% Yes, it is true: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/migration-integration/by-place-birth.html https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/m... The discrepancy between our numbers is most likely that about a third of the foreign born population of Switzerland is naturalized. The number you're citing is foreign NATIONALS. But naturalized immigrants still are foreign born. > [Italians, Germans, and French] are not really immigrants They were born in one country, and moved to another, which makes them immigrants. Whether they speak a national language is immaterial (and, in the case of Germans, the spoken language in Switzerland is not all that close to many German dialects). Is an Asian Indian or a Kenyan in the US "not really an immigrant" if they speak fluent English? > tax benefits Swiss banks can guarantuee to very rich people Swiss banks used to be fairly powerful, but I can assure you that this power did not quite extend to setting tax rates for individuals. You're probably thinking of Lump-sum tax agreements, which do exist, but only for about 5000 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump-sum_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump-sum_tax > a tax heaven, that's the main drive for immigration There are certainly a good number of wealthy immigrants for which this is true, but for the vast majority, I'd think that high wages are the main driver. This is true both for countries like Portugal, whose immigrants typically take low skilled jobs, and countries like Germany, where many immigrants are in high skilled professions. > immigration in Switzerland is also due U.N. agencies being there True, but not numerically all that significant on a national level. > not the kind of immigrants that come to Europe on shitty boats I can assure you that Switzerland still has more of those than billionaires coming for the tax benefits.

romanoderoma 6y ago
> They were born in one country, and moved to another That's a moot point in my opinion, Italians in Switzerland come mainly from the areas near the border (I used to live half an hour away from Lugano). And there's a big difference: Italian is an official language in canton of Ticino (southern Switzerland) because the population is in large percentage of Italian heritage, it was formed by occupying Italian cities, and is an independent self governed Region inside the Helvetic Republic (formerly Helvetic confederation) where Italian is the solely official language. Kenya uses English as national language because it was colonized by UK, but their original language is Swahili. Kenya and US don't share a border where both countries use the same official language.