7 ms·
This seems a much more rational approach than pure political agenda driven fear mongering campaigns against immigrants.
by amtamt 4mo ago
This seems a much more rational approach than pure political agenda driven fear mongering campaigns against immigrants.
- amunozo 4mo agoWhat's rational in the arbitrary number of 10 millions for no reason at allM
- naths88 4mo agoIt is completely irrational. But the UDC knows it, pure manipulation of the masses.
- herbst 4mo agoIt's not completely irrational. It's a fixed placative number yes. But reality is also we don't produce more food than we already do. More people means more import and it's actually lowering the quality of the available food, making shopping more complicated, etc. And that's just the food quality aspect, what about pensions? Health care? ...
- foldr 4mo ago>what about pensions? Health care? What about health care if there's no more 'room' for the immigrants who make up a substantial fraction of health workers in Switzerland?
- logancbrown 4mo agoSwiss people are perfectly capable of becoming health workers? What kind of argument is this?
- foldr 4mo agoThat's an option, but it takes a long time to train and recruit locally, costs a lot of money, and you'll probably have to increase salaries to get the required numbers. If there were an easy and cheap way to recruit all the required staff locally, that would already be happening.
- logancbrown 4mo agoSo the solution is to import uneducated and non-certified individuals from other countries at lower pay and hope you can pay them less and teach them? As if that is any easier? Sounds like the only reason is so health conglomerates can provide lower pay.
- foldr 4mo agoNo, you can import educated and certified healthcare workers, as many European countries, including Switzerland, have been doing for a long time. It’s easier and cheaper, which is why everyone’s doing it.
- logancbrown 4mo ago.
- inigyou 4mo agoCuba has a reputation for producing highly skilled doctors, and they're not allowed to move to the US.
- amunozo 4mo agoFertility rates are low and people are ageing, like everywhere in Europe. There will be a moment that simply there won't be enough workers. The reality is that there is already a lack of healthcare professional even without a population cap that would only get worse given the case.
- logancbrown 4mo agoSounds like modern slavery, import people from poorer countries to tend to the rich and elderly in countries that made short-term sacrifices to not build a future for themselves independently.
- amunozo 4mo agoImport people from poorer countries with a salary of 100k CHF and wonderful life conditions. Anyway, what I mean is that it's nor worth it for Switzerland, in my opinion, to break the agreements with the EU to limit the population artificially to a random number.
- amunozo 4mo agoMost of food is imported anyway, Switzerland is a very small country. This is a very silly argument, I'm sorry, it does not make any sense. "making shopping more complicated" what does that even mean. What about pensions? We are talking about foreigners working and paying taxes in Switzerland, a lot of them in very specialized jobs. Health care? A lot of doctors and nurses are foreigners, too. But apart from all these cliches about how good immigrants are for the economy, the main issue is that all bilateral agreements with the EU depend on the free movement of people between Switzerland and the EU. Without that, Switzerland losses access to the EU market and becomes and isolated country. It is nonsense.
- herbst 4mo agoHonestly I don't know import statistics but the majority of food I eat is from Switzerland. A lot of imported products are complicated because they often contain more weird stuff like artificial colouring, sweeteners or thickening stuff. Familien nachzug is a thing where people can get their elderly parents (or anyone family really) to move to Switzerland a lot more easily. This can indeed add additional costs to the pension and health care system. The implications with the EU surely could be problematic.
- lukan 4mo agoHm. Are there any difference in the consequences for the immigrants, if they are kicked out because of arbitrary population cap, instead of anti-migration laws?
- d1sxeyes 4mo agoAs far as I understand, action begins when the population hits 9.5M, so likely no-one gets kicked out, but fewer new visas will be approved, etc.
- herbst 4mo agoThis. As immigrant I don't feel threatened by this at all. I can't vote, and I wouldn't vote for SVP but as far as I can tell this makes kinda sense.
- lukan 4mo agoI am pretty sure there are many people living in swiss with temporary visa's and those will then be de facto kicked out, if they do not get their permissions extended.
- d1sxeyes 4mo agoEither these are already counted in the 9.5M, or they will continue not to be counted.
- fractallyte 4mo agoWhy would you assume the population cap is arbitrary? There's a calculable limit to the population an area of land can sustain. (Yes, some agricultural practices can mitigate that, but that should also be weighed against culture and history, and how much change is acceptable.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
- lukan 4mo agoOk, so how to calculate it for switzerland in a non arbitrary way? (Btw. I believe switzerland is not trying to be self sufficient anyway, but donimport lots of stuff, like most other countries do)
- acivitillo 4mo agoWhat is rational about this exactly? They share no borders with the countries most immigrants come from, they are moving the problem to Spain, Italy, Greece.
- FabCH 4mo agoVast majority of immigrants to Switzerland come from Spain, Italy, Greece and other EU countries…
- tonfa 4mo agoGermany (16% of recent immigration), followed by France and Italy (12% and 11%). https://cms.news.admin.ch/fileservice/sdweb-docs-prod-nsbcch-files/files/2026/04/21/a7cc3a80-d7f2-45e4-a156-8761f2c392e5.pdf https://cms.news.admin.ch/fileservice/sdweb-docs-prod-nsbcch... (page 5)
- FabCH 4mo agoThis is about Swiss - EU relations. Everyone understands that a yes vote means the Swiss equivalent of „exiting the EU“. All Swiss-EU contracts contain a „Guillotine clause“ where if one contract is broken, all are immediately gone. The initiative explicitly requires breaking the freedom of movement contract, which immediately severs all other links to the EU. This _is_ pure political agenda driven campaign using immigrants.
- seanmcdirmid 4mo agoThis is not a vote for Switzerland to exit the EU...for obvious reasons. It is a vote to exit the Schengen.
- FabCH 4mo agoWhich immediately triggers the guillotine clause in all other bilateral treaties including movement of goods and services, Horizon, energy market etc. „Exiting the EU“ is a perfectly adequate way to summarize it to a world audience that doesn’t care about the details.
- seanmcdirmid 4mo agoI’m pretty sure you just pissed off a bunch of Swiss citizens claiming they are voting to exit the EU. It’s just insulting and insensitive. Incidentally, when brexit was being voted, the only person I knew who thought it was a good thing was Swiss. They are just fiercely independent.
- tonfa 4mo ago"the swiss equivalent" As OP explains, freedom of movement can't be stopped in isolation from the rest of the bilaterals. (btw funnily Schengen is just about the border control, we're talking about freedom of movement which is a different thing, e.g. UK wasn't in Schengen but the freedom of movement applied to UK as well before brexit, tho I guess people use Schengen interchangeably)
- soco 4mo ago
- slopinthebag 4mo agoI agree. Every country has a limit, unspoken or not, let the people decide. Anything less is undemocratic.