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Swiss immigration: 50.3% back quotas, final results show
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- spindritf 13y agoAnd EU officials are unhappy about it. I guess if it was one of the EU countries, people would get to vote until a pre-approved decision in a referendum is reached. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_European_Constitution_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_European_Constitution_re...
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y agoNo. If it was an EU country, same thing would happen. EU would crack down on treaty violation.
- waps 13y agoBy which you mean Europe would claim that the international treaties they make superseed the will of the local voters by virtue of them being in Europe ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_(European_Union_law) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_(European_Union_law)
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y agoYes. Member states can't just pick and choose. They're in or they're out, with few exceptions.
- waps 13y agoExcept of course that in every test ever European politicians have chosen to safeguard their power and jobs as opposed to the principles of the European state. Hell they've even gone against democracy itself. Btw : letting member states pick and chose is alive and well. It's called confederalism and you can see it in action in (amongst others) Belgium and Switzerland.
- chad_oliver 13y agoEU law is a framework for cooperation between local communities. Cooperation only works if it's mutual.
- yulaow 13y agoImho it is not a good choice at all. As the EU commission said, if the Switzerland want to put some immigration block they have to drop also all other rights of the treaty EU-Sw [1]. Considering how much Swiss companies depend on the EU to make profit, I think this can be a large catastrophe on the mid-long term. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_Union_relations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_Un...
- Hermel 13y agoThe dependency goes two ways. For example, there is no German car without parts coming from Switzerland. I hope that Brussels does not act offended and stays reasonable. Any action that hurts both parties would just be childish. However, they Swiss already struggled in the past to explain their democracy to the EU bureaucrats. Being used to decide for themselves, European politicians often fail to fully comprehend a system in which the people have the last word.
- aristidb 13y agoI suppose you consider not upholding one side of the treaty when the other side has been dropped "childish"?
- Hermel 13y agoThe Swiss do not want to drop the treaty - which is about much more than just immigration. They only want to keep immigration limited - as it was already the case until 2010. Going back to that level would be the simplest and most pragmatic solution. The problem with this is that the Eurocrats see Europe's political integration as a one-way street: once you are in, there is no way back. They hate and threaten anyone who wants to go a step back - even if it is just a small one. The root cause is their fear of others imitating the Swiss and Brussels losing power. This has become very apparent during the euro crisis: while there are lots of rules for joining the euro-zone, none of the treaties ever even mentioned how one could leave it again. Leaving is just not an option in the minds of European politicians. This leaves no room for experiments and makes the EU very inflexible.
- Hermel 13y agoActually, the EU should be grateful - that decision will result in fewer engineers, doctors, professors, and other highly qualified talents migrating to Switzerland.
- rmc 13y agoThe EU/Swiss deal is (I think) an all-or-nothing deal about immigration/customs/etc where either side can pull out completely. Switzerland might have just pulled out completely.
- mistakoala 13y agoIIRC, Switzerland reserves certain rights on immigration.
- waps 13y agoSo what you mean to say is that the EU politicians will show backbone, respect their principles and reject a potential of new power over a new state in order to safeguard European law ? That'll be a first. e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe#Post-rejection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitut... These are the people that have not even mentioned the situation in Turkey. Hell, they haven't even stopped treaty negotiations about Turkey joining the EU.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoIt seems that Europe is tightening its immigration policies. I would say it makes sense given that previous policies gave rise to some suboptimal dynamics. I wonder if they manage to still make holes for qualified specialists.
- rmc 13y agoHalf a billion people in the EU have the right to live and work in any of the 27 member states. People from some very poor countries can live and work in very rich countries. That's actually a massive amount of freedom of movement, and dismantling of immigration barriers.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoHow come UK wants to stop paying immigrants from poor countries unemployement benefits? If you think about it you'll wonder how they managed to pay newly immigrated poor people unemployement benefits in the first place.
- hackerboos 13y ago>If you think about it you'll wonder how they managed to pay newly immigrated poor people unemployement benefits in the first place. And if you research it rather than just think about it you'll know that the UK doesn't just dole out benefits to newly arrived EU migrants.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoAs I've never been to UK nor plan to, I would like to hear a digest. If you prove me wrong I'll admit it.
- seszett 13y agoThe UK is not part of this, though. The grand-parent said 27, but Shengen area (with free movement) is not the same as EU: The UK and Ireland are not part of it, but Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are (well, not anymore it seems).
- ZirconCode 13y agoEven the voting booklets were pretty biased against passing (IMO of course), although I'm not surprised at this result. The type of xenophobia often attributed to hillbillies in american culture is a lot more common in Switzerland than I expected. The sad thing is most people I've meet which hold this belief, could themselves be considered foreigners.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoWhy should foreigners want to bring more foreigners into the country? It will drive their wages down and decrease living conditions (both short term). You might argue it would be "a fair thing" for migrants to support migration, but it's not a rational one.
- gaius 13y agoIt's a similar reason to trade unions traditionally opposing minimum wage laws.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoIt's slightly different: Trade unions have to be nice to the rest of society (being its part), but Swiss citizens (both born and new) don't have to be nice to all the rest of the world. They have even greater priority of minding their own business.
- thrownaway2424 13y agoWhen I first arrived in Switzerland I was very surprised by the open racism and generally far-right-wing platform of the SVP. The black sheep poster[1] is pretty infamous of course, and then there's the small fact that the SVP was strongly against women's suffrage, within my lifetime! I think of universal suffrage as belonging to the American Reconstruction era but for Switzerland it's contemporaneous with men landing on the moon. Even an American can easily see that a large chunk of Switzerland is quite reactionary. It seems weird. For some reason I expected a wealthy European country to have liberal social values. http://www.hurryupharry.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/svp_01a.jpg http://www.hurryupharry.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/svp_0...
- Hermel 13y agoThis is potentially good news for immigrants from the rest of the world. Currently, there are very strict quotas in place to make up for the large inflow of Europeans. In future, both categories will have quotas, which could result in more generous quotas for countries like the US. In an ironic twist, this could result in a more globally oriented Switzerland.
- seszett 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-born_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-bo... With most countries with high amounts of immigrants being either quite poor or quite rich (especially those in Europe) and Switzerland obviously belonging to the rich European ones... it's not obvious what good could come from trying to leave this list of the richest, highest-immigration countries.
- Hermel 13y agoAccording to that list, 28.9% of the Swiss population are immigrants. Even if the proposed quota cuts immigration in half, it will still stay one of the top countries in that regard.
- stefantalpalaru 13y agoSome people hope that the EU will cut Switzerland's access to the common market which will force it to officially accede to the European Union and have a saying in the rules and regulations it has to adopt anyway.
- ZirconCode 13y agoActually Switzerland will most likely have to take this action itself, as the Swiss law now contradicts itself in this aspect.
- michaelt 13y agoFrom the perspective of the EU, taking punitive action would make them look like Russia, eager to push their 'allies' about. It would be a gift to people who say the EU wants to take away countries' individual sovereignty. According to those who oppose caps, instituting caps will cause a bunch of pain anyway. If the EU want to punish the swiss, the best thing to do would be to allow that pain, which the swiss have indisputably brought upon themselves.
- sentenza 13y agoI think you are right, letting them run into that knife is probably the best way. However, the counterargument also holds some sway: Switzerland is free-riding already, having many of the common market benefits of the EU without giving he loss of sovereignty that EU membership entails. The whole EFTA agreement only works because Swizerland etc. are relatively small compared to the rest of the EU. If everybody had the EFTA deal and there was no EU, the whole thing would go to shambles within a few decades.
- Hermel 13y agoI wonder wether this is part of a larger backlash against centralization in general. The British have become very skeptical of the EU. And in September, the Scots will even vote on becoming independent from the UK. Catalonia feels less and less comfortable as part of Spain. Is this only a temporary phenomenon or an ongoing trend?
- skylan_q 13y agoThe British have become very skeptical of the EU. This is par for the course in historical terms. The U.K. has always been against the formation of a strong, unified, mainland Europe.
- RivieraKid 13y agoI would say that thay rather don't want the EU tell them what to do. Which is completely understandable.
- gaius 13y agoIndeed we fought two wars in the last century to prevent it.
- aristidb 13y agoI believe preventing the need for such wars was one of the reasons why the UK joined the EU, or am I mistaken?
- seszett 13y agoPreventing it by disorganising the EU from the inside, maybe.
- ig1 13y agoNot really, we were drawn into the wars for a variety of political reasons (e.g. treaty obligations to protect neutral countries) rather than because of a philosophical objection to a unified European power.
- jsnell 13y agoThis is of course potentially disastrous. Our startup is based in Switzerland, with about half us working in Zurich and the other half in the EU. The goal has always been to do most new hiring in Switzerland rather than continue building a distributed organization. If the immigration situation changes drastically, we'll probably need to instead grow in other countries. And after that happens, there really is very little point in keeping the company registered and paying taxes in Switzerland at all. Even in the current situation being outside of the EU is already rather inconvenient. And I'm sure ours isn't a unique situation. A sane immigration policy has been one of the main things Switzerland has going for it. For example Google Zurich can't be at all happy about this. (As is normal in these kinds of things, the vote to restrict immigation was concentrated in the rural areas where no immigrants would move to. Meanwhile the places where immigrants actually have an impact voted against the proposal).
- Hermel 13y agoYes, such quotas are a pain in the ass for a startup. The company I worked for lost a foreign employee because his residence-permit was not renewed after two years. However, I'm not afraid about Google - they have all the legal processes in place to get non-EU citizens into Switzerland that face quotas already today. And in the worst case, they can still offer them a job in another office.
- jsnell 13y agoOh, Google as a whole will of course be fine. But it'd be insane to have a huge engineering office in a small country and a bad immigration policy. So they'll grow elsewhere, and Switzerland loses out. (I worked in Google's Zurich office the last time there was a big immigration quota scare, IIRC 2008 or 2009 when they cut various quotas in half with no warning. It definitely wasn't treated internally as casually as you imply.)
- return0 13y agoI wonder if EU countries would ever pull a referendum on whether they should impose quotas on their nationals who keep their savings in swiss banks.
- RivieraKid 13y agoThere is nothing inherently wrong about tightening immigration policy. I don't know the details but there are couple of perfectly understandable reasons why people oppose immigration (note that they overlap a bit): 1. Immigrants are disproportionally responsible for criminality. 2. Switzerland is a rich country and the Swiss want to keep the wealth for themselves. But of course, many immigrants have a net positive effect on the country's wealth. 3. Many immigrants come from a very different culture and don't want to adjust to the mainstream culture. 4. Immigrants may form groups isolated from the rest of the society. 5. The Swiss culture is different than the American one. They're not that welcoming to immigrants. They want to keep their culture. I personally understand why they voted not to allow mosques in their towns.
- RivieraKid 13y agoThere's also a nice analogy to the startup world. Heard of a culture fit? Immigration policy is similar.
- kkowalczyk 13y agoGiven that (in aggregate) startups are phenomenally successful, looks like the Swiss made the right decision.
- RivieraKid 13y agoWhy the downvote?
- guard-of-terra 13y agoI guess it's caused by Compulsive Libertarian Downvote Disorder which is triggered by seeing non-politically-correct claims while not being able to mount compelling arguments against those.
- Gmo 13y agoNo, it's because most of his points are not valid regarding the situation of Switzerland and the point of this vote.
- henridf 13y agoThis vote has a classic "urban vs rural" component. Urban areas (where high population growth has the most direct impact) said "no" to the restriction of immigration. Rural areas said yes. The other component is linguistic/regional. These two components typically summarize most Swiss votes pretty well. (most visible on a map, see http://www.24heures.ch/suisse/tendance-initiative-udc-limmigration/story/13798297 http://www.24heures.ch/suisse/tendance-initiative-udc-limmig...)
- fidotron 13y agoThese kind of moves are Europe's equivalent to the bus nonsense in Silicon Valley. It's the misplaced anger of a bunch of people that feel economically impotent and threatened by outsiders that seemingly operate in places they consider to be their homes more effectively than they do. Removing freedom of movement of labour is highly retrogressive, and vast parts of the world would benefit from enabling it further, but we need to be better at getting to the bottom of this alienation at home question and how to resolve it because otherwise the fear of outsiders is just going to become more common and more acceptable.
- kkowalczyk 13y agoIt's actually the opposite of the "bus nonsense" and actually the concerns are valid. In SV, poor(er) people complain about too many rich(er) people coming in. When it comes to immigration, rich(er) people are afraid of too many poor(er) people coming in. Also they are not removing freedom of movement, they put a limit on rate. Which is something U.S. has been doing for decades and nothing bad really happened because of that. In addition, the math for Switzerland is much different. It's hard to change demographics of 300 million country by letting in a few hundred thousand immigrants. According to the article, already 25% of 8 million Swiss are foreigners. That would be a pretty alarming number if you were native Swiss. If the current trend continues (80 thousand immigrants per year), that would be 50% in ~25 years. Let's also not ignore the real danger of ethnic-based or religious-based conflict, like Bosnian War.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sentenza 13y agoThe swiss enjoy the many benefits of the European Free Trade Association and want to be as integrated into the EU economy as possible without actually having to pay the price that comes with full membership. Not everybody is happy about this and I expect the EU to retaliate by putting more pressure on the freedoms of Swiss banks. Can't have your lunch and eat it.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoSo you're arguing that inflood of immigrants is not a benefit, but rather a "price" you have to "pay"? That's an interesting twist to our discourse.
- sentenza 13y agoWhat? NO! That's not what I meant. The immigrants are a benefit. The price you have to pay is that you get the Euro, you pay into the EU budget, you have your banking and industry regulated by the EU and you get the (admittedly questionable) supervision of the national budget. There is a bigger question about cherry-picking the EU treaties here. Too many nationalists wanting to opt out of too many things. EDIT: I must admit that my original comment can be read the way you did, but it was definitely not meant that way. I can assure you that I personally have made extensive use of the freedom to roam, work and study wherever I please within the EU.