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Comment by ramtatatam | Hacker News Reader

As far as I remember this point of pro-leave campaign was quite misunderstood by media. My understanding always was that UK does not want to be told who to accept and how many. UK is very much interested in migration, just they would favor skilled and highly educated people (like Switzerland do). Actually funny thing is that there is a lot of immigration to UK from outside of EU :-) And I would not expect that will change because of Brexit...

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Switzerland's model is exactly what the UK has now: EU citizens are allowed to work in Switzerland. Switzerland isn't allowed to make special restrictions on some groups of people.

They want to because they had a referendum on it and it's legally binding to them, but the EU has told them that that means losing free market access (e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/03/eu-swiss-singl... ).

I'm afraid it's not. As far as I'm aware Switzerland cannot be told by EU to accept whatever number of immigrants from any place in the world. Swiss benefits model is substantially different than any other European country and I can't imagine any non-skilled immigrant would try to get to Switzerland to exploit it..

Apart from that tabloids will make a lot of noise around this, obviously it's great topic to get some news :-) In this uncertain time it is not that easy to make predictions, especially when it comes to such high level.

Same as the UK.

Both the UK and Switzerland have to allow people from the EU to travel into and work in their country, don't need to provide them with benefits if they don't have a job. In return UK and Swiss citizens have the same rights in the rest of the EU.

Both the UK and Switzerland can decide to allow people from outside the EU in whatever way they want.

In 2015 during the migrant crisis EU governments decided to relocate 160,000 refugees over Europe, but the UK opted out ( http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/607349/Migrant-crisis-ma... ) so this doesn't apply to them.

I don't agree, it's not same as the UK - talking from experience. Swiss citizens do not have to allow people from EU to travel and work, the amount of formalities you have to pass is much more than if you was moving to UK.

When was that? In theory the rules for EU citizens are exactly the same ( https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home/themen/fza_schweiz-eu-e... ) but in practice implementation may differ, I guess. Did you have a job there before moving?

A few years ago I was applying for a job in there. Did not get it in the end but got close enough to start discovering ins and outs of their system - UK is a heaven compared to Switzerland :-)

The UK already has full control of non-EU immigration and stringent criteria. Are you getting immigration, asylum, and the Dublin convention n refugees mixed up?

I think it likely will because GBP as an export currency has lost almost 20%. It's just not as interesting a deal. Unless wages are forced up to attract foreign pros which ends up being a further hit to business.

Yeah, I'm tracking GBP closely and it's hitting levels from 2.5-3 years ago (though still far from 6-years minimum). Current short-term trend is even bullish :-) Fingers crossed all those bad forecasts are not based on facts :-)

I'm interested in what you're looking at which says that. Against the dollar 2.5-3 years ago GBP was never below 1.47, since the referendum, the highest it has been is 1.34 and that was the lowest we got in the 2008/2009 crash.

Ah sorry, I should have mentioned I was tracking GBP against PLN (much much less known currency ;-) )

Against EUR it is not doing THAT bad (but still BAD), but we were over 1.30 in GBPEUR and now we're 1.12 (and hit lows of 1.10 and even 1.09).

For me that causes a problem as I'm saving for a house in the continent, which I have to pay in EUR, now that I might have to leave the UK as my status is not guaranteed: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2016-10-19/debates/F13...

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