Switzerland to restrict EU immigration | Hacker News Reader

Switzerland to restrict EU immigration

bbc.co.uk

38 pointsyoungerdryas79 comments

I feel more and more ashamed as a swiss citizen - seeing xenophobia on the rise across the country. it is disheartening to see the growing populism among our politicians, mindlessly fueling the fears in the swiss population and focusing the political deliberations on topics such as immigration, asylum-seekers and highway taxes instead of the real issues in this country.

the swiss citizen need to wake up and realize which century they are in. in the 21st century few swiss people understand the implications of globalization and that immigration for better or worse is inevitable. as a matter of fact the economy of this country would not stand as strong without the constant influx of immigrants. it is time we acknowledge this fact and leave our resentments towards europe behind.

for those who are interested, you'll find more extensive remarks in my blog: http://jcfrei.com

Even if it were true that "the economy of this country would not stand as strong without the constant influx of immigrants" -- and it's not true, it's foolish -- you would still want to consider before selling your birthright for the bowl of red.

Some people seem to think that whatever is good for the stock market is good for the country, because the country IS the stock market.

What exactly is jcfrei's birthright? Or yours, or mine for that matter?

I'm going to get out my raclette and chillout for a bit...

If you do not know what your birthright is, then it is unlikely that you will manage to keep it for very long.

Do you want free migration or do you want a swiss people to actually exist?

I feel this message always gets lost in the sea of "but diversification is doubleplusgood!" You can't have a culturally diverse population and still have a singular national identity.

Have you read about the Lombard invasion of northern Italy in the 6th century? It was essentially a massive, unopposed migration, but the effect was the same as an invasion - the Lomards ruled northern Italy for centuries.

I'm a Swiss citizen living in San Francisco, and while I don't necessarily agree with restrictive immigration policies (I'm in the process on getting a US green card – don't get me started on how stressful that is), I also don't see anything particularly wrong with it either.

Immigration in Switzerland is a big issue. Switzerland is tiny and is getting a little over-crowded. We don't have mega-cities, real estate prices are through the roof, and new building permits are very restricted due to regulation meant to preserve Switzerland's beautiful old cities.

When I grew up, Switzerland's population was 7 million. Now it's 8. That almost 9% growth. The country hasn't gotten any bigger, though. While there benefits to diversifying our culture, and bringing in skilled workers to contribute to the economy; the average immigrant is probably a net detriment to the country, because an influx of people puts a strain on Switzerland's public services and its real estate market (Y'all think San Francisco rents are bad? Try renting an apartment in Zurich!).

If you believe in the principle behind countries (a group of people coming together to form a society that, like Capitalism, does what is in its best interest), then you should understand the decision. If not, well, that's an entirely different argument.

Personally, I'd like immigration to be merit based. Ie., immigrants would have to demonstrate that they'd be a net asset to the country, in some fashion.

Sounds like you agree with immigration only when it benefits you personally.

I agree with immigration when it benefits the country.

It's like when you hire an employee for your company: you're only going to go through with it if the transaction is mutually beneficial (keeping in mind the associated costs), which from your vantage point means that it must benefit your company. Immigration is the same thing, at a larger scale.

San Franciscans can (and do) make all your same arguments against you moving here: the city is small and getting over-crowded, real-estate prices are going through the roof, etc.

But San Francisco, like Switzerland, is part of a larger economy which benefits from freedom of movement.

You sure are excited about this economy stuff. It's as though you think that people exist to serve the economy rather than the other way around. I hope nobody points out to you that per capita income would go up if we gassed all the old folks and cripples.

You mean the economy that attracted SeoxyS to move half across the world?

I mean the economy for which we must all bend ourselves into pretzel shapes.

Only an idiot or an ideologue promotes a particular policy even though he knows that it would harm him.

So Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are idiots or ideologues?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1259184...

Neither. Advocating that taxes be raised serves to increase their status, just as catapulting buckets of money in the generally direction of irredeemably corrupt African countries does. Biologists refer to such behavior as a "display of fitness," like a peacock's feathers or the way some tribal chieftains compete with each other to see who can give away the most stuff. We crave status more than we do money or even sex.

Besides, in this case their lawyers and lobbyists will see to it that they actually never will have to pay much extra to Uncle Sugar. In the end, the only people who will feel the bite of tax hikes will be ordinary people, and nobody cares about them.

Sure, you can be a cynical selfish asshole when promoting public policy. But it's not a very good argument when trying to convince others.

Gotta love that false consciousness.

When else does it make sense ?

The argument about increasing rents is one I've heard quite a few times however correlation and causation are not entirely clear (this blog goes into more detail: http://politblog.tagesanzeiger.ch/blog/index.php/tag/miete/?... (in german)). on top of that the available land for building would be more than sufficient for 8 mil. and more people. take a look at singapore, which is half the size of the canton of zurich but has three times more inhabitants (5.3 mil.). needless to say we would need to revise a lot of the very restrictive building codes here.

Anyway, the whole discussion about immigration really becomes absurd when you consider that most immigrants are not unskilled, minimum wage workers, but mostly highly skilled professionals. in some areas our economy is in desperate need of those professionals - for example in the health care sector - and dismissing those professionals would be the really foolish thing to do.

That only makes sense unless you take into account how people are living in Singapore. 5 people to an apartment is not an exception there. Couples that don't have the money and have to share the SAME ROOM with other people is not rare. Just imagine building a future with someone you care about, or having a child, or just even finding someone at all in that environment.

I for one would consider it a very positive trait of a city to NOT be like Singapore. I do not want to live like that, and when prices hit a certain level you have no choice left.

"most immigrants are not unskilled, minimum wage workers" - I can only respond with "visit Brussels". They have a very positive trait - they're much more likely to start a business (though almost always either an eatery or a food store). Enough is enough though. After a certain amount of stores - everything just starts to fail, and everyone moves to welfare. And yes, a small amount of immigrants is definitely enriching. The way it is happening in Brussels it brings zero diversity (there's only 99% morrocan, 99% turkish, 99% dutch 99% french quarters with zero interaction between them - aside from crime. Kids go to separate schools, and in the few cases they do go to similar schools - they still don't interact - everyone knows why but it's politically incorrect - it's violence-enforced racism by a particular non-white religious group, although ethnicity also plays). The way it is now, immigration in Brussels is nothing but a massive drag on a city that just can't take it. I heard about one study claiming that the average economic benefit for the EU of one immigrant is about MINUS 10k euros per year. I think that's probably pretty accurate.

> When I grew up, Switzerland's population was 7 million. Now it's 8. That almost 9% growth.

Switzerland's projected population growth for 2000-2050 is 1.8%.

Just for comparison Australia's population growth over the same period is 28.9%.

Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/compare/Australia/Switzerland/Pe...

Have you ever considered that immigration to Switzerland may also be harming the countries where these people are coming from?

Many countries, especially third-world countries, are in desperate need of well-educated, talented people. We're talking about doctors, engineers, and even educators. These are the kind of people who are essential to providing or creating the infrastructure of a modern society.

As long as these people keep leaving their native countries, and as long as more prosperous western nations keep accepting them, it will become more and more difficult for the situation to improve in the countries they emigrated from.

You are right, but there's nothing we can or should do about that. I only know of a few countries which forcefully try to keep emigration down, most notably north korea.

In an ideal world every individual would be free to pursue happiness in whatever country it desires to, regardless of nationality (I believe that idea has been mentioned before in the constitution of some rather prosperous nation...)

1) The words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" appear nowhere in the Constitution.

2) In any event, the above phrase has nothing to do with immigration.

3) Even though Bluto asks in "Animal House" if it was over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, the Germans actually did not bomb Pearl Harbor.

What are you saying here? That people should be forcibly confined in places they don't want to live in order to fulfill someone else's desire to create a "modern society"?

I hope you recognize the frightening implications of your point.

I clearly did not suggest that people should be "forcibly confined in places they don't want to live". I have no idea how you could've even come up with such an obviously-mistaken interpretation in the first place.

The top 20 or so countries (of approximately 200 countries in total) not accepting any more immigrants or refugees would in no way prevent these migrants from moving to one of the other 180 or so countries.

However, when the options are staying where they are, or moving to a country with only a marginally better standard of living, there may not be enough incentive for these people to move. This at least raises the possibility of enough of them helping to improve the situation in their homelands, rather than that not being possible at all if they've left for a western nation.

And I'd like to think that having widespread access to at least a minimal level of modern health care, education, agricultural techniques, water and sewage treatment, and other technology is something that most people would desire. This doesn't happen spontaneously, though. It requires people with education, training and experience directly living and participating in the society desiring such things.

> EU officials have always told Switzerland it cannot cherry pick only those parts of European policy it likes best.

Surely that's the exact reason they are not a member of the European Union, and exactly what they can do.

Certainly they can. But then the EU can quit treating Switzerland like a quasi-member, and instead treat them like a they do e.g. Turkey.

Why? Because they're not as multicultural as the rest of Europe? Because they dare to live in a way that suits themselves?

The promoters of diversity ueber alles certainly are in touch with their inner totalitarian these days.

Because it isn't worth the effort to bilaterally negotiate every little detail with tiny Switzerland.

The EU has accommodated Switzerland's extreme go-it-alone ethos by offering membership in all but name. They did so out of a sense of shared history, affection, and mutual benefit. If the Switzerland is no longer interested they can truly go it alone.

As for totalitarian, it's pretty rich to argue against free movement and in favor of rank nationalism and accuse your interlocutors of totalitarian tendencies.

Aristotle contended that justice consists of treating equals equally, and unequals unequally. You, on the other hand, want to treat Switzerland just like Turkey, even though the two countries are strikingly unequal.

Analogies do not work that way! /Morbo

You're using a very selective definition of 'equal.' Switzerland is certainly different from Turkey in various ways, but in this context they should be assessed on their degree of legal ties to the EU - treaties signed and complied with, for example. Arguably, Switzerland is getting far more benefits from the EU than Turkey despite neither of them being actual members.

And they are making far better use of those benefits than Turkey ever could.

For instance (since so many people here are fond of economic arguments), tiny Switzerland (population under eight million) has a GDP a bit over six hundred and thirty-five billion dollars.

But even though Turkey has a population nine times greater, that country's GDP is only a hundred billion and change bigger than Switzerland's. If the Turks were as productive, their economy would be the equal of China's, with only a fraction of China's population.

The Swiss literally get more done before their morning coffee break than the Turks do all day, maybe because they somehow manage to spend their time at useful tasks rather than blowing up Kurds, staging military coups, listening to crazy preachers, banning political parties, and so on. I'm glad the EU is helping them out, because they deserve it.

In other words, I'm right so you change the subject to how lazy the Turks are. Well, Let's put Switzerland where Turkey is and vice-versa and see how well the Swiss do, shall we? Sorry, but your post comes off as pretty thinly-veiled racism, thanks to your highly selective use of statistics, dismissal of geography, and conflation of multiple historical events into the present.

Your idea of putting the Swiss in Turkey is unworkable for the simple reason that nobody wants to go there. However, plenty of Turks move to Switzerland, where, I gather, their economic performance continues to be less than stellar. That crisp mountain air can only do so much, it seems.

And you want the EU to treat Switzerland like an EU country, even though they are manifestly (and deliberately) not equal. Everyone fails!

By what metric are they unequal? Crime rates? Economic output? Level of corruption? Degree of political freedom? What?

You cannot name a single way in which Switzerland is not the equal, and often the superior, of the countries that comprise the European Union. It even has the highest per capita rate of Nobel Prize winners

On the other hand, Turkey is known for Islamic fundamentalism, ethnic wars, military coups, violence against women, and a level of intellectual accomplishment that ranks somewhere between D+ and C-.

> By what metric are they unequal? Crime rates? Economic output? Level of corruption? Degree of political freedom? What?

Political culture, economic customs and practices, actual membership in the European Union...

thanks. I hadn't specified since I thought the point of difference was so blindingly obvious in context, but I guess not to everyone.

You forgot to add, "and not being handcuffed to a dead man."

so...you think the EU is a bad thing (I assume that's the dead man you are talking about), and Switzerland made the right decision to not tie themselves to it, but those countries that did decide to join it should give Switzerland all the benefits that would accrue from being a member while allowing them to avoid any possible negative outcomes, because Switzerland is just so awesome.

That's an interesting perspective.

Long after the EU has succumbed to gigantism the Swiss will still be around. To believe that the sick should shun the healthy is an inversion of reality.

Isn't Switzerland, on any meaningful account, far more "multicultural" than the rest of Europe? We're talking about what's arguably the most decentralized country in the world here; the one in which four different languages are dominant in different regions.

And, aside from all that, artificially-enforced uniformity seems no less totalitarian than artificially-enforced diversity. Wouldn't you regard any legislative policy that attempts to direct the composition of civil society - toward any goal - to be inherently totalitarian? Certainly it at least creates a sort of circular reference in the mechanism of democracy: how can the state be held accountable to society if it has the power to manipulate society?

Switzerland is far more multicultural than the rest of Europe. Switzerland must embrace multiculturalism the way the rest of Europe has.

Switzerland is the most decentralized country in the world. Switzerland is inherently totalitarian.

Legislative policy that attempts to direct the composition of civil society is bad when citizens vote for it. Legislative policy that attempts to direct the composition of civil society is good when it is imposed on an unwilling citizenry by a foreign bureaucracy.

Got it. Everything is much clearer now.

In theory that is true, and it is very nice. The problem just is that the EU is all around Switzerland, they have a huge stick they can use.

If there where more countrys like Switzerland it would be closer to theory.

I used to live in Switzerland for two years. Switzerland depends on foreigners for high-skilled jobs - they simply have a higher demand for high-skilled people than they currently produce. It seems like a super stupid idea to limit that.

I wonder what this means for us Swiss citizens working in other EU member countries. Will they reciprocally boot us out?

I think this policy makes perfect sense. In the Netherlands we've put the borders wide open since the early 90s and perhaps even earlier due to EU legislation. Overall the results have been terrible. These are some of the issues we deal with nowadays:

- many immigrants are on welfare, this puts a huge economic pressure on our country.

- many immigrants of Middle-Eastern descent put a huge pressure on our healthcare (e.g. very many visits to our general practitioners).

- the culture of many Middle-Eastern immigrants doesn't merge very well with our Western culture. E.g. in Marrocan culture boys are generally higher regarded as girls. Additionally these boys are one of our biggest problem groups (very high criminality). Mothers don't have the means to correct these boys.

- I should note Marrocan girls seem to do pretty well in the Netherlands, low criminality and generally hard working students at school with good grades.

It's interesting when browsing fora of Dutch-Marrocan people (for example http.maroc.nl) you often see posts of Marrocan girls looking for converted (to Islam) Dutch guys to wed. These girls often prefer converted Dutch partner because the girls themselves would have more freedom in such a relation.

Many of these immigrants live close to each other. Since many woman don't work and are not allowed to leave home by themselves except for shopping / visiting the doctor, they often don't learn the Dutch language which results in them being socially excluded from the Dutch society.

In my opinion our own government failed big time on this. We should have had limited immigration from the start (early 70s or 80s perhaps?) and when people would come we should have made sure immigrants would be spread around cities, not living close to each other in "ghettos". This would have forced many immigrants to integrate better in our society.

Either way, I think unlimited immigration puts huge strains on society and eventually destabilises society as a whole because of culture clashes.

It takes a few generations for these things to work themselves out. I imagine the former Dutch colonies would have preferred a more limited subjugation as well, but you can't always have what you want.

This is really quite xenophobic. The majority of migration is going to be from the EU [1], and despite Europe's integration by way of treaties, I'm under the impression that someone fresh off the boat (metaphorically speaking) can't just suddenly claim all the welfare there is. Immigrants from non-EU countries have to be able to show their ability to support themselves before they're granted a visa, so I highly doubt they're a huge burden on society too.

Only something like 2.16% of population is from Morocco [2] and I really doubt they're the result of society's ills. While I can't find statistics, I highly doubt these people are draining the country's coffers through welfare payments. Also, why do you think they're constantly seeking health care? Even if they are, you seem to be saying they're unnecessarily visiting the doctor and are hypochondriacs; again, I struggle to understand why this would be the case just because they're from the middle east. Do you have any statistics available that demonstrate middle-eastern immigrants visit their GP more than born and bred Dutch, and are feigning illness? (I'm not saying it's untrue, I just can't find anything to support or refute your claim.)

The thing with the freedom of movement provisions is it works both ways: the Dutch are just as able to leave and move to another EU nation as other EU nationals are able to move to the Netherlands. Quite a good number of Dutch emigrate both to within and outside the EU, which is fair and fine.

Immigration, at least in the US, can be argued to have quite a positive effect on society. [3] I see no reason for this not to apply to the Netherlands.

What your argument really seems to boil down to is that there are people from a different tribe that are living among your tribe and, by way of confirmation bias, you notice all the things they do wrong.

No society is perfect and not all immigrants are going to integrate into society or be a net benefit, but many more will be. Relatively speaking, the Netherlands has its shit together and I fail to see any evidence that supports your claim that the Dutch standard of living is being significantly eroded because of brown people.

[1] http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/bevolking/publicaties/ar...

[2] http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/Download/Population__origin_2...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/opinion/the-beneficial-imp...

What you call xenophobic, others call noticing what is right in front of their noses.

Could it be confirmation bias?

Stereotypes don’t materialize out of thin air. If they did that you’d see a more random distribution of competing stereotypes.

Stereotypes don't appear out of thin air, but they aren't independently formed either; they get taught and passed on by parents and peers. Confirmation bias also plays a role in perpetuating them too.

After all, if you hold the belief that women are bad drivers, did you independently come to this conclusion based on an accurate assessment of driving skill and gender, or did you hear "ha, women drivers!" over and over as a kid and subsequently see every mistake a woman driver made and mutter to yourself, "ha, women drivers!"?

The image of the immigrant as invariably hard-working, noble, and law-abiding gets taught and passed along too, not by parents and peers but by business interests seeking cheap labor and political parties seeking permanent dominance by means of electing a new people.

When you label something as confirmation bias, make sure you're looking through the right end of the telescope.

Reasons why these kinds of people put so much pressure on our welfare and health systems are partly because they have so much trouble integrating into our society. Part of the problem is, as I've explained, our own government that didn't spread immigrants around country but allowed them to live close to one another. Now we have closed badly integrated societies ("ghettos") in some of our bigger and even smaller cities. One city where this problem with especially the Marrocan population is very clear is Gouda, but the same kinds of problems exist in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, etc...

Criminality among (especially) boys of Moroccan descent is disproportionate with regards to the size of the population:

[0]: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2624/moroccan-crime-nether...

We've imported a lot of berber people from Morocco. Within the berber culture a lot of marriages happen between closely related family members, resulting in a worse gene pool. This could be partly the cause for the berber immigrants health issues. The following articles might be of interest to you:

[1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC449726/

[2]: http://books.google.nl/books?id=HDIa0tyllqgC&lpg=PA455&#...

In the end I don't think multicultural societies can really exist. There needs to be a leading culture and people should be encouraged to adopt (parts of) the leading culture or blend it with their own culture. Without a leading culture the social cohesion slowly erodes. And this is why I think Switzerland made a very wise decision in limiting immigration. Immigrants need time to integrate and the society should be able to deal with the strain of the immigrants until they're well integrated, otherwise it results in "dweilen met de kraan open."

Switzerland seems to be the only country in Europe which gets it right. They also have a 'real' democracy(grassroots democracy), which is a huge advantage, because people can vote for nearly everything.

How is that an advantage? Sure, they get to vote on roundabouts in the city, but having that many votes have also led to one of the lowest participation rates, when they vote, in Europe.

Most people dont care about most of the things and so they dont vote most of the time. Some people vote only on the lower levels, some only on the highest.

I myself do normally not vote on village level (5000 people) because the matters are quite trival, while I vote on the level that involve things like immigration. I know other people that do to opposit because truth is that the village level things probeblly still have a bigger impact on your live then the country wide things.

If there is a vote on something really importent that a lot of people feel is importent participation rates shoots up quite a bit.

You seem to think that participation is an end in itself. By that metric, Belgium is doing splendidly, whereas Switzerland is a failure.

Meanwhile, on Planet Earth, Switzerland is a marvelous country, while Belgium is on the verge of splitting up.

So is the problem essentially the rising cost of real estate? See I was under the impression that IF you structure your economy correctly and you have net surplus (of money) and IF you draw immigrants from all social strata, surely these people will just continue in the trend? Some will be workers, some employers, some have nots? The only problem would be a country getting cramped so it costs more to build the same type of buildings, roads etc.

From what I've read of it, a lot of it is cultural as well. Outside a few liberal, cosmopolitan parts of society (whether left-liberal or right-liberal), many Swiss just don't want more than a handful of immigrants, and like maintaining a closed, stable Nation of people whose great-great-grandfathers were Swiss. This even (perhaps especially) extends to negative sentiment directed at German immigrants by Swiss-Germans.

One paper I ran across (via Wikipedia) suggested that negative sentiment directed at Germans might be due to their similarity: if the objective cultural difference between two groups is not huge, then an influx of immigration is particularly threatening, because it might erase the fragile boundary: http://img2.tapuz.co.il/CommunaFiles/44893554.pdf

Totally understandable decesion, don't see anything wrong about it.

You mean except for the part where they previously agreed not to do so?

You mean before they started getting 80k immigrants a year ?

EDIT: 80k / year represents ~1% of the actual population

If it was more than an informal agreement, then yes, except for that I don't see a problem.

When they made the agreement, they included a "safeguard clause" indicating that the deal would be off if immigration exceeded a particular amount. It has.

I'm completely against the policy, but it's not a violation of the agreement.

> I'm completely against the policy, but it's not a violation of the agreement.

That is not clear. EU officials say that it is indeed a violation of the agreement: “The measures adopted today by the Swiss government are contrary to the agreement on the Free Movement of Persons, since they differentiate between groups of member states.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9f70bc54-ad0c-11e2-9454-00144feabd...

If it is not clear whether it's a violation of the agreement, then it is dishonest to accuse them of being in violation of the agreement.

It is not.

One side may have no doubt it is a violation of the agreement, and say so. There is no problem with that.

If I don't know whether my laptop has been stolen or simply forgotten in some coffee house but I accuse you of taking it because I don't like your politics, that makes me a liar.

Yes.

And that has no relation with what we are talking about. If the Swiss government doesn't follow the written rules of the agreement, it is in violation of them. Saying so doesn't make one a lier.

It might be understandable. It might not even be surprising -- it's only a few years since Switzerland last tried to pull off a "let's cut all the permit quotas drastically" trick. But it's also very short-sighted.

There aren't a lot of reasons to actually start new business in Switzerland (awkward regulatory environment, tiny internal market, very high costs). A mostly sane immigration policy has been one of the main things the country has going for it. Sudden changes in the policy make for an increasingly hostile business environment.

Indeed. This could force Google to move its EU HQ to some other country.

They already bought the land for their massive new facility in London.

Immigration is not entirely positive, it has complex effects on the society and economy. I don't know whether 80 000 per year is the optimal limit, but I oppose to the idea that foreigners have moral right for immigration. It's a democratic decision, they may be wrong, but it's them who's best positioned to decide what's best for them.

I wonder if they will extend this to the immigration of capital.

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