Nearly 55% of voters in Switzerland on Sunday rejected an initiative championed by the top right-wing party to cap the rich Alpine country’s population at 10 million, early results showed.
The populist Swiss People’s Party, which has the most seats in parliament, has stirred up and fostered anti-migration sentiment over the years, notably about an influx of workers from the neighboring European Union.
Some have dubbed the proposal a “Swiss Brexit” because it could jeopardize Switzerland’s deep ties to the European Union anchored by deals that foster economic growth, cultural ties and cross-border travel, among other things. Switzerland is not one of the EU’s 27 member states, but it is all but surrounded by four of them
What is it with right wing populists and their obsession with immigration? All they ever do is state the immigration is bad, and that it’s the root of all evil, provide no evidence for the claim, and then just keep parroting the claim ad infinitum until either elected or arrested/shot.
I get that they’re racist but they’re bordered by the likes of France, who exactly is it that’s coming over that they have a problem with?
Basically it’s a way to distract from actual political issues, and shift blame to people that have a hard time defending themselves.
It’s a very old technique but ususally works very well. The Romans used to execute Christians, and in mediaeval times European leaders would do pogroms (of Jews), burning of Catholics etc. Then 20th century examples like segregation, Nazism and fascists like Oswald Mosely.
Nowadays we have the modern versions in MAGA and Reform and “stop the boats” and whatever this Swiss movement calls itself.
Always condeming “the other” and making sure only to pick on those who can’t stand up or really speak for themselves, because that persecution is cheaper and easier than acually solving problems.
Especially if those problems could be solved by worker reforms and progressive tax systems.
We had a foreign exchange student from Switzerland living with us recently, and I can confirm that the German side of Switzerland thinks the French side as lesser.
I doubt it was an honest goal. It was most likely a post-truth political device for aligbment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thbc9Auongc
I mean, to a certain extent that is certainly true. If the taxable population stays the same, but the general population grows(through immigration or child births), then the taxable population will have to pay more to support the general population. This is often referred to as employment-unemployment ratio.
Now if the claim that one side is making “immigrants are employed to a higher degree than the native population” is true, then the other side is right about their claim that “immigrants are taking our jobs”.
If, on the other hand, the inverse is true, then the immigrants not gaining employment would contribute to the drain on government resources.
It is complicated, to say the least.
It’s actually not very complicated at all you’re just painfully misinformed
“No, you.”
That’s not how immigration works. That’s how the right want you to think it works.
I have literally never met anybody who has had their job taken by immigrants. Companies aren’t allowed to pay immigrants less money than the current citizens so there’s no reason to hire an immigrant over a citizen, in fact the opposite, a citizen is much more likely to understand the language and culture (although you do meet some people) and therefore much more able to integrate, and effectively operate in the business, whatever that business is.
If you want to emigrate into a country you have to usually prove that you’re not going to cost that country any money. You have to prove that either you have the means to support yourself, or that you already have an offer of employment. The only exceptions that are made are for people who are fleeing persecution or conflict. But the vast majority of potential immigrants do not meet that criteria.
Empty claim.
Anecdote.
Of course they are. Minimum wage is not a thing in many countries.
Wrong.
In simple manufacturing jobs you don’t need to know the local language. Also here is a google-translated segment from an article posted this year by Swedish State media: “A compilation made by the Health and Social Care Inspectorate in 2023 shows that 97 percent of the country’s municipalities have health and social care staff who lack sufficient knowledge of the Swedish language to be able to understand what the patient himself is expressing and to be able to correctly pass it on.”
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/sodertalje/sprakkrav-kan-bli-lag-utmanar-personalen-inom-aldrevarden-i-sodertalje
Let me know if you would like data from other nations I mentioned.
Since this thread is about Switzerland: We have the flankierende Massnahmen alongside Schengen exactly to prevent wage dumping. Companies get audited and we make sure foreign workers do not get paid less then local ones.
Edit: Most people who immigrate to Switzerland for work end up in high-income jobs. The lower-income roles get filled too, but that’s mainly down to labour shortages rather than wage dumping.
Yes. I mentioned something to this effect earlier. This is partly why Switzerland is not seeing a marked increase in violent crime.
Where did you mention that. And don’t tell me it is because our immigration system is somehow strict. I can move around Europe with a high likelyhood that nobody ever checks who I am.
In a separate comment about Switzerland specifically.
Switzerland’s is.
Switzerland is not in the EU. Even so, “In Switzerland, 69.7% of the prison population did not have Swiss citizenship, compared to 22.1% of total resident population (as of 2008).”
“In 2010, a statistic was published which listed delinquency by nationality (based on 2009 data). To avoid distortions due to demographic structure, only the male population aged between 18 and 34 was considered for each group. From the study, it became clear that crime rate is highly correlated on the country of origin of the various migrant groups. Thus, immigrants from Germany, France and Austria had a significantly lower crime rate than Swiss citizens (60% to 80%), while immigrants from Angola, Nigeria and Algeria had a crime rate of above 600% of that of Swiss population. In between these extremes were immigrants from Former Yugoslavia, with crime rates of between 210% and 300% of the Swiss value.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Switzerland#Crime_rates
You’ve made a lot of claims above you haven’t provided evidence for any of them. You do realise that being a rude and dismissive isn’t a counter arguement don’t you?
I understand that you didn’t read my comment and that is fine. This is just an echo-chamber any way, so I am not expecting any meaningful conversations. You have a nice day now.
“Illegal” immigrates pay in sales taxes and use less public resources. They’re generally a net gain for tax revenue.
Please show that this is true.
Edit - Or just stick your heads in the sand and down-vote I guess.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/fiscal-facts/yes-undocumented-immigrants-pay-taxes-and-receive-few-tax-benefits
Now cite your sources.
Ahh. TPC “A joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution,”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Policy_Center#Funding
Urban institute: “According to a study by U.S. News & World Report most political campaign donations by Urban Institute employees go to Democratic politicians. Between 2003 and 2010, Urban Institute employees’ made $79,529 in political contributions, none of which went to the Republican Party.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Institute#History_and_funding
So hardly unbiased, but the bigger issue is the partner Brookings Institution:
"A 2014 investigation by The New York Times found Brookings to be among more than a dozen Washington, D.C.–based research groups and think tanks to have received payments from foreign governments while encouraging American government officials to support policies aligned with those foreign governments’ agendas.[112] The Times published documents showing that Brookings accepted grants from Norway with specific policy requests and helped it gain access to U.S. government officials, as well as other “deliverables”.[113][114] In June 2014, Norway agreed to make an additional $4 million donation to Brookings.[112] Several legal specialists who examined the documents told the paper that the language of the transactions “appeared to necessitate Brookings filing as a foreign agent” under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.[114]
The government of Qatar was named by The New York Times as “the single biggest foreign donor to Brookings”, reportedly contributing $14.8 million over a four-year period. A former visiting fellow at a Brookings affiliate in Qatar reportedly said that “he had been told during his job interview that he could not take positions critical of the Qatar government in papers”.[112] Brookings officials denied any connection between the views of their funders and their scholars’ work, citing reports that questioned the Qatari government’s education reform efforts and criticized its support of militants in Syria. But Brookings officials reportedly acknowledged that they meet with Qatari government officials regularly.[112]
In 2018, The Washington Post reported that Brookings accepted funding from Huawei from 2012 to 2018.[115] A report by the Center for International Policy’s Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative of the top 50 think tanks on the University of Pennsylvania’s Global Go-To Think Tanks rating index found that between 2014 and 2018, Brookings received the third-highest amount of funding from outside the United States compared to other think tanks, with a total of more than $27 million.[116] In 2022, Brookings president John R. Allen resigned amid an FBI probe into lobbying on behalf of Qatar."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution#Funding_controversies
It should also be noted that the Cato model that the claim in the article is based upon is developed by an organization that is pro immigration and has connections to the Ayn Rand institute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute#Ideological_relationships
Lol none of these smear attempts prove the studies are flawed. You can dig up political donations and controversies for any organization in the country. It says everything that you couldn’t engage with the actual data and resorted to ad hominems instead.
What a cowardly little racist weasel you are.
Call someone a coward and then scurry off to hide in your echo-chamber when proven wrong. Typical.
I am a coward because I don’t have the time to break down an economic model? Or am I a cowardly racist weasel because I don’t swallow that immigration of individuals from less stable and progressive countries make the country to which they migrate, less stable and progressive?
If you want a relevant quote on why Cato arrived at their findings, maybe this will help "In another recent paper, this one looking at all costs and tax payments using a different survey, Cato again assigns the welfare costs of immigrants’ U.S.-born children to the U.S.-born. That study even excluded the roughly $200 billion spent educating these children. Of course we should educate the U.S.-born children of immigrants. But as is true of welfare, the impact on the education system must be considered when setting immigration policy. Any analysis that fails to do so does profound disservice to the public discourse.
Another important issue with Cato’s welfare approach is the decision to report the average dollar value of benefits rather than use rates. Because the SIPP does a better job capturing use of welfare than the amount recipients receive, Cato has to make various adjustments to the values in the SIPP. None of this means that reporting dollar amounts is a terrible idea. But it does mean that their results are dependent on all the assumptions they make."
https://cis.org/Oped/CIS-vs-Cato-Immigrant-Welfare-Whos-Right
Especially since the Swiss immigration standard is so rigorous. They basically only accept the kind of immigrants that will integrate easily and not contribute to crime. As such they don’t even have the immigration related issues (rapes and murders) of countries like Sweden “In 2021, a study found that of 3039 offenders aged 15–60 convicted of raping over 18 years of age in the 2000–2015 period, 59.2% had an immigrant background and 47.7% were born outside Sweden.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden
Germany: “The statistics show that the asylum-group is highly overrepresented for some types of crime. They account for 14.3 percent of all suspects in crimes against life (which include murder, manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter), 12.2 percent of sexual offences,”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime
Denmark: "Descendants of non-Western immigrants are significantly overrepresented in criminal statistics, especially in violent crimes, traffic violations, and certain sexual offenses. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#Denmark
Norway: “In September 2016, Norwegian authorities discovered that more than a million identity papers had been issued without stringent checks which enabled fraudsters to claim social welfare benefits of many persons simultaneously.[176] 2007 was the first time when foreign perpetrators of partner murders were in the majority. While 13% of Norway’s population are foreigners, they represent 47% of perpetrators who have murdered their partner.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime
and the UK: “According to the data from the Ministry of Justice, obtained under freedom of information laws, foreign nationals have disproportionately committed sex crimes between 2021 and 2023. Afghans and Eritreans – were more than 20 times more likely to account for sexual offence convictions than British citizens, according to the data. Overall, foreign nationals were 71 per cent more likely than Britons to be responsible for sex crime convictions. In terms of overall crime nationals from Albania topped the crime league table; followed by Moldova, Congo, Namibia and Somalia.”
"Data from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), drawn from the Police National Computer and obtained under freedom of information laws, showed that 26 per cent of the 1,453 sex assault convictions on women in 2024 were accounted for by foreign nationals. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#United_Kingdom
Edit - Sorry, I need to support my claims. Done.
I wonder if the output from the judicial system is the right tool to understand those issues.
Those are known to discriminate.
in germany the stats mentioned here look at suspects not at convictions.
Also checked that wikipedia citation abt sweden. It is from one study that defines second generation immiration status as immigrant. secondly that same wikipedia entry mentions that roughly 80 percent of cases are not reported. there are some scenarios that i can think of that prove this study to be utterly useless uneless it is meant to sow xenophobia.
You think Swedish state media (SVT), rated by Media Bias Fact Check as:Center Left and High Factuality ,is trying to spread xenophobia?
In 2018, Swedish Television investigative journalism show Uppdrag Granskning analysed the total of 843 district court cases from the five preceding years and found that 58% of all convicted of rape and attempted rape had a foreign background.[23][32] 40% were immigrants born in the Middle East and Africa, with young men from Afghanistan numbering 45 standing out as being the next most common country of birth after Sweden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sveriges-television-svt-bias-and-credibility/
What tool should we use? Crime rates in their native countries?
Also “An analysis of historical courtroom records suggests that despite higher rates of arrest, immigrants were not systematically disadvantaged by the British court system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#United_Kingdom
The problem with “conducting your own research” is you also have to then read it.
LOL! The VERY NEXT SENTENCE: “An analysis of historical courtroom records suggests that despite higher rates of arrest, immigrants were not systematically disadvantaged by the British court system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries”
Totally, but that obviously isn’t the case since we see that a crime that is very “behind closed doors” like spousal assaults and homicide was also more prevalent amongst immigrants in Norway.