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
Hmm, yet another right wing politician, peddling policy that would weaken the European Union.
Holly gosh, I wonder where he gets his ideas and/or funding from?
A lack of repercussions
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.
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.
“Illegal” immigrates pay in sales taxes and use less public resources. They’re generally a net gain for tax revenue.
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.
The SVP sold it as anti-foreigner thing but it was really about forcing Switzerland out of the Single Market, a Swiss eqivalent for Brexit. Again. The SVP doesn’t take no for an answer.
I’m please to hear of the results. I didn’t think the “No” side would have won by more points because the pre-referendum polls showed neck and neck.
Anyway, it’s a silly initiative to begin with. I was thinking even if the “Yes” side won, in my mind I’m thinking “let the leopards eat their faces”. Never mind the arguments on culture and so on, the economic damage to capping the population is insurmountable because it means fewer workers to migrate. And also, how is capping 10 million even logistically possible? Are they going to deport people? Who decides who to deport if a person is either long term resident or born and raised there? Are they going to do sterilisation if by some miracle there is a baby boom (which by the way, Switzerland like the rest of the world right now is having fewer fertility rate) and the population is reaching 10 million? Far right policies are moronic because they are purely based on emotions. Leopards eventually do eat their faces.
It’s exactly the same in the UK. The whole Brexit thing has been the unmitigated disaster that it was predicted that it was always going to be. It turns out that if you don’t let immigrants come into your country they can’t pick your crops for you they can’t drive your trucks and they can’t work in the hospitals (amazing who would have known).
It’s almost as if immigration is useful.
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The most mundane way to have sex to break federal law.
Aww yep, good to hear only 45% support ‘capping’ the people they don’t like, phew.
Well, you have to see it in a bit of a context. Many votes in Switzerland are concluded on a much tighter scale. Sometimes stuff gets accepted or declined by 50.5% or even less. 55% against the initiative is pretty decent, especially when it looked like it would pass for a long time. Me personally I would have liked to see 95% against this crap, but this has never happened on any matter that was voted on, so…
Also, the cities and suburbs, with the supposed “problems of immigration” right in front of their doorstep, all declined the initiative. It was the country side and small communities that aren’t even affected by immigration, that voted for it. This shows once again, that fear is a powerful tool to mobilize masses. Thankfully it didn’t work this time but we gotta stay alert and fight the narrative of fearmongering every single day.
Source: Me, I’m Swiss.
Another indication that interacting with others from outside your bubble is the best vaccine against right wing rethoric regarding immigration: in rural areas and suburbs such interactions tend to be much rarer than within the city…
It’s so fucking embarrassing to be a human being and watch dumb shit like this and authoritarianism growing around the world.
So many countries started because of this kind of shit I’ve human history, but we’re all outta globe to pack our shit and start a proper country with blackjack and hookers…🫤
somehow you left this comment five times
Holy shit…appreciate the heads up! Its funny too, the top one is the only one with the spelling correction edit. No idea what happened but thanks for pointing it out!
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My thoughts exactly. Everyone is like “the Swiss have spoken and are clearly not supporting capping the population”. And I feel like that is not really showing the reality…
I know this isn’t how it would work but im just picturing some one woman giving birth, the doctor hands her the newborn and she holds it for the first time… Some man walks in wearing a black suit and pulls out a gun. He shoots the baby through the head. “sorry that was the 10 million and 1 Swiss child, we have a limit!”
You might find Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s story “2BR02B” (“to be or not to be”) an interesting read. It’s not exactly like your theory, but it’s not too far off.
Love death robots pop squad was also similar.
Hmm, I’ve liked some of his writing so I’ll add this to my list.
Clearly it would be more humane to take out the oldest Swiss person instead of the youngest
Much better idea: kill the richest person and distribute their wealth evenly amongst the rest of the population, public infrastructure, and social programs
Repeat until there’s no billionaires, no poverty, and nobody has to go without anything essential for living in a modern society.
It’s Switzerland. You could close your eyes and shoot the bullet blindly, you would probably hit a billionaire.
Out of all the countries in the world that shouldn’t be implementing population caps, it’s Switzerland. The entirety economy is based on people and corporations moving there.
this is switzerland, silly. they’re more likely to kill the poorest first.
That could be worse…watching tv on the couch with your spouse, you both laugh at the joke suddenly the door opens and your partners head splatters everywhere. The man in a black suit says “sorry, the tompsons just had a baby”…
Statistically it’s more common for the oldest person to be a widow(er)
But if the Swiss population started to get out of control maybe
Probably true but not as funny to picture…
Nah the nation-wide vote is the most moral approach. The list of candidates is selected from trending posts on social media, then the whole nation decides whom to kill in a democratic way.
I don’t know… I’m also considering completely random.
The dice show… 543, John go kill your mother,sorry for your loss.
This initiative was a conservative movement.
It would have been used as a cudgel to oppress immigrants or to target the out group.
And when they run out of immigrants: Rules is rules
Yeah, I understood that. But a hard limit on population is crazy. You would need to have some way of killing people for each person born. That’s disregarding the fact that people have a beneficial use. They can help in food, service, manufacturing, business to business stuff.
But taken to the extreme if some person in a suit just going around the country killing people for each person born…
I don’t know how many hospitals are in Switzerland or how big they are but it’s definitely more than 10 a day so imagine someone just driving around all day yelling at traffic and any delay because they need to report how many people they killed that week and praying it’s not a busy week in the maternity ward…
Or just denying citizenship or deporting. You know, other forms of state based violence
But how can that be sustainable? Ok sure you set up a limit of 5000 immigrants per year. Fine you deny everyone at the border over that limit.
How do you limit population? Either kill people or prevent them from having sex…logistics of both are pretty hard.
People have babies. That increases population.
Xenophobia and anti-immigrant policies are now present in almost every developed country.
Fucking xenophobes in Japan are not helping in that they’re bent on keeping racial purity and “peace and order”, anxious to kick out the Kurds, but at the cost of their falling population, growing numbers of shut-ins, and insane costs of living.
Are there Kurds in Japan? That’s news to me.
Unfortunately, xenophobia is rising in many parts of the world, even in countries with negligible number of immigrants like Japan. I’m even surprised that in Chile, anti-migrant is a sticking point on their recent elections, even though they barely have any immigrants and many Chileans are even leaving.
I am blaming social media for amplifying polarisation. The elites are doing what they can to divide the population while they steal from our pockets because we’re too distracted.
I have no particular skin in this game, but reading the article:
- Results are still pending
- Turnout of 59% > 55% of 59% is actually 32%
Come on folks 👀
That’s a moderately high participation rate for Switzerland.
See this list of past votes.
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/politics/popular-votes.html
Depends entirely on how the voting results are coming in. It’s entirely reasonable to call a result if the sample of votes counted already is a representative sample of the whole.
A counter example would be the recent elections in California. The early results came in from rural red areas for the governors race. So the early results were heavily weighed to the voting trends of those counties rather than the much different high density urban counties.
Also. Article mentions 55% of voters. It never said 55% of the total population. It just also stated independently a 59% total turnout. They wrote it perfectly fine.
Actual results map for anyone interested.
https://abstimmungen.admin.ch/en/details?proposalId=6860
TLDR: There is nothing wrong with the way the article shared percentages or inferring results from a partial count.
What does the article mean when it says switzerland is “all but surrounded by four of them”?
It means Switzerland is all but surrounded by four EU member states. Germany, Italy, France, and Austria.
The point being every country around them is in the EU and Switzerland is a notable enclave when you look at a map.
Liechtenstein: “Am I a joke to you?”
I mean … yes.
No, just the allbutt :-)
If you’ve been to Lichtenstein, you know the answer is yes. We have villages that are bigger. And the architecture there is eclectic.
“All but” has always confused me as a phrase even as a native English speaker. You would think it means it isn’t surrounded at all, i.e. “all but:” = “the last thing it would be is:”, but apparently not.
It’s the worst phrase and we need to stop using it! Most of the time the actual intended meaning can be found by just removing “all but”. Switzerland is all but surrounded == Switzerland is surrounded
No, it means it’s almost surrounded. Lichtenstein is not part of the EU.
Which is the point of the phrase of course. It’s meant to simultaneously acknowledge and dismiss the “well ackshully” crowd. No, Switzerland is not fully surrounded, but also it doesn’t matter in any politically meaningful way.
It’s the worst phrase
It’s not even in the top 1000 worst phrases
It’s all but the worst phrase and we need to all but stop using it! All but most of the time the actual all but intended meaning can all but be found by just all but removing “all but”. Switzerland is all but all all but but surrounded == Switzerland is all but surrounded
It’s made worse by the fact that my native language has exactly the same phrase in terms of literal meanings of words… So naturally the meaning is the exact opposite of what it is in English.
gosh, it’s almost as if Switzerland is part of Europe!
Not “Swisskit”?
44% to little
Switzerland should simply allow migrants with needed skills. This would automatically control migration and the population since it’s difficult to believe that Swiss have no skills.
I might be wrong here but AFAIK they have a deal with EU that makes them join the four freedoms, which makes them not able to control who gets in and who not as long as the immigrants are from EU.
You might be correct, but the EU is restricting immigration because some of its members such as Germany are facing pressure from far-right groups to control immigration.
EU is not restricting immigration. That’s literally not possible. Each member states are free to have their own immigration policies.
Then Switzerland can have a more restrictive immigration policy, but I was thinking of the EU’s decision to enable members to deport asylum seekers to countries outside of the EU.
