"Anti foreigner sentiment"? Dear NYT, try to find an apartment in the EU or Switzerland. At best, you will get a furnished (to circumvent rent caps), overpriced 30 square meter dump that takes up 40% of your net salary.
Once that problem is solved, we can talk about "sentiments".
I doubt that very much. Sure there's places where the rent is less, but there's no jobs there. So a very low rent will still be over 40% of your pay (ie. nothing)
I am looking at a 4 room apartment in a very nice villa next to a small national park right now, for 560€, with a train going twice an hour 15 minutes ride to the town with my potential next job. (In germany)
So salaries there are lower, but so is apparently rent. Way less than 40%, more like 20%.
Yes, most cities are not cheap, but I am also not a city person so the place is in a remote village, but well connected. And no, not naming that concrete place as I really like to move there (again), but it is in western saxony so not that far from chemnitz (a town I don't like so much, the job itself is in a small town).
Ah, yes, as guessed: The region there is quite cheap - in Chemnitz there was a 2 room apartment for 350 EUR (including heating), fully furnished, at the city/castle pond: Excellent price, but the disctrict was not that great.
Commenting about downvotes usually does not help, but maybe they came because you said rents in cities are higher while I spoke of a place outside cities?
Don't take it too serious would be my advice, downvotes also sometimes happen by accident with a big thump on touchscreen.
Sure, I was just surprised :)
Its an online community and we should not put any attention in those, but I know the german situation very well, plus their current economic downturn
Sure, apartments in Paris are overpriced because of immigrants buying them all. Fuck, that is so stupid. The same people parroting this anti-foreigners hate are also completely indifferent to slumlords profiteering on housing, and will support politicians who consistently side with landlords and homeowners over tenants and first buyers. Housing has never become more affordable under a right wing government.
Explain how. All the anti-immigration guys I've ever met were right-wingers. And we know the right's position on housing: never do anything that would devalue housing, never anger homeowners, always side with landlords, etc.
Immigration is a broad topic. Immigration can be a valuable tool that benefits everybody, and it can destroy communities. Development has the same dichotomy (any kind - residential or otherwise). I'm certainly "anti-immigration" by some standards (i.e. "we're doing immigration bad", not "immigration as an idea is bad"). At the same time, I'm highly liberal (American).
(In case you're suspicious of other stereotypes: I'm not wealthy and have no interest in my home as an investment, and I don't live in California)
Stance on immigration and development is not nearly as strongly correlated with left/right as other wedge issues like reproductive rights, government secularism, etc.
I don't know whether I'd call myself anti-immigration, but I'm as left as they come and I don't think that being pro-immigration is a left/right value. You can be on the left and have objections to immigration, you can be on the right and welcome immigration.
Most people think that being anti-immigration equals being racist and wanting refugees to be turned away. And given your comment, that is also what you seem to believe. However, the large majority of immigration is state-sanctioned (so work visas, etc.), is not the immigration you hear about in the news or that racists talk about, and it's neither a left nor a right issue.
Immigration does have economic benefits, but I'm certain you'll agree nothing in the world is only good or only bad. Immigration does lead to larger competition on housing (more people = more demand), and generally this happens in the cities where the housing crisis is the worst. So more immigration undoubtedly benefits landlords.
Immigration also means more competition for jobs, which leads in practice to lower wages. So it also benefits capital-owners.
So you can be leftist, campaign to increase intake of refugees, campaign against the housing crisis and wealth inequality, and be against immigration.
As an example that might change your opinion (beyond talking to a leftist who does not think immigration is nothing but good): when the Tories came to power after Brexit, they implemented policies that greatly facilitated immigration (2-4 times yearly intake to what it was before Brexit) [0]. Corporations and the right are very much pro-immigration. Would you have expected that?
I would consider myself well on the left too, and I mostly agree with what you're saying. But I simply reject the premise that anti-immigration policies and the people who support them do anything to help curb the housing crisis or improve working conditions. Immigration can be a net positive for the general population, if it goes hand-in-hand with worker and tenant protections, etc.
> Corporations and the right are very much pro-immigration. Would you have expected that?
Corporations and the old right, maybe, but the new populist right is very much anti-immigration. It is their main talking point and platform in today's political landscape.
Being anti-immigration is actually left-wing and pro-labor in most functional countries in the EU. It’s only in the US and the UK where being left-wing also being means pro-open borders, however odd that may be.
You're stating this option like it's obvious and simple, but this all just amounts to choosing which of multiple ways to make one's country worse. While growth/immigration has macro-economic positives, it's not infinitely positive, so it doesn't justify ever-denser housing and ever-increasing cultural sub-dividing forever - and as people become less happy, they care less and less about "how the economy is doing".
Of course, nobody can agree on where the line is, or escape the shoulder-rubbing with racism and classism while trying to argue where the line is.
It's much easier to blame the out group for your issues. The US currently has a sizable percentage of people that believe ICE deportations are going to lower housing prices, for example.
Citizens can choose to prioritize quality of life over maximizing housing stock to increase the domestic population. “We’re all full up.” It is their country after all, it is their choice. Those who want in are not stakeholders nor have a vote.
It's amazing how quickly globalists were able to get the ideological left to switch from having riots protesting against globalism to declaring it racist to have any anti-globalist thoughts. Even more amazing are the intellectual knots they'll tie themselves up into when explaining how this came to be. The participants of the Battle of Seattle in 1999 now would be considered Nazis.
> The participants of the Battle of Seattle in 1999 now would be considered Nazis.
Given that I participated in that back in 99, and have been called a Nazi three times over the past two weeks for anodyne views, you’re literally not wrong.
The problem is that most people want to live in cities for whatever reason and, lo and behold, if one wants to buy regional and biological the grain has to grow somewhere on the countryside.
But yeah, most people have lost touch with where food comes from originally, before it's in the shelves of your supermarket.
“We will do literally anything to make housing more affordable except build more of it.”
Forget where I first saw that but it’s absolutely true.
The left will try rent control, subsidies, taxes and prohibitions against speculation, banning AirBnB, etc. The right will try mass deportations and population caps.
Nobody will build more housing because that would work, and home owners are incentivized not to do anything that would work, and homeowners vote in much larger numbers.
The problem won’t be solved until renters out vote homeowners and until everyone who wants more affordable housing stops advocating the solutions that will not work.
How? I can't seem to affect any control the factors that constraint housing. I want to build more, but short of becoming a developer myself, I'm powerless. Even if I were a developer, I'd likely be subject to the same structural forces.
In Switzerland most people rent, in Zurich/Geneva it's more than 80% of inhabitants, doesn't help one bit. I kid you not, we have the renter association that is working tirelessly to prevent new construction.
I guess the motives are not just financial. They’re also just general opposition to change.
There was this weird period after WWII where we built tons of housing. It was a major factor in building the largest middle class in human history. Then we stopped.
I support YIMBYism for ones own countrymen but I don't see the need to fit as many people as possible in your country. A Switzerland with 25 million people will be a worse place to live regardless of whether the housing supply keeps up
Wouldn't a referendum to limit immigration be the way to reveal their preference? Obviously immigrants would tautologically prefer to move there. How is a citizen to "vote" against that via the market? Discriminate and refuse to rent/sell to any immigrants? Charge them more to try to offset their perceived loss of utility? What portion of the country is even in a position to be asked the question via the market?
Using the market as a revealed preference indicator is a disaster. There are too many perverse incentives and indirect causes-and-effects. It's like the scene in Battlefield Earth where they decide a human's favorite food is rat by observation.
There might be a population limit that a country wants to set, based on effects of population visible in employment, housing , transportation, and social services.
There might be a motivation to curb immigration from certain parts of the world, based on cultural factors and aligning more with one side of the political spectrum than the other.
Context as a Swiss person: One of the strongest political parties in Switzerland today is the SVP (german acronym) which is right-wing. It has won a strong plurality in national elections for easily a decade.
This vote, however, does not stem from the federal (or even state-level) government, but instead is an initiative launched by a group of conservative politicians which happen to be part of the SVP party. The Swiss Federal Council (executive body) has come out against this initiative.
Switzerland has a form of direct democracy, where any group of individuals can propose a change in laws and if they collect 100k signatures (within 18 months) this proposed text will be voted on by the whole country. Here is a list of all referendums, a subset of which are these initiatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_federal_referend...
These initiatives are a frequent feature in Swiss politics, and not necessarily indicative of broadly popular legislation. In fact, whether or not an initiative is accepted is heavily correlated with the support it receives form the federal government. Give that they oppose it, I would bet against this passing.
SVP "which is right-wing" may not convey the degree and nature of that alignment. Just search for "SVP propaganda posters" or read https://www.dw.com/en/far-right-party-violated-anti-racism-l.... When I lived in Switzerland I was pretty shocked by how "out" the hard right was. It was as if having been neutral in WW2 not enough of their homegrown fascists got shot, and they still had plain old Nazis kicking around, holding offices and passing laws.
"Against the Swiss constitution" doesn't really make sense here. This is a popular initiative; if accepted, it amends the Swiss constitution. Here's the text: https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/vi/vis555t.html
Unless you want to argue that this violates the mandatory provisions of international law, I don't think you have an argument. The text of the amendment specifically clarifies that any of the actions it mandates on parliament have to adhere to the mandatory provisions of international law, so I don't think that's an avenue you can pursue.
At 9.5M, the government has to start limiting the issuance of residence permits and start renegotiating international commitments that drive population growth.
At 10M, the government has to terminate the free movement agreement with the EU.
The right-leaning parties bring up something like this every few years. They always get shot down.
>For baby 10M+1 are they going to tell a Swiss woman that she can’t have a baby?
This wouldn't happen because it's not actually a population control measure, it's an immigration control measure - when the population gets above 9.5M, Switzerland would start shutting down immigration/asylum. There's nothing in the initiative that would set controls on births by Swiss citizens. (and it would be unlikely to be needed since Switzerland is facing the same low birth rate of other western countries)
I don't think immigrants make up the basis of the Swiss economy. Looking at their demographic data[1], it was pretty strongly European dominated for a very long time, and is still ~80% European.
When people talk about immigrants in this context, I don't think they mean people from the US, but lower socioeconomic asylum-seekers and refugees etc. from the middle-east.
It definitely seems their economy was built on European labor, which I believe the vast majority of European countries were.
It depends somewhat on the specific campaign but generally in right-leaning Swiss politics, "immigrant" includes Europeans as well. I think that's definitely the case in this initiative since the text of the initiative requires ending freedom of movement with the EU.
Western societies are aging. If you don't take in immigrants (which is basically the government becoming the far right), you're on a timer. Your economy will slow, insecurity will rise, and the far right will surge anyway. It's happening to Japan.
As far as I can tell, the problem is inequality leading to widespread insecurity because the rich buy up housing. The right wing has no solutions. What you probably need is Vienna-style public housing and very high taxes to reduce inequality and fund social services. But then the rich always threaten capital flight to tank your economy.
Switzerland obviously isn't anti-immigrant. Really nobody is from there. Nearly half of their population immigrated. But the SVP wants selected varieties of white immigrants, nobody any darker skinned than David Hasselhoff, certainly not anyone from east of Vienna (the SVP had an entire anti-Kosovar campaign).
My neighbours are a white Dutch couple who have been living in Switzerland for close to 3 decades, but were still denied citizenship at the cantonal level. Every time, it failed at the cantonal level alone.
The co-founder of Bitcoin Suisse too has been struggling to obtain Swiss citizenship.
So again, it's not a question of skin colour or wealth, but a far deeply rooted sense of racism and superiority, and general disdain the SVP and their supporters hold for anyone who isn't German Swiss.
"Line must go up" is such a death wish and I don't see how people who consider themselves "green" can also preach the line must go up mantra. Yes, there are consequences from a shrinking population. There are also consequences from a growing one, especially one that is cultivated with no regard to anything other than maximizing the absolute number. But I guess if you're one of the people who can benefit from the line going up while alive, it doesn't matter what happens to the world once you're gone. Just make sure that line is doing the right thing while you're breathing and that's all that matters.
You won't get anywhere if your solution to climate change is widespread poverty and insecurity. In fact from what I can tell the more secure societies are more likely to push green policies (comparing Europe vs US/China). Intuitively I have more capacity to entertain vegetarianism if I'm not working 80hrs per week. Anyway the rich are emitting way more carbon than everyone else so taxing them should be the first priority, not austerity.
The system they’ve crafted relies on having enough of a working population to pay for the older benefit-receiving population. Their benefits are so large and unwieldy, they know the whole thing will fall apart if they don’t find a way to fund it.
They see this as a threat to their entire way of life.
Based on Switzerland’s total fertility rate of 1.3, the population increases only due to immigration, so controlling the flow of immigration is all that would need to happen.
Walk around Google Geneva (edit: doh, Zurich - my coffee hasn't kicked in), Novartis Basel, or CERN and count how many "Swiss" nationals there are. A large portion are white collar immigrants from CEE or Asia, or French commuters.
Switzerland's comparative advantage as an innovation hub was due to it's permissive capital structures and historic openness to white collar immigration.
All that a rule like this does is incentivize moving jobs out of Switzerland. Heck, look at UBS axing 3,000 jobs across all functions in CH and shifting them to India [0] last Wednesday.
If UBS, Novartis, Google Geneva (edit: doh, Zurich - my coffee hasn't kicked in), etc cannot continue to attract employees they will leave, and given the extremely friendly FTAs and BITs Switzerland [1] has signed either unilaterally or part of the EFTA, it's extremely easy.
Heck, look at how Syngenta went from being a Swiss major that employed thousands in Switzerland to a Chinese major that is about to IPO in Hong Kong [2] in just a decade.
Already 1 out of every 3 Swiss businesses is planning to shift out of Switzerland (primarily to the EU and US, but Asia comes up as well) [3].
Switzerland doesn't have the same comparative advantage in finance 40 years ago (why Basel when I can go to London, Frankfurt, or Amsterdam) nor manufacturing (why CH and not DE or CN) and this kind of ruling puts it's entire life sciences industry - the last industry within which CH remains a global leader - in jeopardy.
Additionally, Switzerland is not in the EU and is dependent on the EU-Switzerland FTA. If this were to pass, it would violate that FTA with Switzerland's largest trading partner. The EU can severely push back against CH, and France+Germany+Italy would very much support such retaliation as it would help incentivize Swiss businesses to shift out of Switzerland.
Swiss comp advantage started in WWII when they were used to exchange Nazis gold into other currencies - this gave them a topstart for the economic period after the war since they were perfectly connected globally and they understood to scale & keep this advantage for long time.
Maybe its fading a little bit nowadays
> You could also say that because Switzerland wasn’t war raged they had a had start.
The Nazis may have found the Swiss more useful as a 'neutral' country than they would have as conquered territory:
> No, the controversy in Swiss conduct comes from three major factors. The trade in gold, Nazi banking, and Jewish banking.*
> When the war began, Germany had less than 50 million dollars in gold in their national stores. Yet, during the war, the Allies claimed that the Swiss purchased over 300 million in gold from the Germans. Where did the extra gold come from? Well, the obvious answer is that Nazi Germany stole it from the countries they invaded. With most powers unwilling to accept what was obviously stolen gold as payment for goods, the Swiss didn't have the same scruples. They bought the gold for Swiss francs, which Germany than could use to purchase stuff they needed from other neutral powers such as Turkey. When confronted after the war, the Swiss only would admit to 58 million of French and Belgian gold, which they compensated the respective national banks for. Investigations couldn't prove the rest, and when suspiciously new, gold 20-Fr pieces began appearing in the late 1940s, bearing dates from the 1930s, no one seemed able to prove that the Swiss had melted down the gold and was trying to secretly pass it into circulation.
> Gold wasn't all they got though. The Allies also believed there to be hundreds of millions in assets from Nazi officials stashed in Swiss bank accounts. As the occupying powers of Germany, the Allies claimed that ownership of these accounts defaulted to them, while the Swiss not only disagreed, but also claimed near total ignorance, as their strict banking laws prevented any disclosure verifying the claims. […]
> The Swiss helped transform almost four-fifths of all German gold into highly convertible Swiss Francs. As a result, Germany was able to buy strategic raw materials from Spain and Portugal.
> Switzerland as a nation was immensely important to the German military machine and economic planning. In 1941, for example, Hitler received a billion Swiss francs as credit for the Russian campaign.
Sure in finance (and even then it has been overshadowed by London, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam by the 2000s), but not really in innovation industries like the Life Sciences - which has historically been Switzerland's strongest niche and a major reason for Switzerland's modern success.
This was largely due to the success of Biogen in the 1980s which helped link American biopharma IP with the Swiss ecosystem along with a fairly permissive PR program for skilled foreign nationals.
Edit: cannot reply
> Roche and Lanza
Roche and Lanza would have remained CDMOs if it wasn't for Biogen bringing an entire generation of Harvard and MIT Biopharma researchers to Switzerland in the 1980s and helped build an ecosystem for therapeutics and biopharma R&D.
Much of Roche's biopharma and therapeutics leadership and IP is derived from Biogen alumni.
To be honest during WWII, Switzerland was surrounded by the Nazis. Literally. On all sides, and learned a harsh lesson on not just the importance of military readiness but also economic resilience. So they took what they could get.
Switzerland is the best munitioned country on earth, because:
After military service, most people keep their guns and are forced to yearly practicing (or loosing the gun) etc. - they are battle-ready every time.
Plus: they are the only(!) country on earth who could offer bunker protection to 95%+ of society in case of war.
That’s just not true at all. Even if 100% of the population keeps 2x guns at home, at 9.5M people that would mean 19M guns. The US has more than 20x that many owned by civilians.
Why always bringing back everything to racism? The people of Switzerland want to maintain the look an feel of their country as it is. How is racism the first thing you think of when no one mentionned race?
Your cheap labor addiction is racist but you coat it in platitudes to keep your feelings of superiority hidden behind a false veil of virtue. But it's plain to see what you're really after: cheap labor performed by people different than you. It's an addiction.
This view reduces countries to nothing more than oversized hotels or economic zones, as if they don’t have communities that go back many generations and who would fight or die to defend the borders.
Think this through: If the world likes your real estate, they can just come in and take it over overnight? Borders suddenly don’t matter?
Pop caps can easily be understood as visa or naturalization buffers. Hysteria doesn’t help.
If that was the case, there would be no need to worry about migrating to the area formerly-known-as-Switzerland to be among its people, would there?
The people who clamor for moving there now could simply remake what they imagine liking about it in another area - careful not to erect borders or engender any kind of pride or loyalty to what they build, naturally.
I support that. If you tried doing the inverse, for example, migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all. I’m an expat and one thing I’ve learned is to integrate myself with the culture of the country that adopted me, I believe this shows respect and that I am aligned with its values and principles.
Is the purpose of the comparison to show that it can indeed be a bad thing (i.e. you're simply agreeing with the parent), or implying that Europeans should be subject to the same treatment as punishment?
This is the trap that the western world has set up for itself. You cannot destroy countries on the grounds that your society is better and that it's worth the destruction to make them be like yourself, and then at the same time say forget about it when it's time to actually be better and more tolerant.
Ignoring the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy (AKA "hypocrisy is the worst sin"), it doesn't even seem to follow. Wouldn't imposing your culture on less developed nations and also rejecting those cultures from your own nation be consistent behavior?
Do you truly believe Switzerland is at risk of an Islamic invasion? How do people on a platform such as HN fall for such obviously falsifiable statements? The initiative is obviously part of the global right-wing populist trend. Countries in the EU are dependent on immigration for maintaining their economies and public infrastructure as the population ages. I'm not Swiss, but the current government in Sweden has been going through with similar anti-criminal/anti-bad-immigrant (racist) politics and rethoric for four years now. As a result, there are now elderly care centers in parts of the country where 25% of all personnel have been expelled, children and even babies are taken back to their "home countries" without their parents and major domestic industry organisations are turning on the politicians they have fostered as the detrimental economic policies are killing low-wage industries in Sweden.
I don't know if you've lived in an Islamic country but I have. In fact I was born there and spent more than half my life under Islamic law. More to it, I am the same brown minority that you seek to defend by posting this.
Westerners are so naive, Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible. To this end, they have been building mosques all over the world, increasing their population and weaponizing immigration. There is a reason Muslim countries don't allow Christians, Jews and other faiths to flourish in their homes.
Now, is this applicable to all Muslims? Of course not. But don't be naive and think that no one has an agenda. Case in point, my family has Muslims (Shia) and there are some of them I wouldn't want in the West.
No one is advocating for an immigration ban here, or is attempting to bar Muslims. Suggesting caps and enforcing sane limits is a good thing. Nations need to vet their applicants thoroughly before letting them in.
As a final note, I think that immigration is a band-aid for the population collapse in the West. The real issue is the underlying culture change. Perhaps a better avenue is to focus inward and promoting family values instead of outwards to resolve the issue?
Perhaps a better avenue is to focus inward and promoting family values instead of outwards to resolve the issue?
Inwards is the right answer, but it's not about lack of family values. It's the lack of stability and belief that people can give a good life to their offspring. We need to retreat from this capitalistic consume everything social structure and kids will naturally flow.
The problem with that is that the Pandora's box has been opened. We are trading with globalized world.
Europeans first stole the resources that fed the industrial revolution and enriched themselves at the loss of everybody else. Then with the US forced everyone to be part of "line always goes up" club, with extreme violence at the times.
You cannot just "exit" the club now. All rare metals, fruits, various produce, chemicals, clothing etc are sourced with the global trade network. Since everybody has to be in the "line goes up or else" club, (we) Europeans have to continue the saga to not lose the entire civilization we have now. Nobody except very big nations with rich resources can afford pulling the plug and be self sufficient.
If you are not joining the ponzi scheme, you cannot buy shit. Without buying rare elements you cannot make advanced silicon, computers, solar cells, batteries. All engineering, medicine, food needs the ruthless capitalism. You cannot quit without turning the world upside down again. And who are you going to force through the inevitable meat grinder?
"I don't know if you've lived in an Islamic country but I have. In fact I was born there and spent more than half my life under Islamic law"
are you aware that not all islamic countries are the same, just as all christian countries are not the same. Perhaps you've let your view of your bubble in your home country colour your view of all others. I've been to muslim countries, most people don't care all that much about the west - certainly not enough to make a conspiracy to destroy it with immigration or whatever.
"Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible"
is it? says who? Why do you think there is one unified islam with one goal? As far as I'm aware, islam is not a prosetylising religion, who's out to convert who?
"building mosques all over the world"
yes when a bunch of religious people are in a place, they build a place of worship. From your comment history, you're apparently iranian - what exactly is sinister about building mosques?
"increasing population"
yes people like to do that, it's a rather enjoyable process, not exactly mindblowing thing to accuse people of.
"weaponizing immigration"
how? who is doing that? are these governments deliberately sending people over? Who are they sending? Why has no leak of this conspirary ever happened? Are multiple governments independantly doing this?
"There is a reason Muslim countries don't allow Christians, Jews and other faiths to flourish in their homes."
flourish in what sense? many muslim countries have other faiths there. These are the people of the book afterall. Some countries have sharia law that applies only to muslims - harsher laws only for the majority religion.
"No one is advocating for an immigration ban here, or is attempting to bar Muslims"
Yes people are, don't be naive, this is absolutely about muslims.
"promoting family values"
Or maybe the real reason people aren't having kids are climate anxiety and economic factors. It's not that people just suddenly hate families now. What do you even mean by "family values", send woman back to the kitchen and that'll make people have kids? I doubt that's what you mean so what is your solution?
>>"Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible" is it? says who?
Do you not learn anything about Islam in schools where you live? I'm sure you must have spent at least few hours at History class covering Islam expansion starting with Mohamed.
>> What do you even mean by "family values", send woman back to the kitchen and that'll make people have kids? I doubt that's what you mean so what is your solution?
You want more people from cultures who think exactly like that. You believe Muslim women should be baby factories for the West.
"Do you not learn anything about Islam in schools where you live? I'm sure you must have spent at least few hours at History class covering Islam expansion starting with Mohamed."
I am ex-muslim, I am aware of islamic history. And what of it? Do christians want to crusade for the levant still? Why are you pointing to literal ancient history?
"You want more people from cultures who think exactly like that"
Many don't think like this. I do not want or not want them.
"You believe Muslim women should be baby factories for the West."
No I don't, why would you think otherwise?
On second though, you simply extracted what things you could best insult me with from my reply and put words in my mouth, I will no longer be engaging in this. Goodbye.
How many Muslims/middle easterners/ Somalis are too many? As those populations are known for high rates of sexual assault and other antisocial behavior, why would you want any of them in your country?
If you really want cheap labor, why not import Vietnamese people, Filipinos, etc?
I modestly propose a much better solution. 99% of perpetrators of sexual assault are men. Let's just ban all males regardless of race. Given the statistics, why would you want any men in your country?
I think they have a right to decide how they want their values and culture to be defined, and they can choose to start enforcing those at any given moment in however way they deem appropriate and necessary. Yes, it’s unfortunate to need immigration for your economy, but not at the sake of your values, customs, traditions, and principles.
> who were also protected by the minister of justice’s approach to justice
I've repeatedly called you a dumbass on this website and it's not about to change with this comment: the minister of justice is not in charge of:
* Police
* Arresting people
* Building prisons
* Fixing the prison overpopulation that makes it impossible to send someone to jail.
* Changing laws.
> before you say it: the Crans Montana owner was French, with the name of Macron’s first minister of justice
Macron's ministers of justice were Bayrou, then Belloubet, before Dupont-Moretti. Who hasn't been minister since 2024. That's without considering the fact that it's the most absolute dog shit "link" you could make. Last names can be shared, woohoo. Zero relationship between Jacques Moretti and Eric Dupont-Moretti.
That’s because you don’t agree with the conclusion that many ethnicities in France aren’t at peace with letting the French live. But let’s analyze your accusations.
A French guy emigrated in Crans-Montana cared so little about Swiss lives that he skimmed some laws and dozens of people died in a horrible, avoidable accident which is typical from people skimming laws.
Dupont Moretti was the first minister of justice of Macron, I stand by my words. You can say a minister is not responsible for anything that happens under him, and yet, when one walks into the ashes of a parliament, people hear about it 80 years later. The “reduce prison population by freeing criminals” policy was real and is real under Macron.
The real thing you skipped is that hundreds of French people are killed every year. It’s not a slaughter, because there’s both intent and selection on ethnicity and religion: It’s an intentional genocide.
It's not, because it's a conspiracy theory. They'll make tenuous connections between unrelated things and extrapolate some grand scheme to match their fiction.
This just makes no sense, because before all why 10 million? There is no scientific or proven reason for this number by the proposing party. The SVP position paper is 38 pages of cherry-picked stats but nowhere do they demonstrate why 10 million is the breaking point rather than 9.5 or 11. It is a round number chosen for a slogan.
The Federal Council's official message to Parliament dismantles the whole thing. Real GDP per capita grew 0.82 percent annually between 2002 and 2022, comparable to Norway, Austria, and Denmark. EU and EFTA nationals are net contributors to Swiss social insurance, paying significantly more into AVS, AI, and APG than they receive back.
The SVP frames asylum seekers as the most urgent part of the problem, but recognized refugees make up about 1 percent of total residents. Meanwhile 64 percent of net migration in 2024 came from EU and EFTA countries, overwhelmingly people filling jobs. This is not an asylum crisis, it is labor migration the Swiss economy actively demands.
The initiative would likely require denouncing the ECHR, the Geneva Refugee Convention, and other human rights treaties to hit an arbitrary number. The guillotine clause means killing free movement also kills Schengen and Dublin. And the Federal Council already negotiated a safeguard clause with the EU that allows limiting immigration in justified cases without blowing up the entire bilateral relationship. That is a scalpel.
This initiative is a sledgehammer aimed at a number someone picked because it fits on a poster.
Sorry, not sorry, but facts don't care about feelings.
"Anti foreigner sentiment"? Dear NYT, try to find an apartment in the EU or Switzerland. At best, you will get a furnished (to circumvent rent caps), overpriced 30 square meter dump that takes up 40% of your net salary.
Once that problem is solved, we can talk about "sentiments".
im not sure about Switzerland, but there are areas in Germany, where you can.
I doubt that very much. Sure there's places where the rent is less, but there's no jobs there. So a very low rent will still be over 40% of your pay (ie. nothing)
Then maybe actually check places yourself?
I am looking at a 4 room apartment in a very nice villa next to a small national park right now, for 560€, with a train going twice an hour 15 minutes ride to the town with my potential next job. (In germany)
So salaries there are lower, but so is apparently rent. Way less than 40%, more like 20%.
Could you please send name of city and district? Maybe in eastern germany, yes; Chemnitz is cheap. But most cities are by far not that cheap.
Yes, most cities are not cheap, but I am also not a city person so the place is in a remote village, but well connected. And no, not naming that concrete place as I really like to move there (again), but it is in western saxony so not that far from chemnitz (a town I don't like so much, the job itself is in a small town).
Ah, yes, as guessed: The region there is quite cheap - in Chemnitz there was a 2 room apartment for 350 EUR (including heating), fully furnished, at the city/castle pond: Excellent price, but the disctrict was not that great.
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Commenting about downvotes usually does not help, but maybe they came because you said rents in cities are higher while I spoke of a place outside cities?
Don't take it too serious would be my advice, downvotes also sometimes happen by accident with a big thump on touchscreen.
Sure, I was just surprised :) Its an online community and we should not put any attention in those, but I know the german situation very well, plus their current economic downturn
Sure, apartments in Paris are overpriced because of immigrants buying them all. Fuck, that is so stupid. The same people parroting this anti-foreigners hate are also completely indifferent to slumlords profiteering on housing, and will support politicians who consistently side with landlords and homeowners over tenants and first buyers. Housing has never become more affordable under a right wing government.
This is a particularly egregious case of the "same people" fallacy.
Explain how. All the anti-immigration guys I've ever met were right-wingers. And we know the right's position on housing: never do anything that would devalue housing, never anger homeowners, always side with landlords, etc.
Immigration is a broad topic. Immigration can be a valuable tool that benefits everybody, and it can destroy communities. Development has the same dichotomy (any kind - residential or otherwise). I'm certainly "anti-immigration" by some standards (i.e. "we're doing immigration bad", not "immigration as an idea is bad"). At the same time, I'm highly liberal (American).
(In case you're suspicious of other stereotypes: I'm not wealthy and have no interest in my home as an investment, and I don't live in California)
Stance on immigration and development is not nearly as strongly correlated with left/right as other wedge issues like reproductive rights, government secularism, etc.
I don't know whether I'd call myself anti-immigration, but I'm as left as they come and I don't think that being pro-immigration is a left/right value. You can be on the left and have objections to immigration, you can be on the right and welcome immigration.
I invite you to read the book [How Migration Really Works](https://goodreads.com/book/show/82005192-how-migration-reall...).
Most people think that being anti-immigration equals being racist and wanting refugees to be turned away. And given your comment, that is also what you seem to believe. However, the large majority of immigration is state-sanctioned (so work visas, etc.), is not the immigration you hear about in the news or that racists talk about, and it's neither a left nor a right issue.
Immigration does have economic benefits, but I'm certain you'll agree nothing in the world is only good or only bad. Immigration does lead to larger competition on housing (more people = more demand), and generally this happens in the cities where the housing crisis is the worst. So more immigration undoubtedly benefits landlords.
Immigration also means more competition for jobs, which leads in practice to lower wages. So it also benefits capital-owners.
So you can be leftist, campaign to increase intake of refugees, campaign against the housing crisis and wealth inequality, and be against immigration.
As an example that might change your opinion (beyond talking to a leftist who does not think immigration is nothing but good): when the Tories came to power after Brexit, they implemented policies that greatly facilitated immigration (2-4 times yearly intake to what it was before Brexit) [0]. Corporations and the right are very much pro-immigration. Would you have expected that?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_immigration_to_the_Unit...
I would consider myself well on the left too, and I mostly agree with what you're saying. But I simply reject the premise that anti-immigration policies and the people who support them do anything to help curb the housing crisis or improve working conditions. Immigration can be a net positive for the general population, if it goes hand-in-hand with worker and tenant protections, etc.
> Corporations and the right are very much pro-immigration. Would you have expected that?
Corporations and the old right, maybe, but the new populist right is very much anti-immigration. It is their main talking point and platform in today's political landscape.
Being anti-immigration is actually left-wing and pro-labor in most functional countries in the EU. It’s only in the US and the UK where being left-wing also being means pro-open borders, however odd that may be.
That is completely false. Anti-immigration is the main (if not only...) talking point of every far right political parties accross Europe.
Maybe work on changing zoning laws instead of pandering to farmers and rural cantons?
You're stating this option like it's obvious and simple, but this all just amounts to choosing which of multiple ways to make one's country worse. While growth/immigration has macro-economic positives, it's not infinitely positive, so it doesn't justify ever-denser housing and ever-increasing cultural sub-dividing forever - and as people become less happy, they care less and less about "how the economy is doing".
Of course, nobody can agree on where the line is, or escape the shoulder-rubbing with racism and classism while trying to argue where the line is.
It's much easier to blame the out group for your issues. The US currently has a sizable percentage of people that believe ICE deportations are going to lower housing prices, for example.
Does supply and demand apply or not? Building houses increases supply. Deportations reduce demand.
demand for what exactly?! 1 bedroom houses that sleep 37?
Citizens can choose to prioritize quality of life over maximizing housing stock to increase the domestic population. “We’re all full up.” It is their country after all, it is their choice. Those who want in are not stakeholders nor have a vote.
It's amazing how quickly globalists were able to get the ideological left to switch from having riots protesting against globalism to declaring it racist to have any anti-globalist thoughts. Even more amazing are the intellectual knots they'll tie themselves up into when explaining how this came to be. The participants of the Battle of Seattle in 1999 now would be considered Nazis.
> The participants of the Battle of Seattle in 1999 now would be considered Nazis.
Given that I participated in that back in 99, and have been called a Nazi three times over the past two weeks for anodyne views, you’re literally not wrong.
The only constant is change.
The problem is that most people want to live in cities for whatever reason and, lo and behold, if one wants to buy regional and biological the grain has to grow somewhere on the countryside.
But yeah, most people have lost touch with where food comes from originally, before it's in the shelves of your supermarket.
Social housing programs have historically doubled or tripled housing construction.
Has changing zoning laws historically ever boosted housing construction by more than 10%?
Why would they want to do that?
So what you are saying is that these places have not built enough housing. That sounds like the actual problem, not the population size.
“We will do literally anything to make housing more affordable except build more of it.”
Forget where I first saw that but it’s absolutely true.
The left will try rent control, subsidies, taxes and prohibitions against speculation, banning AirBnB, etc. The right will try mass deportations and population caps.
Nobody will build more housing because that would work, and home owners are incentivized not to do anything that would work, and homeowners vote in much larger numbers.
The problem won’t be solved until renters out vote homeowners and until everyone who wants more affordable housing stops advocating the solutions that will not work.
How? I can't seem to affect any control the factors that constraint housing. I want to build more, but short of becoming a developer myself, I'm powerless. Even if I were a developer, I'd likely be subject to the same structural forces.
The main impediments are density limits, zoning, onerous permitting requirements, lawsuits from NIMBY groups to block everything, and so on.
The entire developed world is basically a big housing cartel where existing home owners work to limit supply to keep the price high.
In Switzerland most people rent, in Zurich/Geneva it's more than 80% of inhabitants, doesn't help one bit. I kid you not, we have the renter association that is working tirelessly to prevent new construction.
I guess the motives are not just financial. They’re also just general opposition to change.
There was this weird period after WWII where we built tons of housing. It was a major factor in building the largest middle class in human history. Then we stopped.
I support YIMBYism for ones own countrymen but I don't see the need to fit as many people as possible in your country. A Switzerland with 25 million people will be a worse place to live regardless of whether the housing supply keeps up
Only the market can decide what's better or worse. Revealed preference is truer than words.
Wouldn't a referendum to limit immigration be the way to reveal their preference? Obviously immigrants would tautologically prefer to move there. How is a citizen to "vote" against that via the market? Discriminate and refuse to rent/sell to any immigrants? Charge them more to try to offset their perceived loss of utility? What portion of the country is even in a position to be asked the question via the market?
No, because money is the only thing that measures value. People vote against their interests all the time.
Using the market as a revealed preference indicator is a disaster. There are too many perverse incentives and indirect causes-and-effects. It's like the scene in Battlefield Earth where they decide a human's favorite food is rat by observation.
Two possibilities could be true at the same time.
There might be a population limit that a country wants to set, based on effects of population visible in employment, housing , transportation, and social services.
There might be a motivation to curb immigration from certain parts of the world, based on cultural factors and aligning more with one side of the political spectrum than the other.
Context as a Swiss person: One of the strongest political parties in Switzerland today is the SVP (german acronym) which is right-wing. It has won a strong plurality in national elections for easily a decade.
This vote, however, does not stem from the federal (or even state-level) government, but instead is an initiative launched by a group of conservative politicians which happen to be part of the SVP party. The Swiss Federal Council (executive body) has come out against this initiative.
Switzerland has a form of direct democracy, where any group of individuals can propose a change in laws and if they collect 100k signatures (within 18 months) this proposed text will be voted on by the whole country. Here is a list of all referendums, a subset of which are these initiatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_federal_referend...
These initiatives are a frequent feature in Swiss politics, and not necessarily indicative of broadly popular legislation. In fact, whether or not an initiative is accepted is heavily correlated with the support it receives form the federal government. Give that they oppose it, I would bet against this passing.
SVP "which is right-wing" may not convey the degree and nature of that alignment. Just search for "SVP propaganda posters" or read https://www.dw.com/en/far-right-party-violated-anti-racism-l.... When I lived in Switzerland I was pretty shocked by how "out" the hard right was. It was as if having been neutral in WW2 not enough of their homegrown fascists got shot, and they still had plain old Nazis kicking around, holding offices and passing laws.
> plain old Nazis kicking around, holding offices and passing laws
This happened everywhere, to an extent that is genuinely surprising to me.
Pretty much every German company and government position post WW2 is in this category. And funnily enough, a good number of American organizations.
Chile's president is the son of a Nazi.
Japan went on operating business as usual except for the invading China part.
Good for them, I hope the vote will reflect everyone's wishes.
https://archive.ph/KRH4W
Will they use FIFO or LIFO to enforce the 10M?
And will those people be exiled or taken out to the back?
Based on the general behavior of humanity: probably a priority queue/heap.
Why shouldnt they be allowed to make a cap at 10M?
Because it's very likely against the Swiss constitution
"Against the Swiss constitution" doesn't really make sense here. This is a popular initiative; if accepted, it amends the Swiss constitution. Here's the text: https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/vi/vis555t.html
The only way you could argue an initiative is "against the Swiss constitution" in my opinion would be if it runs afoul of the rules: https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1999/404/en#tit_4/chap_2
Unless you want to argue that this violates the mandatory provisions of international law, I don't think you have an argument. The text of the amendment specifically clarifies that any of the actions it mandates on parliament have to adhere to the mandatory provisions of international law, so I don't think that's an avenue you can pursue.
Please elaborate and send me the link to the relevant www.parlament.ch docs :)
Let’s pretend it’s within the constitution. How are they going to enforce this?
For baby 10M+1 are they going to tell a Swiss woman that she can’t have a baby?
In any case, this is definitely not conformant to the treaty that the Swiss have with the EU around rights of free movement.
The text of the initiative is here: https://www.bk.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/vi/vis555t.html
It's primarily an attempt to control immigration.
At 9.5M, the government has to start limiting the issuance of residence permits and start renegotiating international commitments that drive population growth.
At 10M, the government has to terminate the free movement agreement with the EU.
The right-leaning parties bring up something like this every few years. They always get shot down.
>For baby 10M+1 are they going to tell a Swiss woman that she can’t have a baby?
This wouldn't happen because it's not actually a population control measure, it's an immigration control measure - when the population gets above 9.5M, Switzerland would start shutting down immigration/asylum. There's nothing in the initiative that would set controls on births by Swiss citizens. (and it would be unlikely to be needed since Switzerland is facing the same low birth rate of other western countries)
You need impeccable timing if you want a baby. Make sure grandma falls down the stairs first otherwise the baby will be exiled to Liechtenstein.
Pause working visas and citizenship applications?
Organic population growth doesn’t have to be criminalized or authoritarian-controlled like China tried.
Switzerland is a state. Talking about what they're "allowed" to do is just meaningless.
But, it does seem like a terrible place to live. I fear for the immigrants who form the basis of the economy.
I don't think immigrants make up the basis of the Swiss economy. Looking at their demographic data[1], it was pretty strongly European dominated for a very long time, and is still ~80% European.
When people talk about immigrants in this context, I don't think they mean people from the US, but lower socioeconomic asylum-seekers and refugees etc. from the middle-east.
It definitely seems their economy was built on European labor, which I believe the vast majority of European countries were.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Switzerland#Pe...
It depends somewhat on the specific campaign but generally in right-leaning Swiss politics, "immigrant" includes Europeans as well. I think that's definitely the case in this initiative since the text of the initiative requires ending freedom of movement with the EU.
They really don't like asylum seekers either though. Several of their arguments reference asylum seekers specifically: https://nachhaltigkeitsinitiative.ch/argumente/
Switzerland is consistently rated among the best places to live in almost any metric.
Good for them.
Western societies are aging. If you don't take in immigrants (which is basically the government becoming the far right), you're on a timer. Your economy will slow, insecurity will rise, and the far right will surge anyway. It's happening to Japan.
As far as I can tell, the problem is inequality leading to widespread insecurity because the rich buy up housing. The right wing has no solutions. What you probably need is Vienna-style public housing and very high taxes to reduce inequality and fund social services. But then the rich always threaten capital flight to tank your economy.
Switzerland obviously isn't anti-immigrant. Really nobody is from there. Nearly half of their population immigrated. But the SVP wants selected varieties of white immigrants, nobody any darker skinned than David Hasselhoff, certainly not anyone from east of Vienna (the SVP had an entire anti-Kosovar campaign).
My neighbours are a white Dutch couple who have been living in Switzerland for close to 3 decades, but were still denied citizenship at the cantonal level. Every time, it failed at the cantonal level alone.
The co-founder of Bitcoin Suisse too has been struggling to obtain Swiss citizenship.
So again, it's not a question of skin colour or wealth, but a far deeply rooted sense of racism and superiority, and general disdain the SVP and their supporters hold for anyone who isn't German Swiss.
"Line must go up" is such a death wish and I don't see how people who consider themselves "green" can also preach the line must go up mantra. Yes, there are consequences from a shrinking population. There are also consequences from a growing one, especially one that is cultivated with no regard to anything other than maximizing the absolute number. But I guess if you're one of the people who can benefit from the line going up while alive, it doesn't matter what happens to the world once you're gone. Just make sure that line is doing the right thing while you're breathing and that's all that matters.
You won't get anywhere if your solution to climate change is widespread poverty and insecurity. In fact from what I can tell the more secure societies are more likely to push green policies (comparing Europe vs US/China). Intuitively I have more capacity to entertain vegetarianism if I'm not working 80hrs per week. Anyway the rich are emitting way more carbon than everyone else so taxing them should be the first priority, not austerity.
The system they’ve crafted relies on having enough of a working population to pay for the older benefit-receiving population. Their benefits are so large and unwieldy, they know the whole thing will fall apart if they don’t find a way to fund it.
They see this as a threat to their entire way of life.
So how does this work in practice? Once the population reaches 10M, people can't have kids?
I'm going to guess that having too many kids would be a happy problem for them (and most gentrified Western societies)
Based on Switzerland’s total fertility rate of 1.3, the population increases only due to immigration, so controlling the flow of immigration is all that would need to happen.
Maybe they have to take a bounty first.
Walk around Google Geneva (edit: doh, Zurich - my coffee hasn't kicked in), Novartis Basel, or CERN and count how many "Swiss" nationals there are. A large portion are white collar immigrants from CEE or Asia, or French commuters.
Switzerland's comparative advantage as an innovation hub was due to it's permissive capital structures and historic openness to white collar immigration.
All that a rule like this does is incentivize moving jobs out of Switzerland. Heck, look at UBS axing 3,000 jobs across all functions in CH and shifting them to India [0] last Wednesday.
If UBS, Novartis, Google Geneva (edit: doh, Zurich - my coffee hasn't kicked in), etc cannot continue to attract employees they will leave, and given the extremely friendly FTAs and BITs Switzerland [1] has signed either unilaterally or part of the EFTA, it's extremely easy.
Heck, look at how Syngenta went from being a Swiss major that employed thousands in Switzerland to a Chinese major that is about to IPO in Hong Kong [2] in just a decade.
Already 1 out of every 3 Swiss businesses is planning to shift out of Switzerland (primarily to the EU and US, but Asia comes up as well) [3].
Switzerland doesn't have the same comparative advantage in finance 40 years ago (why Basel when I can go to London, Frankfurt, or Amsterdam) nor manufacturing (why CH and not DE or CN) and this kind of ruling puts it's entire life sciences industry - the last industry within which CH remains a global leader - in jeopardy.
Additionally, Switzerland is not in the EU and is dependent on the EU-Switzerland FTA. If this were to pass, it would violate that FTA with Switzerland's largest trading partner. The EU can severely push back against CH, and France+Germany+Italy would very much support such retaliation as it would help incentivize Swiss businesses to shift out of Switzerland.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ubs-plans-hire-3000...
[1] - https://www.seco.admin.ch/seco/en/home/Aussenwirtschaftspoli...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/syngenta-targets-up-10-b...
[3] - https://www.thelocal.ch/20251023/swiss-companies-set-to-relo...
What is Google Geneva? They're in Zurich.
Swiss comp advantage started in WWII when they were used to exchange Nazis gold into other currencies - this gave them a topstart for the economic period after the war since they were perfectly connected globally and they understood to scale & keep this advantage for long time. Maybe its fading a little bit nowadays
This seems a highly biased view. You could also say that because Switzerland wasn’t war raged they had a had start.
> You could also say that because Switzerland wasn’t war raged they had a had start.
The Nazis may have found the Swiss more useful as a 'neutral' country than they would have as conquered territory:
> No, the controversy in Swiss conduct comes from three major factors. The trade in gold, Nazi banking, and Jewish banking.*
> When the war began, Germany had less than 50 million dollars in gold in their national stores. Yet, during the war, the Allies claimed that the Swiss purchased over 300 million in gold from the Germans. Where did the extra gold come from? Well, the obvious answer is that Nazi Germany stole it from the countries they invaded. With most powers unwilling to accept what was obviously stolen gold as payment for goods, the Swiss didn't have the same scruples. They bought the gold for Swiss francs, which Germany than could use to purchase stuff they needed from other neutral powers such as Turkey. When confronted after the war, the Swiss only would admit to 58 million of French and Belgian gold, which they compensated the respective national banks for. Investigations couldn't prove the rest, and when suspiciously new, gold 20-Fr pieces began appearing in the late 1940s, bearing dates from the 1930s, no one seemed able to prove that the Swiss had melted down the gold and was trying to secretly pass it into circulation.
> Gold wasn't all they got though. The Allies also believed there to be hundreds of millions in assets from Nazi officials stashed in Swiss bank accounts. As the occupying powers of Germany, the Allies claimed that ownership of these accounts defaulted to them, while the Swiss not only disagreed, but also claimed near total ignorance, as their strict banking laws prevented any disclosure verifying the claims. […]
* https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rciqp/why_d...
> The Swiss helped transform almost four-fifths of all German gold into highly convertible Swiss Francs. As a result, Germany was able to buy strategic raw materials from Spain and Portugal.
> Switzerland as a nation was immensely important to the German military machine and economic planning. In 1941, for example, Hitler received a billion Swiss francs as credit for the Russian campaign.
* https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/nazis-neve...
That analysis starts too late. Swiss advantages arose from ignoring other countries' patent laws in the 1850s.
Sure in finance (and even then it has been overshadowed by London, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam by the 2000s), but not really in innovation industries like the Life Sciences - which has historically been Switzerland's strongest niche and a major reason for Switzerland's modern success.
This was largely due to the success of Biogen in the 1980s which helped link American biopharma IP with the Swiss ecosystem along with a fairly permissive PR program for skilled foreign nationals.
Edit: cannot reply
> Roche and Lanza
Roche and Lanza would have remained CDMOs if it wasn't for Biogen bringing an entire generation of Harvard and MIT Biopharma researchers to Switzerland in the 1980s and helped build an ecosystem for therapeutics and biopharma R&D.
Much of Roche's biopharma and therapeutics leadership and IP is derived from Biogen alumni.
Some say Swiss was always "naturally lucky" due its location in the "blue banana" region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana
Biogen? Seriously?
Swiss pharma was driven by Roche and Lonza, which are much older than Biogen.
To be honest during WWII, Switzerland was surrounded by the Nazis. Literally. On all sides, and learned a harsh lesson on not just the importance of military readiness but also economic resilience. So they took what they could get.
Switzerland is the best munitioned country on earth, because: After military service, most people keep their guns and are forced to yearly practicing (or loosing the gun) etc. - they are battle-ready every time.
Plus: they are the only(!) country on earth who could offer bunker protection to 95%+ of society in case of war.
They don’t keep the ammo though, so it’s quite funny to call it the “best munitioned country”.
Even if you only considered the guns, your claim seems to be false: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
This was slightly misworded: They keep the gun, not the amo - the amo you have to buy on your yearly-forced practice shooting.
That’s just not true at all. Even if 100% of the population keeps 2x guns at home, at 9.5M people that would mean 19M guns. The US has more than 20x that many owned by civilians.
Typical right wing popularism to divide people and ignore the fact they have no actual solutions.
Racism is bad people. This will hurt people living in Switzerland today and those who end up there in the future.
Most of the immigration is French, German, Italian.
This isn't about racism. This is about unchecked immigration putting a strain on infrastructure and people feeling like they're losing their identity.
This initiative is stupid but the underlying problem is real: we're letting in too many people too fast.
Why always bringing back everything to racism? The people of Switzerland want to maintain the look an feel of their country as it is. How is racism the first thing you think of when no one mentionned race?
Because it is motivated by racism, and you can't pretend otherwise. This is pure slopulism.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/1awmq1a/...
Your cheap labor addiction is racist but you coat it in platitudes to keep your feelings of superiority hidden behind a false veil of virtue. But it's plain to see what you're really after: cheap labor performed by people different than you. It's an addiction.
I said nothing about cheap labour.
People should get to move and live where they want.
If Switzerland has a lack of infrastructure it should build more, not xenophobically cap its population. You can’t freeze a society in amber.
This view reduces countries to nothing more than oversized hotels or economic zones, as if they don’t have communities that go back many generations and who would fight or die to defend the borders.
Think this through: If the world likes your real estate, they can just come in and take it over overnight? Borders suddenly don’t matter?
Pop caps can easily be understood as visa or naturalization buffers. Hysteria doesn’t help.
Nationalism and borders have done very little for humanity.
The world would be a better place if we defined our communities by how we welcomed people and not by who we excluded
If that was the case, there would be no need to worry about migrating to the area formerly-known-as-Switzerland to be among its people, would there?
The people who clamor for moving there now could simply remake what they imagine liking about it in another area - careful not to erect borders or engender any kind of pride or loyalty to what they build, naturally.
I support that. If you tried doing the inverse, for example, migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all. I’m an expat and one thing I’ve learned is to integrate myself with the culture of the country that adopted me, I believe this shows respect and that I am aligned with its values and principles.
The majority of Swiss immigrants come from Italy, Germany, Portugal, France Kosovo, and Spain.
> Kosovo
Technically a muslim majority country but likely not what OP ment.
> migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all
That sounds a lot like what us Europeans did in North Africa not that long ago. We were indeed not welcomed.
Is the purpose of the comparison to show that it can indeed be a bad thing (i.e. you're simply agreeing with the parent), or implying that Europeans should be subject to the same treatment as punishment?
This is the trap that the western world has set up for itself. You cannot destroy countries on the grounds that your society is better and that it's worth the destruction to make them be like yourself, and then at the same time say forget about it when it's time to actually be better and more tolerant.
Ignoring the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy (AKA "hypocrisy is the worst sin"), it doesn't even seem to follow. Wouldn't imposing your culture on less developed nations and also rejecting those cultures from your own nation be consistent behavior?
A huge majority of foreign residents in Switzerland come from Christian countries, so I don’t know what your point is.
Why is this down voted?
I live in Switzerland(not from here, migrated) and this vote is not specifically against muslims.
...because you are on HN.... ;-)
Do you truly believe Switzerland is at risk of an Islamic invasion? How do people on a platform such as HN fall for such obviously falsifiable statements? The initiative is obviously part of the global right-wing populist trend. Countries in the EU are dependent on immigration for maintaining their economies and public infrastructure as the population ages. I'm not Swiss, but the current government in Sweden has been going through with similar anti-criminal/anti-bad-immigrant (racist) politics and rethoric for four years now. As a result, there are now elderly care centers in parts of the country where 25% of all personnel have been expelled, children and even babies are taken back to their "home countries" without their parents and major domestic industry organisations are turning on the politicians they have fostered as the detrimental economic policies are killing low-wage industries in Sweden.
I don't know if you've lived in an Islamic country but I have. In fact I was born there and spent more than half my life under Islamic law. More to it, I am the same brown minority that you seek to defend by posting this.
Westerners are so naive, Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible. To this end, they have been building mosques all over the world, increasing their population and weaponizing immigration. There is a reason Muslim countries don't allow Christians, Jews and other faiths to flourish in their homes.
Now, is this applicable to all Muslims? Of course not. But don't be naive and think that no one has an agenda. Case in point, my family has Muslims (Shia) and there are some of them I wouldn't want in the West.
No one is advocating for an immigration ban here, or is attempting to bar Muslims. Suggesting caps and enforcing sane limits is a good thing. Nations need to vet their applicants thoroughly before letting them in.
As a final note, I think that immigration is a band-aid for the population collapse in the West. The real issue is the underlying culture change. Perhaps a better avenue is to focus inward and promoting family values instead of outwards to resolve the issue?
The problem with that is that the Pandora's box has been opened. We are trading with globalized world.
Europeans first stole the resources that fed the industrial revolution and enriched themselves at the loss of everybody else. Then with the US forced everyone to be part of "line always goes up" club, with extreme violence at the times.
You cannot just "exit" the club now. All rare metals, fruits, various produce, chemicals, clothing etc are sourced with the global trade network. Since everybody has to be in the "line goes up or else" club, (we) Europeans have to continue the saga to not lose the entire civilization we have now. Nobody except very big nations with rich resources can afford pulling the plug and be self sufficient.
If you are not joining the ponzi scheme, you cannot buy shit. Without buying rare elements you cannot make advanced silicon, computers, solar cells, batteries. All engineering, medicine, food needs the ruthless capitalism. You cannot quit without turning the world upside down again. And who are you going to force through the inevitable meat grinder?
"I don't know if you've lived in an Islamic country but I have. In fact I was born there and spent more than half my life under Islamic law" are you aware that not all islamic countries are the same, just as all christian countries are not the same. Perhaps you've let your view of your bubble in your home country colour your view of all others. I've been to muslim countries, most people don't care all that much about the west - certainly not enough to make a conspiracy to destroy it with immigration or whatever.
"Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible" is it? says who? Why do you think there is one unified islam with one goal? As far as I'm aware, islam is not a prosetylising religion, who's out to convert who?
"building mosques all over the world" yes when a bunch of religious people are in a place, they build a place of worship. From your comment history, you're apparently iranian - what exactly is sinister about building mosques?
"increasing population" yes people like to do that, it's a rather enjoyable process, not exactly mindblowing thing to accuse people of.
"weaponizing immigration" how? who is doing that? are these governments deliberately sending people over? Who are they sending? Why has no leak of this conspirary ever happened? Are multiple governments independantly doing this?
"There is a reason Muslim countries don't allow Christians, Jews and other faiths to flourish in their homes." flourish in what sense? many muslim countries have other faiths there. These are the people of the book afterall. Some countries have sharia law that applies only to muslims - harsher laws only for the majority religion.
"No one is advocating for an immigration ban here, or is attempting to bar Muslims" Yes people are, don't be naive, this is absolutely about muslims.
"promoting family values" Or maybe the real reason people aren't having kids are climate anxiety and economic factors. It's not that people just suddenly hate families now. What do you even mean by "family values", send woman back to the kitchen and that'll make people have kids? I doubt that's what you mean so what is your solution?
>>"Islam's objective is to grow and convert as many people as possible" is it? says who?
Do you not learn anything about Islam in schools where you live? I'm sure you must have spent at least few hours at History class covering Islam expansion starting with Mohamed.
>> What do you even mean by "family values", send woman back to the kitchen and that'll make people have kids? I doubt that's what you mean so what is your solution?
You want more people from cultures who think exactly like that. You believe Muslim women should be baby factories for the West.
"Do you not learn anything about Islam in schools where you live? I'm sure you must have spent at least few hours at History class covering Islam expansion starting with Mohamed." I am ex-muslim, I am aware of islamic history. And what of it? Do christians want to crusade for the levant still? Why are you pointing to literal ancient history?
"You want more people from cultures who think exactly like that" Many don't think like this. I do not want or not want them.
"You believe Muslim women should be baby factories for the West." No I don't, why would you think otherwise?
On second though, you simply extracted what things you could best insult me with from my reply and put words in my mouth, I will no longer be engaging in this. Goodbye.
How many Muslims/middle easterners/ Somalis are too many? As those populations are known for high rates of sexual assault and other antisocial behavior, why would you want any of them in your country?
If you really want cheap labor, why not import Vietnamese people, Filipinos, etc?
> As those populations are known...
What a horrible calumny to casually post on a ostensibly politically-neutral website! Absolutely shameful.
This website is notorious for these sorts of unexamined assumptions.
Assumption are already well examined. You just don't like the conclusions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden#Birthplace_of_p...
I modestly propose a much better solution. 99% of perpetrators of sexual assault are men. Let's just ban all males regardless of race. Given the statistics, why would you want any men in your country?
I think they have a right to decide how they want their values and culture to be defined, and they can choose to start enforcing those at any given moment in however way they deem appropriate and necessary. Yes, it’s unfortunate to need immigration for your economy, but not at the sake of your values, customs, traditions, and principles.
Curious: Do you live in Switzerland in 2025 / 2026?
> bring over Christianity there
Yes, this covers about a thousand years of European history.
It's funny to see people pretending not to know the history of spreading Christianity and subsequently colonialism.
>pretending not to know the history
What are you referring to in the parent comment? It sounds like you're agreeing with them, but this antagonistic part is mysterious.
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> who were also protected by the minister of justice’s approach to justice
I've repeatedly called you a dumbass on this website and it's not about to change with this comment: the minister of justice is not in charge of:
* Police
* Arresting people
* Building prisons
* Fixing the prison overpopulation that makes it impossible to send someone to jail.
* Changing laws.
> before you say it: the Crans Montana owner was French, with the name of Macron’s first minister of justice
Macron's ministers of justice were Bayrou, then Belloubet, before Dupont-Moretti. Who hasn't been minister since 2024. That's without considering the fact that it's the most absolute dog shit "link" you could make. Last names can be shared, woohoo. Zero relationship between Jacques Moretti and Eric Dupont-Moretti.
Dumbass.
That’s because you don’t agree with the conclusion that many ethnicities in France aren’t at peace with letting the French live. But let’s analyze your accusations.
A French guy emigrated in Crans-Montana cared so little about Swiss lives that he skimmed some laws and dozens of people died in a horrible, avoidable accident which is typical from people skimming laws.
Dupont Moretti was the first minister of justice of Macron, I stand by my words. You can say a minister is not responsible for anything that happens under him, and yet, when one walks into the ashes of a parliament, people hear about it 80 years later. The “reduce prison population by freeing criminals” policy was real and is real under Macron.
The real thing you skipped is that hundreds of French people are killed every year. It’s not a slaughter, because there’s both intent and selection on ethnicity and religion: It’s an intentional genocide.
Ok gros faf.
I don't know why they call these things "a crisis" it's well documented that the WEF colluded in making this happen.
where is this documented?
It's not, because it's a conspiracy theory. They'll make tenuous connections between unrelated things and extrapolate some grand scheme to match their fiction.
This just makes no sense, because before all why 10 million? There is no scientific or proven reason for this number by the proposing party. The SVP position paper is 38 pages of cherry-picked stats but nowhere do they demonstrate why 10 million is the breaking point rather than 9.5 or 11. It is a round number chosen for a slogan.
The Federal Council's official message to Parliament dismantles the whole thing. Real GDP per capita grew 0.82 percent annually between 2002 and 2022, comparable to Norway, Austria, and Denmark. EU and EFTA nationals are net contributors to Swiss social insurance, paying significantly more into AVS, AI, and APG than they receive back.
The SVP frames asylum seekers as the most urgent part of the problem, but recognized refugees make up about 1 percent of total residents. Meanwhile 64 percent of net migration in 2024 came from EU and EFTA countries, overwhelmingly people filling jobs. This is not an asylum crisis, it is labor migration the Swiss economy actively demands.
The initiative would likely require denouncing the ECHR, the Geneva Refugee Convention, and other human rights treaties to hit an arbitrary number. The guillotine clause means killing free movement also kills Schengen and Dublin. And the Federal Council already negotiated a safeguard clause with the EU that allows limiting immigration in justified cases without blowing up the entire bilateral relationship. That is a scalpel.
This initiative is a sledgehammer aimed at a number someone picked because it fits on a poster.
Sorry, not sorry, but facts don't care about feelings.
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