Comment by bapo
6 days ago
Swiss here and able to vote.
In fact, just posted my voting letter today, before taking a 1h bike ride through the biggest city in Switzerland, having lots of space and freedom biking around in our beautiful city.
When taking the train to my parents house, I pass several farms and landly smaller cities. Alot of free space in between those, train mostly has spare seats, depending on rush hour timings. There usually are several big commercials on private farmer land stating “NO to 10 Million Population”, prompting people to vote YES on the SVP/UDC initiative.
The initiative’s lancers seem to play a lot on people’s fear of overcrowding, which even in the most population-dense city in Switzerland seems like a joke. There’s a lot of space and quality of living is still amazing here.
Yes, during rush hours, you might have to stand for 15-30min in public transport. Yes, finding an appartment is getting harder and more difficult.
But is this a problem of more people coming here or the failures of the state preparing for future population growth? We have so much space, benefits from diverse cultures and love for human beings.
My letter was specifically voting AGAINST this initiative.
Also swiss here. So many people seem to think that this is about refugees. Wrong. It's about Europeans. Mostly Germans. They are educated and highly skilled and for some swiss, that's a problem. They blame them for not finding a job or an appartement. Just read the comments on inside paradeplatz, you can translate with any llm, on a post about the referendum. A subset of the swiss Middle class has decided that they don't like competition, they want them gone. Of course they themselves are never the problem, the german with a middle management position is however, because quote "they are only hiring other Germans".
Also voted no of course.
I am German and live near the Swiss border. My wife is Swiss. I always tell Germans: if you want to get a feeling for the life of an immigrant in Germany, go to a non-touristic region in Switzerland. It's definitely not open hostility, but many little things which quickly give you the impression that you are not welcome and seen as a threat. You are treated differently as soon as you are identified as a foreigner, and this treatment is completely independent of your own behavior.
My wife really enjoys talking to Swiss people in German first (she has no accent anymore), and if the reaction is hostile, she seamlessly switches to full Swiss German in mid-sentence. The reactions are often priceless.
It's definitely not open hostility, but many little things which quickly give you the impression that you are not welcome and seen as a threat. You are treated differently as soon as you are identified as a foreigner, and this treatment is completely independent of your own behavior.
Sounds like Seattle in the 2000's.
As soon as one of the locals found out you're not from there, you get the "Seattle Freeze."
Fortunately, I read about it in a book before I moved there, so I knew it when I recognized it. But that didn't make it any less uncomfortable.
I guess with SEA filled with expat tech people these days, it's either gotten much better or much worse.
> It's definitely not open hostility, but many little things which quickly give you the impression that you are not welcome and seen as a threat.
Literally what most expats go through in Europe. I live abroad for 6 years and here, a Central EU country, this also happens. I am trying to learn the language and even then I got told implicitly several times that I will still be treated as a foreigner, no matter how much culture and language I learn from the local country.
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That's interesting (and a really fun stunt to pull). I always had the impression that the situation is slightly better for other minority-dialect foreigners (Vorarlberg/Südtirol) compared to "vanilla" german speakers, but that might wrong...
Yes a “grützi” at the right moment is often priceless, especially when abroad.
seems to be a common concern amongst the local population everywhere "X identity is hiring only X identity"
If you’re part of the majority group, you really don’t see how cliquish people in minority groups are. Every time I get into a cab with another “brown” person, there is a Q&A. When they find out I’m from a muslim country, it’s all “my brother,” etc. I’ve always found it distasteful.
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Yes, we have a really well recognized Spanish team lead here, yet he’s mostly hiring Spanish people (in Switzerland), oh yes and one Italian is the exception.
Also we had a German team lead hiring Germans, well surprise it is easier being with similar ones.
Diversity back in the day meant Physics, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering working together…
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Because it is real, and there _is_ in fact a large difference in the propensity to do this across cultures.
This post is about Switzerland, and as said by parent a lot of this is about Germans in Switzerland.
Are Germans in Switzerland more prone to hiring another German rather than a French person, or Swiss person? I'm sure that such bias exists. But that bias is nothing compared to e.g. tendency for Indians to hire other Indians. Now of course some of this can be explained by economic opportunity. The extra benefit Germans can provide to other Germans by giving them Swiss job is smaller than for Indians.
However that only explains part of it. If that was all, then Chinese people should bias much more to hiring fellow countrymen than Japanese and Korean people, while the latter two should be similar to each other. This is definitely not the case (note that we're talking about immigrants here, not 2nd+ generation).
I'm sure there's been research on this subject, and there will be some cultural trait that proxies for how much immigrants from country X bias towards hiring others from X.
I can even give you a proxy for funsies: embassies. Look at the employees at the embassy of country X in country Y. How many of them are from country X and how many are from Y? Now compare that across embassies. You'll see a lot of similarities with what I've sketched. Sometimes you'll see that both the embassy of country X in country Y, as well as that of country Y in country X (the other direction), are both primarily staffed by people from country X! In those cases it's common that country X has a much stronger bias than Y towards hiring people from their own nationality rather than based on aptitude.
Because it's an unfalsifiable claim. If you need to bring in highly skilled people and most of them come from X Y or Z, it will be near impossible to distinguish in-group preference from a continuation of skilled immigration which for most countries that practice it, is beneficial for the economy.
Also hiring is often based on trust and networks. People refer others to their company and jobs. That trust tends to work out pretty well for companies. If people get laid off they tell their friends and their friends pass on opportunities to them or try to help them find new jobs. And people tend to make friends with others they share a culture and language with.
If you add a bunch of barriers to make companies have to hire proportional amounts of every ethnicity or culture, that slows down hiring and can be an extra regulatory burden for what reason?
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I think it's pretty logical, though perhaps it is correlation rather than causation.
Say I am hiring as a native English speaker in a Chinese company (while of course still knowing enough Mandarin to survive) and I have 3 candidates, one of whom also speaks English fluently. I would definitely be biased towards the English speaker, because I would work better with them.
Now, it doesn't really matter what their ethnicity was, but there is a higher likelihood of them being of the same ethnicity. Especially if my first language is niche, the chances of hiring the same ethnicity would be higher.
I've been on the receiving end of this before, being hired in part because I spoke English due to my manager while the rest of the company was primarily Mandarin
The broader concern seems to be “outsiders taking our jobs/raising house prices/voting in elections” etc etc. Anything perceived to be done by “outsiders” is an issue.
Americans/British saying this about non-white immigrants. Switzerland about Europeans. India saying it about Bangladeshi migrants.
It’s like people dislike others who are worse off them.
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>Middle class has decided that they don't like competition, they want them gone. Of course they themselves are never the problem
Yeah, screw the middle class. What do they know anyway?
I mean there is a tendency for people in the middle class to go all NIMBY and not want additional housing to be built which drives up the cost of housing. It's good that there's a middle class but there are also things that people in the middle class do that aren't good. Like drive f350s on their 40-minute commute to the office.
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"So many people seem to think that this is about refugees. Wrong. It's about Europeans. Mostly Germans.".
It can be about both though.
> the german with a middle management position is however, because quote "they are only hiring other Germans".
Good to see (in a sad way) that some biases are constant across humans.
The text of the proposal disagrees with your claim. Or - are there lots of Europeans seeking asylum in Switzerland?
Maybe its a bit like Brexit, i.e. not rational immigration being one of the major issues when it did nothing to reduce the immigration of (non-white) people from third countries and EU migration was rapidly decreasing anyway.
Funny enough, the voting of this weekend mentions as argument also "the lax asylum politics in the EU" while exactly THIS weekend the EU is strengthening a lot, and I mean quite a lot, the asylum procedures and including border controls. I guess they had to push it quickly before the Swiss voter notices...
Blaming immigration for not finding an apartment is very different from blaming immigration for not finding a job. Jobs appear almost automatically (if some basic economic conditions are met), apartments have to be built and permitted.
Blaming immigration for not finding an apartment is also different from blaming immigrants. Blame has a moral connotation, and certainly no individual deserves blame because he lives in an apartment that you'd like to live in, whether he moved from another country, another place in the same country or another district of the same city, or whether he was born in that apartment. But that doesn't mean that immigration can't make it more difficult to find an apartment if not enough apartments are built.
Swiss as racists. Amazing. People know Americans harbor racist feelings because they are surrounded by people of many races. But it's trivial to demonstrate racism among any population as soon as you introduce an "other" of virtually any type.
No it isn’t racism as Germans had the same skin color. Keep in mind that Germans aren’t stereotypical anymore.
In Switzerland live over 41% migrants and children of migrants (just 8.4%). So the native Swiss are not just “surrounded” but greatly diminished.
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Racists havent heard of Ashbys Law of Requisite Variety.
Its also why they get left behind by everyone who has.
Its an ever growing complex and unpredictable world. Sameness is not a strength in complexity theory.
It's not just the state - it's your neighbors pushing the same building restrictions as the rest of the developed world, where people say "I don't want another neighbor next to me", which results in too few apartments for even the existing people's children...
You should check Geneva then - they are building apartment buildings like crazy in past 5 years. Too much if you ask me - in very center, almost every small park or green spot is now 6 story concrete building. Only the biggest protected parks are untouched. City is visibly and permanently degrading into concrete field. Weirdly schizophrenic move - they try to keep pushing bike lanes everywhere, even where not safe to share the road, yet they also remove greenery and trees. I guess the money is too juicy. But not to just bash - they build on outskirts too.
Switzerland as a country usually strikes good balance between various extremes, much better than US or EU countries do. I have no doubt they will work it out, not ideally, but better than most. Immigration they tackled much better than rest of Europe for example.
And for the vote - its 1:1 Brexit. Vote for capping, damage your long term prosperity, and those unpopular jobs still will need to be staffed, or country will work worse, be dirtier etc. And if one can earn cleaning streets or putting stuff in shop shelves as much as cca doctor in France (with higher costs of life, but it doesn't have to be extreme), the amount of people willing to try coming and working is basically endless.
The idea one can freeze time and keep the country as some idealized image from their childhood (without the nasty stuff that happened ie in 70s to orphaned kids en masse, aka Verdingkinder), one would have to become second North Korea. Everything changes these days, massively and quickly. Dictators won't be sending their kids to study here under false names anymore, would they.
These jobs are unpopular because the pay is shit, not because people don't want to do them, the government could simply have grants/bonus program for people employed in these positions so that the taxpayer money directly funds the bettering of the society and environment around them. Besides, Japan is a good real world example that you do not need to lean on immigrant labor to stop your country from becoming "dirty"; it's one of the most ethically homogeneous countries and also one of the cleanest places you can visit.
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Geneva is the 2nd most expensive city to live in (behind Zurich). I commend any attempt at moderating prices by building more housing.
> in very center, almost every small park or green spot is now 6 story concrete building
I struggle to see this. Central Geneva is full of beautiful, well-maintained green spaces and children's play areas with plenty of larger parks scattered around.
Geneva had an extreme shortage of housing while there were plots of land perfectly suitable for construction but older people willing to sacrifice their kids' future for the sake of today's comfort and for one more year of ignoring the world around them. This problem is no unique to Geneva though.
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I agree about bike lanes in Geneva, they should take the space away from cars. Their success is so phenomenal, that they are carrying more passengers/h in some sections than the much wider street they flank.
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> Too much if you ask me
Good thing no one asked you. Why should you have a say in how someone else uses their land if all they are doing is building more housing units?
It seems like a good idea to start worrying about population long before it feels overcrowded and there's no room left on the trains. The issue isn't about how much open space there is to stuff people into, but about how many people an area can sustainably support. I'm not sure that 10 million is a good target to aim for, but you sure don't want to wait until your quality of life declines before you start making plans.
If people are already starting to have trouble finding work and housing that seems like the conversation is long overdue.
The economy is strong because of immigration, particularly white collar immigration from EU countries. Without them businesses cannot grow in the same rate. Immigration leads to net job creation, meaning also more jobs to fill for locals. It's not zero sum. Public finances would be in a much more dire state without immigration and the locals will have to bear the public debt burden, maybe not immediately but eventually. Granted, housing and infrastructure do have to be built to keep up with population growth indeed, but it's a better problem to have than a depressed economy with decaying infrastructure and housing stock.
Or you can rather prepare housing and infrastructure for the increase of population instead of blaming foreigners and risk all bilateral agreements with EU in which Switzerland's economy depend on.
This seems like xenophobia masked as sustainability. The article indicates the referendum specifically would block immigrants but not, say, require free birth control for citizens. Interesting how narrow the target is if sustainability is the real goal.
Because the Swiss already have below replacement fertility, like everywhere else.
"We have so much space".
No, you don't have that much space. The entire Switzerland is half the size of Czechia and half of it is taken up by high mountains.
Your cities are already pretty dense. Maybe your threshold for "too many people" is very high, but in general Switzerland doesn't have much free real estate left in/around its urban centers and most people would probably prefer to keep the rural places rural. You could turn your cities into a highrise maze - does the majority of the population want to?
I can fully see where this initiative is coming from. If Czechia was pushing 20 million people, I would consider it on the edge of being overcrowded.
Considering the other EU ramifications, this is basically Swixit, is it not?
Yes. We can cap non-EU/EFTA immigration to zero but that's relatively small anyway. Getting out of Schengen-Dublin and more importantly the Freedom of Movement of workers would basically unravel all bilateral agreements.
Switzerland is not a member of the EU.
Switzerland is, however, a member of the Schengen Area, which is very relevant to this discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
EU citizens can freely live and work in Switzerland and vice-versa. It would be difficult to reliably cap immigration from other EU countries and stay in the Schengen Area.
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As a Indian I envy you.
My whole life has been a struggle for living in places where there could be fewer humans.
In one of the religious texts, the supreme god Indra says "man acquires sin by living amongst humans, and ward it off by wandering in faraway places (void of humans)". Not far off to think that Indians have always had this trauma due to population.
There are plenty of such places and as the population in many countries gets older there will be more even with available housing etc; the only issue is relatively lower pay.
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Really? I live in Lausanne and it’s getting a bit crowded. The buses and trains are completely packed to the point of over flowing, the city as well. Sure there’s a lot of land but that doesn’t mean we need to maximize its use at the expense of the environment and the nature it supports.
Australian/Brit here. A Sudanese man tried to decapitate someone in the middle of the street in Belfast this morning. I suspect if the UK had better immigration controls this wouldn't have happened.
In Belfast? Was that a Protestant Somali man or a Catholic Somali man?
Sounds like a lovely place. Why wouldn't you want to pass a law to keep it that way?
Why would you want less people to live in a lovely place?
Maybe some (or many) people believe that more people will make it less "lovely". I think this is a popular stance and I think many people are more than satisfied with the current population density of their area.
To keep it lovely.
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Please elaborate on this "harmful ideology you are trying to conceal"?
I'd be *far* more concerned about living next to the Swiss equivalent of Tommy Robinson than a Muslim or African.
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> how diverse are we talking?
Switzerland is deceptively effective at assimilation. Migrants tend to learn the local language and customs.
Many people are awful. I’d be fine with Afghan refugees moving in. Even if we accept the premise that Afghan culture is “awful,” wouldn’t the fact that they’ve fled the country indicate they’re not exactly in sync with that culture?
I live in an extremely diverse area with many immigrants on my street and it’s fine.
They could have fled for any number of reasons- that doesn't mean that they aren't exactly in sync with the culture they are coming from. And even if they aren't in sync with the culture they are fleeing- they very likely still hold radically different values than you.
I met a man from Afghanistan sometime last year, however, once we got past the introductions and realized we shared things in common- he opened up to me and began trying to make me realize the value of Sharia law in America, and how much better it would be here if it became the cultural norm.
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Yeah I think a culture that turns away asylum seekers is pretty awful tbh
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I know people who have been victims from these far-right cultures being brought into my community. I have no tolerance for it. If you wish to call that xenophobia then so be it.
I'd highly recommend not visiting places like Afghanistan, not because the weather isn't nice, but because the people are awful. That's not just me saying that either, most Western governments will tell you not to visit either. Perhaps that's xenophobia, but either way I think it's correct.
According to PEW research 99% of Afghan's support Sharia Law. If you wish to present an argument for why this kind of cultural diversity is good for my community, then be my guest.
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If this were the HN of ten years ago, I might have expressed similar sentiments.
Between the comments in this thread though, and the complete lack of moderator attention, I can only come to the conclusion that xenophobia is perfectly fine on HN - provided you couch it in the appropriate rhetoric and don't use any mean words.
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They're partially right, some cultures are awful by any common usage of the word. The problem of course is that they're dogwhistle implying that this means all Afghan asylum seekers must be part of such cultures and therefore must be awful, which is of course not true.
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Could just stop state financing farmers and raise import taxes on non bio products which will raise food praises hence less people will be able to survive is better option?
Well, first UK had to vote for their own anti immigration nonsense, then US tried out their MAGA winning and now it's time for Switzerland to follow in their footsteps and make their country great again with SVP at the helm.
After all, this time it HAS to go better right?
It didn't work out that well for UK the first time. So now they are trying a second time. By voting for the guy that promised he would solve it the first time. This time he really means it.
Sounds familiar.
Yes, my point exactly. This is a proposal of Swiss MAGA wannabes with the same disregard for consequences as Brexit and MAGA parties showed elsewhere.
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> benefits from diverse cultures
You mean "benefits from increased population," right? Because isn't the whole theory that people are the same? If so, you're just adding new people who are exactly the same as the existing people. So the only benefits come from having more people, or more people with certain skills (if you're filtering based on that).
Nobody in Switzerland is worried about the population growing due to birthrate. This referendum is about stopping immigration (even though in Switzerland more than anywhere else, immigration is at the foundation of the country's wealth).
> (even though in Switzerland more than anywhere else, immigration is at the foundation of the country's wealth).
Is that true? Switzerland's foreign-born population was under 5% around WWII. Wasn't Switzerland already a rich country by then?
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>in Switzerland more than anywhere else, immigration is at the foundation of the country's wealth
Such a claim would need terms to be defined, even before justification. Switzerland's mercenary attitude to immigration is well known, yes. I would argue that endogenous factors (history and culture) are far more important in explaining Switzerland's success. Neither natural resources nor immigration are determinative of a country's wealth. See: Japan, which historically has had neither.
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If the referendum passes and the population crosses the threshold, Switzerland may need to remove itself from e.g. the Schengen area. All the remediations mentioned in the referendum are about suspending immigration.
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All the butthurt people are going to come in here with screeds trying to upend a basic economic tenet that a growing population translates to economic growth if you can employ that growing population gainfully
> Because isn't the whole theory that people are the same? If so, you're just adding new people who are exactly the same as the existing people.
That's a very dumb theory. People cannot just be exchanged: you cannot take say, 60 million people out of Bangladesh, put them in Japan, and expect Japan to stay the same. Just as you cannot take 60 million Japanese, put them in Bangladesh, and expect Bangladesh to stay the name.
That's a fact. But I could give a shitload of historical examples too... Here's one: when white and black people arrived in the americas, there was still cannibalism taking place in both northern and southern america. The americas had neither white nor black people. Today there's no cannibalism anymore and there are not many kids sacrifices happening in the US to please Inca/Maya gods anymore either.
A slightly more reasonable theory is that if you import people through immigration at a reasonable rate, you can assimilate those people. For example for a long time in Europe female genital mutilation wasn't a thing anymore. Now sadly due to mass migration, ask any ob-gyn doctor in western Europe what he sees and what kind of act he has to do: like re-stitching hymens to pretend the women-to-be-married are virgins (because, yes, there are patriarchal cultures where men are going to inspect a woman's hymen to make sure she's a virgin).
People just live in a fantasy land in their heads: there are 300 million women alive, today, who've been genitally mutilated (that's a very sizeable percentage of all the women out there). What's actually ongoing is weirder and shittier than most people realize.
I say good for Switzerland to curb immigration a bit.
People may be not dissimilar but cultures certainly are.
> more people with certain skills (if you're filtering based on that)
This is how freedom of movement works, yes, and it's a key reason why our country is so rich.
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Probably the same as Britain, which didn't suffer any economic damage from leaving the EU. Look at current trade ratios, GDP and other core stats vs neighbouring France. No difference.
The EU single market is apparently not as important as it's cracked up to be. The EU has sanctioned Switzerland before and it didn't matter. And the Swiss economy is very strong.
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