Swiss here and able to vote.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>My letter was specifically voting AGAINST this initiative.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
> Yes, finding an appartment is getting harder and more difficult.<p>And that has everything to do with bad land use and housing polices.<p>We all know what this issue really is, its right wing people using 'big number bad' logic because it sounds less racists then what they tried before and the goal has always been to close the border as much as possible again.
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Your xenophobia is not welcome here.
> <i>how diverse are we talking?</i><p>Switzerland is deceptively effective at assimilation. Migrants tend to learn the local language and customs.
Yeah I think a culture that turns away asylum seekers is pretty awful tbh
Many <i>people</i> 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?<p>I live in an extremely diverse area with many immigrants on my street and it’s fine.
> benefits from diverse cultures<p>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).<p>Is that true? Switzerland's foreign-born population was under 5% around WWII. Wasn't Switzerland already a rich country by then?
> <i>Wasn't Switzerland already a rich country by then?</i><p>In 1940, Switzerland’s GDP/capita was 2.9x; it peaked at 4.4x in 2000 and is now 3.8x [1]. (It increases linearly, long term, from the mid 20s until 2000.)<p>Relative to Western Europe, Switzerland was 1.6x in 1950, about the same as today.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2023" rel="nofollow">https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/relea...</a>
In 1910 the foreign-born population was 14.7% and the drop around WWII was caused by other factors.<p>Much of the industrialisation and banking industry was driven by immigrants. Arguably the wealth of today is the product of managing to avoid the worst of WWII and profiting from Switzerland's "neutrality" but that's an entire conversation by itself.
It saw a fair bit of immigration before the war to get there. The war itself obviously helped enrich them by not being in it and also practically zeroed immigration. Immigration continued after the war.
There’s other factors, obviously, like early industrialisation.
>in Switzerland more than anywhere else, immigration is at the foundation of the country's wealth<p>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.
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.
It depends on who is immigrating there. Back then, it may have been people actually looking to make a life for themselves.<p>The issue is that the majority now don't ever learn the language and stay on welfare instead of getting a job.
> more people with certain skills (if you're filtering based on that)<p>This is how freedom of movement works, yes, and it's a key reason why our country is so rich.
The country is rich because it has a homogenous, hard-working, low-crime population, it only spends 0.75% of GDP on defence[0], only spends 16% of GDP on public welfare[1], it provides an incredibly valuable and trustworthy banking service to the world, it has an incredible tourist industry, and it has some key industries that higher-priced because they are Swiss and traditional - Swiss watches, Swiss chocolate, Swiss army knives, etc.<p>[0] <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=CH" rel="nofollow">https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_welfare_spending" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we...</a>
The first time I was in Switzerland was 1985, and even then, I would not call it "homogenous." The people at the time spoke French, German, Italian, and Romanisch. Switzerland is an excellent example of the "harmonious" rather than "homogenous": it manages to integrate people from four linguistic groups into a well-ordered society.
Switzerland does not have a homogenous population, and to a reasonable person who has travelled in Switzerland I think this is an insane thing to be defending. A significant proportion of the population (certainly for Europe) do not even share a common first language. Significant proportions sit on different sides of the reformation which is again a big deal for Europe. etc
Homogeneous isn't likely the correct word. Shared cultural norms and "harmonious" is often more accurately what people describe when the call a country "homogeneous".
I think that it's pretty obvious that the user that you're responding to is using the term 'homogenous' as a euphemism for "white"
> only spends 16% of GDP on public welfare<p>It's easy to not have to spend much money on public welfare when there is a constant stream of foreign money floating in.
I get hard working and low crime, but why does homogeneity make a country rich?
Because it favors social cohesion and social trust, which are strongly correlated with economic success. Americans are reflexively thinking of race, but that's entirely incidental and basically irrelevant.
But Switzerland emphatically does not have a homogenous population. It has an exceptionally diverse population, linguistically, religiously and culturally. And yet as you say it has an exceptional record when it comes to cohesion and social trust. Living the dream!
The social cohesion of Switzerland is mainly <i>within</i> the linguistic communities. Many Francophone Swiss, like their Belgian counterparts, hardly speak a word of German. And in German-speaking Switzerland, a large proportion of the "diverse" immigrants are in fact Germans from just across the border. "Diversity" is not what explains Switzerland's wealth.
It's not even true, 40% of the population has an immigrant background. And as for low crime, yes, blue collar crime. Please don't ask about white collar crime, we don't talk about that here...
It's a dog whistle for "if a country's racial identity remained pure everything would've been fine".
> homogenous population<p>Not even gonna comment on this nonsense.
This is such a fascinating referendum. The population is at 9.1m, and at 9.5m it appears they'll stall asylum and family reunification, and at 10m they'll execute a Swexit - Switzerland isn't in the EU but it allows freedom of movement to EU nationals. Boy it is interesting to see what's going on in the world right now. There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy. I thought that even Brexit was a one-off event, but perhaps it is the other way around and European unity is a temporary thing that fragments easily. An interesting age, in the Austen Chamberlain sense.
> There were so many things that I saw growing up as relatively solid but I just happened to grow up in an era of European unity and American primacy<p>European unity works well in a world of mostly-stable populations. Having mass migrations from large, relatively empty countries, to pretty full ones, is going to make the full ones increasingly expensive to make housing for, to power, and to water.
most of the immigrants are highly educated professionals, big tech, pharma and meds. it‘s not the „empty“.
I think at least in Germany it's not true - among people coming to Germany there are more refugees of various kinds than professionals
citation needed
They definitely aren't, but whomever they are they still requires houses, power and water.
And literally all the limits on those things are artificial. Its the same right wing idiots that want this referendum that prevent smart transportation infrastructure in cities, that delay important transportation investments, that prevent bike infrastructure, that had the brilliant plan of buying cheap energy from France and Germany and so on.
France is mostly empty by Europe's population density standard though, so even though it was likely not the intent of GP, it kind of works in that context.
>France is mostly empty<p>Which is so weird! France has large amounts of good farmland, some of the most modern (and unified, unlike Germany) government in Europe for a long time etc... no obvious reason to have just half the population density of Germany.
It's mostly a matter of when the demographic transition started: <a href="https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FGEDBLvOXUAANUlK.png%3Fname%3Dsmall%26format%3Dwebp" rel="nofollow">https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FGEDBLvOXUAANUlK.png%3Fname%3D...</a><p>France used to be “the China of Europe” (which is why we kept being at war with the whole continent at once). Had France followed their neighbors' demographic, it would be home to more than 200 million people today.<p>The demographic collapse of France in the 19th century, while Germany kept growing, alone explains the French defeat in 1870 (and then the two world wars).<p>More data on that piece of history, and a hypothesis to explain it, here: <a href="https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust/" rel="nofollow">https://worksinprogress.co/issue/frances-baby-bust/</a>
Can you back up your claims? I don't have a horse in this fight, but do notice people ridiculing migrants as "doctors and engineers".
As with everything it's complicated but it's more true than not:<p><a href="https://nccr-onthemove.ch/indicators/how-qualified-are-migrants-in-switzerland/" rel="nofollow">https://nccr-onthemove.ch/indicators/how-qualified-are-migra...</a><p>More importantly, education isn't everything. Half the economy runs on work that doesn't need higher education and that locals largely won't do: cleaning, care, hospitality, construction. The Spanish and Portuguese speaking workers doing those jobs are propping up a standard of living for everyone.
That’s to the US. I believe in Europe it’s Arab hoipolloi
"Full countries" is a lie. You hear it often here in the Netherlands.<p>What they don't want you to hear is that 54% of the land in the country is owned by agricultural companies[0], benefitting a tiny fraction of the population.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/achtergrond/2025/14/feiten-en-cijfers-over-de-landbouw" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/achtergrond/2025/14/feiten-en-cijfe...</a>
Are the people supposed to eat rocks? Agriculture takes a lot of land but people need to eat.<p>If anything agriculture is going to require more land in order to be sustainable.
Does EU have the USA problem where most farmers are basically sharecroppers where they are mandated where they can buy their seed, buy their fertilizers, where they buy their chicks/sows/calfs, what equipment they can buy, how they can repair their equipment, where they can sell their crops, and at what specific prices all from a single undemocratic corporation?<p>In the USA it's basically corporations that run everything and drive the farmers into poverty where said corporations can then buy their land and rely on undocumented workers to keep the abuse going.<p>From the outside EU farmers seem to have better labor relations, but don't know.
Where are the full ones?<p>Working age population is decreasing in Europe. It's only really major cities that suffer under development, and even among them it's just some, not the majority.<p>And despite all the bitching, even extra-EU immigrants are a huge resource for most European countries. In Italy e.g. extra-EU immigrants contribute to 14% of taxes and receive less than 2% of benefits, as many of them come here as young adults and leave before qualifying for pension anyway so the bulk of social services (school and healthcare) is essentially largely subsidized by immigrants.<p>In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.<p>Yes, many among them stay poor, don't integrate and tend to fall for minor, petty and some for violent crime.<p>What you hear little about are the insane dangers of organized crime like Italians and Albanians on the other hand, because they move hundreds of billions and are a drag to the economy in most of Europe.
Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe.<p>Large scale global movement is indicative of failure to uplift the globe from violence, poverty, and climate change. It makes a lot more sense to me for the global powers who don't want mass migration to do something to fix its causes instead of retreating inward and succumbing to nativism.
There was no global freedom of movement. Ever.
> Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe.<p>What an absurd assertion. Where did you learn that? Read up about Roman border control and immigration policy, and what they required of immigrants into Roman territory.
> mass migrations<p>> pretty full ones<p>C'mon, why parrot this nonsense? There are no "mass migrations" and neither the European countries nor the US are "full". Yes the Europeans screwed up real integration across the board, but nobody is really working on fixing that. Easier to just claim to be full and the immigrants are causing higher crime rates so no more people in but oh demographics, please everybody make more babies!
Calling it a population cap for something that seems to be about stricter border controls is a <i>wild</i> marketing choice.
That avoids accusations of bigotry which Europe has convinced itself doesn't exist within its domains.
Border control is not equivalent to racism. The people pushing for it loudly just tend to be doing it for blatantly racist reasons. Unsurprisingly, those people tend to abuse any ounce of power given to them. When they're granted extraordinary government powers, they make up official sounding reason to achieve their racist agenda. Hence the general consensus that any talk of border control is racism. The non-racist-driven border control agenda just controls the border, and shut the fuck up about it. They don't boast about arrests, they don't make up stories about crime or eating cats and dogs, they don't send in the military to schools to grab kids out of class, they don't shoot people in the face when they look at them wrong.
You think people who support border controls are simply prejudiced based on skin color? Like, their problem with Little Mogadishu or Little Bangladesh is that people in those places don't need sunscreen? Do you think that, if Ilhan Omar was Albanian, people would love her?
I believe people migrating to Switzerland are largely educated Europeans, so population density must be their biggest concern about migration
It is a population cap, you can read this proposal its like 5 lines of text.
If Swiss population growth were entirely attributable to the children of existing Swiss residents, then this initiative would be pointless because it wouldn't change anything, and we would not be having this conversation.<p>So yes, it absolutely is about immigration, regardless of the wording.
No, it's an immigration restriction. There's no way it applies if the Swiss start having 5 kids each.
It's a migration cap. There's no provision on sterilizing Swiss women should the threshold be reached through birthrate…
Apparently you are unable to understand that if people who have been crying about immigration for 20 years that now push this things does not mean they have changed their mind. They just try to hide what's obvious to confuse uniformed voters (like old people who just see big number and remember the 1970s).
Change is the only constant.<p>Nothing lasts forever. Good times will come and go and so would bad times.<p>I think as humans we are used to small time frames which are proportional to our own lifetime.<p>But the world: say climate, population, geology etc. moves at a much different cycle, if at all you can call it a cycle since none of the iterations are exactly the same.<p>So the lesson is this: change is coming. Change will always be coming. Embrace it.<p>If you like something, you have to struggle to preserve it as much as you can, for as long as you can, but you can never make it permanent.
I was a teenager when 9/11 happened.<p>Until that point, I thought wars were a stupid thing that humanity realized were stupid and stopped doing.
> <i>execute a Swexit</i><p>It wouldn’t be full Chexit. Just renegotiating and then rejecting the Schengen chapter. It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.
> It would then be up to the EU to execute its Guillotine clause.<p>These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes and suggestions are precisely why so many folks have come to be anti-EU. Nevermind the actual other real day-to-day issues with the organization.<p>I'm sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming independent as well? Why should Taiwan be an exception and not part of China? Seems many of the EU are of the opinion that "We support sovereignty when it conveniently aligns with my chosen organization".<p>The default and perhaps what is best for democracy is to have many smaller nation states, city states, and the other various confederations and the like. The super-organization of nations into these unwieldy states is in many respects anti-democratic and perhaps only temporary as these large nations and alliances were built precisely to fight other, large nation states.
> <i>sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming independent as well?</i><p>Why? I think the first is a good idea and the second fine if that’s what they want.
Those "guillotine clauses" mostly exist because member states didn't want to cede their sovereignty to the EU. If a treaty covers areas where member states have shared or full responsibility, it must be ratified unanimously by every member state. (Which in some case requires ratification by regional parliaments.) Any changes to such treaties must also be ratified, which means there will be 30+ parties negotiating and trying to win new concessions.
>These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes<p>This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement, and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.<p>The superiority complex really often seems to come from countries like Switzerland or the UK in the Brexit situation. Countries that already have often privileged deals and then decide to forfeit them, which they are allowed to do, it's not an attack on their sovereignty, the EU is not mainland China and Switzerland or the UK were not Taiwan, they're free to do what they want, they just can't have their cake and eat it too.
> This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement, and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.<p>I don't think so. Even in the case where the Swiss or UK are breaking agreements or demanding changes to those agreements, it isn't something that's uncommon as countries and nations and companies and all sorts of entities break or renegotiate agreements or contracts all the time. In the case of Switzerland let's say they no longer feel the EU's freedom of movement policy works with the existing agreement because the EU has failed to protect its borders. You're painting a breaking of the agreement in the sense that nothing has changed in the agreement, but that may not be true and so breaking the agreement by the Swiss would have actually been because of a break in the agreement by the EU.<p>These interactions taking place and then now all of a sudden the Swiss are to be the recipient of some draconian action "we'll show them" is not really that strange given it's relatively straightforward to see how these two entities can reasonable come to a disagreement which may or may not resolve itself.
>it isn't something that's uncommon as countries and nations and companies and all sorts of entities break or renegotiate agreements or contracts all the time.<p>what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in fact it's so uncommon <i>literally nobody has ever done it before</i>. No country in history has imposed a numerical population cap on its population, and in addition, freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move freely between countries is <i>the</i> bedrock achievement of virtually all its labored for.<p>And the EU is not going to do braconian measures, the EU does not bully its smaller neighbors. Britain wasn't intimated, threatened and nobody tried to interfere with it when they wanted to leave. THey decided to do so and did. Swizterland can cap its population and deny freedom of movement, nobody's going to bully them, but they're obviously not going to have the relationship they had with the EU.<p>To even rhetorically compare the EU to the US (which has threatened to annex an ally's territory) or China (which throws minorities into camps and threatens a democracy with force) is pretty damn absurd. Ask Taiwan if they want to trade places with Switzerland on the world map if they could.
> what the Swiss are trying to do here is very uncommon, in fact it's so uncommon literally nobody has ever done it before. No country in history has imposed a numerical population cap on its population, and in addition, freedom of movement isn't a detail. It's the very core of the Treaty of Rome and the Schengen agreement that Switzerland is part of. That Europeans can now move freely between countries is the bedrock achievement of virtually all its labored for.<p>I think you are putting this referendum on a pedestal it doesn't need to go on. All countries control population to some extent, whether that's in how they support parental leave or how they support mothers, or through immigration control, quotas, points systems, &c. Switzerland is just adding in another wrinkle. Plus all legislation was at one point new.
You are mistaken. I am pro-Scotland independence and EU admission but anti Catalonia independence. Simply because the former will expand and strengthen the EU and the latter will divide and weaken it, especially since it's supported by Russia.
Schengen is not the free movement clause… sad to see people that don’t even know the difference (free movement existed before Schengen).
Sure, and I didn't shoot you, I just sent a bullet in your direction.
Especially after we saw how happy the EU was to negotiate (they didn't budge) when <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Swiss_immigration_initiative" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Swiss_immigration_initiat...</a> passed.<p>The new initiative is basically the same, but with no leeway to ignore it.<p>(that said I suspect if it passes, there will be something tied to the bilateral referendum in 2027/28 to try to supersede it)
> <i>if it passes, there will be something tied to the bilateral referendum in 2027/28 to try to supersede it</i><p>This is my thinking, too. If it really comes down to Chexit-or-nothing, we’ll have another referendum.
That was the UK's thinking, too. "We won't have a hard Brexit! Of <i>course</i> they'll negotiate a plan!"
Well there's anyway going to be a referendum about the bilateral. (which is why I find the initiative somewhat stupid, you can vote on the real deal in a few years, about whether people want or do not want to have agreements with the EU, instead of hiding it behind a fake/emotional reason)
Elderly people in our village in east Europe used to be super suspicious of the EU project and would say that European countries get along like "a sack of horns." Hopefully they were wrong :-)
>Hopefully they were wrong.<p>Over a thousand years of history has shown that they were right.
<i>>would say that European countries get along like "a sack of horns."</i><p>True words of wisdom.<p><i>> Hopefully they were wrong :-)</i><p>They weren't. EU membership and cooperation is built on favoritism and necessity. You get into the EU if you have something of value the other members need from you (capital, geopolitical, industrial, human or natural resources) done via treaties instead of via war and conquest.<p>So it ended up as a toxic relationship where members exploit each other to get as much as they can while contributing as little as they can.<p>@Ukraine, you'll experience this when you get your turn, just ask Romania.
> interesting<p>The word I'd choose instead is "concerning" if not "scary".
damn, the word 'execute' reverberated interestingly
Just wait til Canada joins the EU and we will have a rethinking of any such unions as not necessarily being related to geographic location.
It veers too close to Logan’s Run when they cap things like that. I’m sure it’s just policy action at the various thresholds but it sure sounds odd.
This initiative is a trap. Essentially, it would allow for the termination of bilateral agreements with Europe. This is what the SVP has been trying to do for decades, and this initiative provides them with a convenient excuse. And it’s particularly ironic because the SVP has always opposed legislation promoting sustainability.
> <i>This initiative is a trap. Essentially, it would allow for the termination of bilateral agreements with Europe</i><p>Or their preëmptive re-negotiation.<p>I’m not sure describing it as a trap is fair. Nobody voting on is confused about what the thresholds require. I’m not thrilled at how close they both are. But the fundamental idea of a maximum sustainable population for an Alpine republic isn’t abhorrent to me.
Meanwhile SVP head politicians employ quite a few foreign workers at all levels of employment hierarchy.<p>It's pathetic.
I must wonder though who could profit from Switzerland leaving Schengen. Okay pass checks are only a little hassle, but visas can become bigger, and judicial cooperation on international crime just drops. And yes, no more cross-border workers either way.
> And yes, no more cross-border workers either way.<p>Well, that will be a problem especially for Swiss industry. Tons of workers from neighboring Italy, France, Germany and Austria work in Switzerland, commuting each day. They do this because workers are paid better in Switzerland than in neighboring countries. If those workers aren't available anymore, Swiss production of all kinds of stuff will take a huge hit.<p>For the same reason of wage differences, not a lot of Swiss people cross the border for work, and all neighbors are larger (except of course Liechtenstein, but that's a very special case anyways). So for those neighboring countries, it isn't that much of a problem.
Too many people confuse Schengen and EU freedom of movement. Ireland isn't in Schengen, but any EU citizen is allowed to enter the country, find work and reside...
<i>>I must wonder though who could profit from Switzerland leaving Schengen.</i><p>Same types of people who profited from Brexit.
So this is essentially a way to reduce immigration to the country? And if they get close to the cap they will "need to take measures, particularly in the areas of asylum and family reunification."<p>Would be curious to learn more about why this is being proposed.
Here you go (if you understand French, German, Italian or Romansh, there is a video)<p><a href="https://www.admin.ch/fr/initiative-durabilite" rel="nofollow">https://www.admin.ch/fr/initiative-durabilite</a><p><a href="https://www.udc.ch/actualites/campagnes/pas-de-suisse-a-10-millions-initiative-pour-la-durabilite/" rel="nofollow">https://www.udc.ch/actualites/campagnes/pas-de-suisse-a-10-m...</a>
This is a way to enable deportations and curb permit prolongations, to delay reaching the 10m cap (which will create really bad consequences).<p>As an immigrant in Switzerland, I am quite WORRIED.
> As an immigrant in Switzerland, I am quite WORRIED.<p>If it helps : Assuming that the initiative pass and nothing is done to reduce the immigration rate, the 10M threshold would be reached by 2040 according to the Federal Statistics Office. The current regime should apply to you till 2042 which should give you 16 years to make your way to citizenship (Among many other path that would let you stay).
The initiator party wants to get Switzerland out of Schengen and of the EU bilaterals - which will happen as a consequence if this passes. Like a Brexit, basically.<p>Edit: but the CHexit will work just fine, because of the Swiss exceptionalism.
Moved out last year after 10y in the Zurich area.<p>There's always been a pull-and-push between getting skilled workers and protecting the internal labor market. Right-wing political parties never made a secret of the fact that they hated immigrants, because they stole jobs and redirected/exported money that would have otherwise been received by Swiss. IIRC this was historically mostly felt in Ticino (the southern region), where Swiss companies sourced very cheap Italian labor by undercutting Swiss salaries by a lot, shrinking the job market for Swiss people (a Swiss can barely get by in Switzerland with an equivalent Italian salary).<p>Switzerland is geographically in the middle of Europe, but it's not part of the EU. This allowed the country to thrive outside some of the more restrictive EU regulations and keep its own currency, but because it has a smaller job market that can barely replenish the high-skilled workers pool and is often in defect (not just finance bros, but also doctors, for instance), it always had to import workforce from neighboring countries to some extent. Over the last 40 years Switzerland basically opened up to more-or-less follow many EU rules and put in place agreements to have a play in the same market and be allowed to easily keep importing people it needs.<p>This initiative as I understand it would be equivalent to a Brexit (because sooner or later the cap would be hit, considering more housing keeps being built), which would undo 40 years of openings and IMO greatly weaken the integration with EU, and as a result the country as a whole.
Cruelty to immigrants, mostly. That's literally the only project the right is able to sell the population on anymore. Why a round 10M cap? Because this is just garbage slopulism, and 10M makes for a great slogan.<p>Will you find any serious economist defending this? Any sociologist? Of course not.
The people behind this are conservative politicians. They have done so a lot in the last 20 years or so and keep on trying, but the EU regularly stops their shenanigans.<p>For the most part the swiss already decided to try to cherry pick as much as possible. They know that if they want to limit movement, then the EU will also limit movement from swiss to other EU countries. And the swiss always disliked that, so they could not go through with it. You can also see that with the UK - they are out of the EU but suddenly want free movement and free trade. Some people can't decide what they want.
It's being proposed in order to maintain quality of life. No one wants to be overcrowded. This is a sane solution: collectively agree on the maximum tolerable population. Then it's down to individual responsibility to obey the norms of one's society.<p>Edit: unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant. Swiss voters have a <i>right</i> to decide how they want to live. They're not beholden to EU laws; they can make their own sovereign decisions, and <i>everyone must respect that.</i>
> <i>unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant</i><p>I vote in Switzerland. I’m very much interested in the thoughts and opinions of others on this vote.
There’s never anything sane with population caps by fiat. If that’s a form of insanity they wish to indulge though, then democracy allows them that.
> <i>There’s never anything sane with population caps by fiat</i><p>Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à la one-child policy). But government has controlled immigration for generations.<p>I’m asking as someone who is genuinely on the fence on this vote.
Immigration is being controlled, EU immigrants require a work contract to come here (and consequentially 80% are employed with the rest split between spouses, kids and students). I strongly prefer this system over having some random bureaucrat in Berne decide who is "valuable" and who isn't.
> Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à la one-child policy).<p>There's a point where caping even natively growing population is actually the right move.<p>There's plenty of overpopulated shitholes (Mumbai, Dhaka, Cairo, Bangladesh, etc) where it would have been an absolute blessing if government was controlling reproduction or put a population cap in place.<p>If you think capping population is wrong, go visit Dhaka, I highly recommend it.<p>If you're still on the fence after visiting Dhaka, you're beyond saving.
The entire world can’t demand to live near Europeans peoples.
> unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant<p>Lol. Dude, sure the Swiss can vote however they want. But we all see you and can pass judgement on this thinly veiled anti-immigrant nonsense all day long. Respect it I will never.
Well I _am_ Swiss.<p>You missed the part where we _voluntarily_ chose to enter into a contract with the EU that does in fact beholden us to EU laws.<p>We can go back on that contract, but breaking your word is something that people remember for a reason.
Does the contract contain a section on breaking the agreement?
Yes.<p>And that clause famously includes the breaking of all other contracts.
If it doesn’t, a whole lot of European lawyers need to turn in their licenses.
Maybe not a legally smart move, but morally... when was it signed? Perhaps way before some EU countries decided to stop enforcing their borders beyond the performative level? And since these agreements basically force countries (especially rich countries with socialist systems) to somewhat share the burden of that choice they didn't make, I don't blame them in the least.
I think I'm totally missing the explanation how my quality of life will increase when Swiss products cannot be sold in the EU anymore because of the price hikes and double bureaucracy - including no more cross-border work. Job loss doesn't say much "quality of life", nor does higher prices on imports.
You are assuming there won’t be free trade agreements. People need to stop saying what happened with Brexit will happen with Switzerland. Two completely different countries governed in two completely different ways.
The EU would be really stupid to give you a good deal. Like, for self preservation purposes alone it would be really beneficial if Switzerland would just really suffer after leaving the EEA especially because a lot of shit was going down in Europe and the world after brexit. Can’t really point at the cost of living in the uk and say that’s brexit when petrol is almost 2€ in Germany as well.<p>But a Switzerland that just collapses surely but surely? That’s gonna send a message.
What products are you thinking? Chocolate and cheese are actually not that relevant as some people want it to be. Gold trade, software, banking however is unlikely to decrease a lot no matter the border rules.
It’s ludicrous to think that 10 million is the “maximum tolerable population” for Switzerland. This is a racist, isolationist move and an attempt to stir up hatred among the population.
Except that it is not EU conform. And won't hold up anyway. Everyone knows this.<p>Some politicians want to market themselves here.<p>> Then it's down to individual responsibility to observe the norms of one's society.<p>That's ok, but Switzerland decided to also partake in many EU regulations, including free movement. They can't cherry-pick individual parts. If they don't want special relations to the EU then that's also fine but the benefits will be gone as well. The UK found this out quite quickly too.
If you increased Switzerland’s population density by 50% they’d be in a crowded hellhole like (checks notes) Belgium
Yeah, but while Belgium is basically a huge plain, Switzerland is 60% Alps.<p>If you account for that, the effective density of Switzerland on the usable area is 600–700 people/km².
Looks like it’s 380 in the Swiss Plateau (you might be mixing up sq km and sq mi), which puts its at about ~70% of the population density of the Netherlands as a whole.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Plateau" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Plateau</a>
There are significant differences in terrain that make that comparison a bit tougher.
But Belgium does suck. I drove from Amsterdam to Paris in the early 2000s, and Belgium stuck out as being obviously worse (dirtier) than the other two.
With a birth rate or 1.29, they will need to accept immigrants or face the consequences of a declining population. My guess is that in the end, the next generation of old folk will want taking care of.
> <i>With a birth rate or 1.29, they will need to accept immigrants or face the consequences of a declining population</i><p>Doesn’t the population cap somewhat elegantly deal with this? If birth rates are insufficient, a certain amount of migration is tolerated. The lower births rates go, the more immigration is allowed.
It doesn't work as straightforward as that.
To have a healthy immigration channel, especially if you want younger/educated/skilled/etc. the pipeline needs to be active and streamlined. Jobs, housing, a well-beaten path that is predictably navigable is incredibly important for a migrant, since they're taking a lot of risks moving there.<p>If this referendum blocks EU movement, it will choke the pipeline that's filling positions that takes in a high amount of immigrants like healthcare, agriculture, etc. Once it dies out, people may not be as willing to move if they're the one paving the path.<p>Historically, the US has been quite successful in this area. Migrants from Philippines dominate nursing, Mexico for agriculture and Chinese/Indians for Sotware/Medical.<p>The migration path has to be vastly superior to their current living for this to work, if they want the same immigration. Or else, it will be mostly people who are truly in a terrible situation who'd be willing to take a chance.
Robots will take off in our life time. I will be taken care of by robots circa the 2060s and 2070s.
Being in Switzerland it looks to me like this is a really tough referendum.<p>Both sides have very good arguments and from the side it looks like either way the Switzerland has to give up some asoects of its high quality of life.<p>If the initiative succeeds, Switzerland will get a large hit from the cancelation of a lot of bilateral agreements with the EU.<p>If the population exceeds 10M then the current rail and road infrastructure will not handle it well.<p>I have already been on a train which refused to move due overload. And it would only depart if enough people have disembarked. The autobahn are already having hours long traffic jams at peak hours and with extra million people it will multiply.<p>And it's almost impossible to significantly improve the throughput of rail and autobahn without extreme projects.<p>It looks like a lose / lose situation is a sense and a people are going to decide which hit to take.
ETCS level 2 can increase rail capacity by orders of magnitude without laying any new track. You can have multiple trains following each other separated by stopping distance instead of having to separate trains between trackside signals.
Can you explain how adding frequency to the train network will not work to compensate higher ridership?
It's not simple with the "clock-face scheduling" system which is used which times the trains to all meet at the big nodes (Zürich, Bern, Basel) so connections work. To achieve this trains are supposed to fit into 30/60/120 minute beats which synchronise the entire system. See [1,2] for how this works.<p>Also many of the most important parts of the system are at capacity. Bigger trains can help but a lot of these gains have already been realised in the crowded areas. The current hope is digitalising signaling to allow density to be increased but that's not simple/cheap even if it's cheaper than working on the lines themselves.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock-face_scheduling</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMbV1rIPhCg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMbV1rIPhCg</a>
I'm not saying this is wrong, that makes a lot of sense. But on the other hand why have I never heard of other, much more dense countries facing this problem? I just never hear of Japan, China, Germany, Taiwan, etc seeing overcrowded trains and raise their hands saying "there can't possibly be a solution!"
Yeah there's tons of work ongoing. Lots of line close to the big hubs have ongoing construction to eventually switch to 15min takt.<p>Improvements on various train station (new underground stations in Geneva and Luzern, extra platforms, etc.).<p><a href="https://company.sbb.ch/en/railway-development/future-rail/national-projects/step-es-2035.html" rel="nofollow">https://company.sbb.ch/en/railway-development/future-rail/na...</a><p>(for example, there's also lots of tram, etc. projects)
Germany's passenger rail is notoriously failing. China is big and empty compared to Switzerland so there's lots of room to build. Japan's population is stagnant, and so train use might be stagnant too. (No idea about Taiwan.)
It's not impossible, but Switzerland's geography means tunneling is involved in adding capacity which makes it very expensive. Also the beautiful synchronisation of a country-wide integrated timetable where you can reliably get between any two places in the country with connections that always make sense is a point of national pride.<p>Japan, Taiwan and China all added dedicated infrastructure which took a long time and cost a fortune (vs the shared tracks currently used for intercity/regional/European freight). Tokyo accepts famously absurd levels of overcrowding during peak hours. Deutsche Bahn in Germany is widely thought of a joke due to chronic underinvestment meaning on-time trains are surprising.<p>That said, these technical concerns have nothing to do with the 10 million proposal. It's worth asking why a camp that spent decades opposing sustainability legislation has suddenly discovered the word now that it can be pointed at immigration.
You can't add more trains if the schedule is full to the brink. You would need to add train tracks, and that requires big projects
Frequency is basically 15 minutes almost all over the country already
Capping a population is a short term solution creating huge issues for the following generations. Examples: lots of places this happened.
Are they counting “frontalieri” towards that cap?<p>No? Funny how that works, isn’t?
> If the population exceeds 10M then the current rail and road infrastructure will not handle it well.<p>Actually it will do just fine. Maybe if the very party who is proposing this wouldn't have spent 20 years preventing infrastructure improvements it would handle it even better. Maybe if this very same party wouldn't continue to fight sensible transportation choices at every turn. Maybe if this party wouldn't spend endless time and energy trying to put as much money as possible in unpopular and irrational highway expansion projects.<p>There are lots of easy upgrades we can do to our transportation infrastructure. For example, Zimmerbergtunnel 2. This was known to be needed since the early 90s, and was planned. But was not done and is now in planning. We did it in 2 stages, making it much, much more expensive. But in the same period we spend as much as we did on Zimmerbergtunnel 2 on highway expansions that have lesser returns.<p>> And it's almost impossible to significantly improve the throughput of rail and autobahn without extreme projects.<p>Well we should get moving on some extreme projects then, or maybe not have the party that proposing this constantly stand in the way of sensible polices.<p>Anybody who seriously thinks about this will realize having new high speed line across the country would be great. But they would never let that happen.<p>NEAT was an extreme project, and it will provide benefits for centuries.
Switzerland is ranked 67th in country population density. For reference, the United Kingdom is ranked 48th and the United States is ranked 183rd.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...</a>
I wonder if that number can be adjusted based on the amount of arable land, or based on the ease of construction (quite the nebulous term here admittedly). The number of mountains presumably makes this hard to compare.
America is soooo big and soooo sparsely populated
That is an utterly meaningless statistic. Canada, with four times the population, ranks #233, because most of the country is uninhabited / uninhabitable.
The question is not wrong, but the answer is.
Here in Switzerlands middle land, the streets and trains are very crowded, not just during peek hours.
On the other hand, it's already now hard to find people for almost any kind of work.
> On the other hand, it's already now hard to find people for almost any kind of work.<p>Why is it hard? Can't find a pick from the ~3% unemployment rate? That's approx 100-200k people, are you sure you can't find a person in that selection?<p>Maybe you're asking a bit much for standards that you are weakly attempting at a defense or justification.<p>This argument without any other qualifications reads to me as whinging that you're not getting everything you want. So lower your standards, offer more pay, or just move to a different country.
I think they suffer from universal problem that the job doesn't pay for housing anywhere within reasonable commute to the job, assuming that it's even possible to rent any housing at all.
One interesting point for me is that, IMHO, the propaganda on the „no“ side wad _abysmal_.<p>The counter arguments are awful and they are presented awfully and not even in such high quantity as you would expect.<p>I think it has a good chance of passing just because of that.<p>And then political shitf***y will begin with „we don’t know how to turn this into law!“, which is not good for the basis of democracy…
I agree, but it's also a lot easier to promise a silver bullet to everything than to propose improvements to the actual, hard problems.<p>Yes infrastructure are strained, but it's not like nothing is being done. It's just that it take decades, and will be too little, too late.<p>Same thing with housing. Every one is saying we need to make the procedures more efficient, but when it comes time to actually makes changes, there's no consensus to drop anything.<p>They could have done better, but it would have been very easy to make nothing but empty promises. I prefer they didn't.<p>Although I thought weird that SVP brought the "we will need to increase retirement age" themselves. It's actually pretty likely, but sounds like a massive own goal so close to the vote given how unpopular it is.
The strong point of the Swiss political system is that the government is, by (EDIT) convention, made up by all significant parties. No major political force can say “if only we were in power...” because they already are. Also, no party can create disasters and then disappear and leave the consequences to the following election winners to deal with.<p>This referendum is an attempt by the members of SVP/UDC, the right-most party, to show that on immigration topics they have more popular support than what their relative power in the government is. Their proposed solution is very crude, on the other hand the opposition parties' position is basically “do nothing, everything is going fine”. I would have hoped the government to offer some kind of compromise proposal (which they are allowed to do and appears as third option in many referendums), but it seems the Swiss citizens will be faced with a “all or nothing” choice.<p>As a novel immigrant, as much as I appreciate the political system of my new host country, I was quite disappointed by the referendum campaign from both sides. Most of the propaganda concerning this vote has emotional and apocalytic tones (“the immigrants will steal our welfare and overpopulation will transform Switzerland into Kowloon” vs “we will become a pariah state, our pensioners will die unassisted due to the lack of nurses, EU will tariff us to death”).
> This referendum is an attempt by the members of SVP/UDC, the right-most party, to show that on immigration topics they have more popular support than what their relative power<p>Not really about immigration but EU relationship. Almost every SVP initiative tries to create a contradiction in the constitution with foreign agreements to force an "exit".<p>> The strong point of the Swiss political system is that the government is, by law, made up by all significant parties.<p>It's a tradition, not a rule (the composition of the council is simply the result of an election by the parliament).<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_formula_(Swiss_politics)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_formula_(Swiss_politics)</a>
Yeah, the marketing for this referendum has been awful. But as a mixed-heritage Swiss-American (continental Indian), I’m also sympathetic to the argument that some geographies and political systems have a natural maximum population they can sustain. (Unsurprisingly, the SVP’s marketing may be the thing that tips me against this.)
absent productivity increases, population growth is just there to maintain the welfare state for retirees, it's a perpetuum mobile. apart from that, i dont even know what the benefits of a growing population would be. switzerland is trying a different tack through democratic means.
No Population Growth in My Backyard -- NPGIMBY.
As a voting member of the population all I can say is - good luck winning it… We have silly initiatives once in a while, that’s because you don’t need that much to start one.
Don’t be so quick.<p>You know full well that the polls are 52% no. It will be a razor thin rejection and the SVP will try again until they find one that passes.
Don't look at tiktok then. It seems pretty much won in there.
I'm probably missing something. This would seem a bit problematic for some organizations that put Switzerland on the world stage, e.g.<p>- The UN<p>- CERN<p>- The Red Cross<p>- The WHO<p>- The World Economic Forum<p>- ETH Zurich<p>There are probably a lot of others I'm missing.<p>I'd imagine international banks also benefit from recruiting foreign nationals to do business with their home countries, and not just because there's a shortage of domestic labor.
The whole point of these organizations is to be the <i>headquarters</i> of a much larger international project.<p>I guess maybe there will be a lot of weird exceptions if this were to go though. Otherwise, good luck sourcing your diplomats from entirely Swiss people.
The Swiss have historically been so isolationist, they refused to join the fricking UN until 2002. Some of the headquarters you're referencing have been there since the 19th century, they'll be fine.
Absolute dogshit we are voting on this week. Hopefully both gets denied. We are working ourselves into the bleakest future.
I propose we set it at 4Mio instead, deport all the German speakers and give their properties to the French-speaking ones.
But without population growth there will be no economic growth, the economy will stall it will be an unmitigated disaster.<p>Every country must grow as much as it possibly can and then keep growing much more than that.
I'm sure they are very proud of themselves for sneaking racist anti-immigrant policy in under the guise of left wing environmental rhetoric.
Leaving the EU or ending free movement with EU countries leads to a significant increase in immigration from the third world, as Brexit showed.
It really doesn’t have to. Britain being incompetent is sort of its own chapter in governance.
The Swiss ruling class don’t have as much disdain for their populace. It will only end up that way if the Swiss people will it.<p>A lot of the UK’s problems were a result of the EU being vindictive as well. The EU won’t act vindictively because they aren’t in the EU.
Switzerland is much less desirable and attractive than they think they are.
Previously: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47015345">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47015345</a>
Great that they can vote, but this is also stupid. Plus, it works both ways, so if Switzerland wants to add a cap to limit movement then it won't be able to enjoy free movement in the EU either. I totally understand why Norway and Switzerland do not want to join the EU; the EU has tons of problems, but this kind of cherry-picking is simply unfair to the other EU members. (Also, the EU has to stop expanding. It constantly picks up poor countries, and demands that the richer EU countries must now pay more than before. This is also totally unfair.)
It's not about free movement, but "free trade"/joint market.<p>Having rich countries support its poor neighbors is an ingenious solution to improving your quality of life. You impose your rules, regulations and monetary policy, they get capital for internal improvements. If there's no huge waste or theft (which sadly exists), you end up with wide, strong and stable continent-level middle class. Which is great goal, as we can see when observing Switzerland -- wide, strong and stable country-level middle class.<p>Last time Switzerland attempted something like this (~10y ago), it got burnt, hard (lost a lot of EU related projects and academic financing). Cutting the economical/market ties with the EU, considering its position and dependencies, is a suicide.
The EU expansion politics was a success. E.g. Poland was a great industry place for cheap labour, now it becomes a richer economy, they consume more expensive from Germany and France.
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This seems a much more rational approach than pure political agenda driven fear mongering campaigns against immigrants.
This is about Swiss - EU relations. Everyone understands that a yes vote means the Swiss equivalent of „exiting the EU“.<p>All Swiss-EU contracts contain a „Guillotine clause“ where if one contract is broken, all are immediately gone. The initiative explicitly requires breaking the freedom of movement contract, which immediately severs all other links to the EU.<p>This _is_ pure political agenda driven campaign using immigrants.
> <i>All Swiss-EU contracts contain a „Guillotine clause“ where if one contract is broken, all are immediately gone. The initiative explicitly requires breaking the freedom of movement contract, which immediately severs all other links to the EU</i><p>Why does it need to be? Would freedom of permanent movement still be something Europeans would vote for today? Will the EU really hold hard on this line with Switzerland? (And does it make political sense to?)
> Would freedom of permanent movement still be something Europeans would vote for today?<p>My guess is yes.<p>It's one of the best things that the EU brings.
Support for EU within EU is growing since the war in Ukraine and has gone to overdrive since Trump 2.0. No current political party except for fringe parties in any EU state advocates for exiting the EU or ending the four freedoms. It’s reasonable to say that yes, EU citizens do approve of freedom of movement in EU. They probably do want to limit freedom of non-EU citizens though…<p>… which is exactly why the EU would terminate agreements with Switzerland if we start first. And why it would make political sense. They made that quite clear with the UK.
> <i>Support for EU within EU is growing since the war in Ukraine</i><p>I believe you. But hard numbers?<p>> <i>No current political party except for fringe parties in any EU state advocates for exiting the EU or ending the four freedoms</i><p>Eh, there seems to be massive demand for modifying either freedom of movement or the context around it.<p>> <i>They made that quite clear with the UK</i><p>The UK invoked Article 50. That wouldn’t happen here.
There is no demand for modifying freedom of movement within EU. It’s not even a topic in most EU countries.<p>What IS a topic, is preventing non-EU migration, and that has broad support and slowly all parties are moving in that direction.<p>And we are NOT EU. But for now, they basically go „yes yes, but we think of you as EU because we are so tightly connected“.<p>So what do you expect to happen if we push the point and make them treat us as non-EU?
Of course it is political agenda driven, but at least from surface it does not have _fear mongering_ vibe, comparing for example with Sweden which did not conclude citizenship applications and applied back dated refusal. Also politician openly attribting all immigrants as source of increasing crime and lowering education levels.<p>10m is larger than current resident counts, so people moving in can decide now if they want to move with uncertainty. It is not what everyone would like, but it is more understandable that recent Swedish changes, for example.
This is not a vote for Switzerland to exit the EU...for obvious reasons. It is a vote to exit the Schengen.
"the swiss equivalent"<p>As OP explains, freedom of movement can't be stopped in isolation from the rest of the bilaterals.<p>(btw funnily Schengen is just about the border control, we're talking about freedom of movement which is a different thing, e.g. UK wasn't in Schengen but the freedom of movement applied to UK as well before brexit, tho I guess people use Schengen interchangeably)
Which immediately triggers the guillotine clause in all other bilateral treaties including movement of goods and services, Horizon, energy market etc.<p>„Exiting the EU“ is a perfectly adequate way to summarize it to a world audience that doesn’t care about the details.
Even worse then - no more visa free travel, and no more international collaboration on crime. I must wonder, who would profit from these?
Hm. Are there any difference in the consequences for the immigrants, if they are kicked out because of arbitrary population cap, instead of anti-migration laws?
As far as I understand, action begins when the population hits 9.5M, so likely no-one gets kicked out, but fewer new visas will be approved, etc.
I am pretty sure there are many people living in swiss with temporary visa's and those will then be de facto kicked out, if they do not get their permissions extended.
This. As immigrant I don't feel threatened by this at all. I can't vote, and I wouldn't vote for SVP but as far as I can tell this makes kinda sense.
Why would you assume the population cap is arbitrary? There's a calculable limit to the population an area of land can sustain. (Yes, some agricultural practices can mitigate that, but that should also be weighed against culture and history, and how much change is acceptable.)<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity</a>
Ok, so how to calculate it for switzerland in a non arbitrary way?<p>(Btw. I believe switzerland is not trying to be self sufficient anyway, but donimport lots of stuff, like most other countries do)
What is rational about this exactly? They share no borders with the countries most immigrants come from, they are moving the problem to Spain, Italy, Greece.
I agree. Every country has a limit, unspoken or not, let the people decide. Anything less is undemocratic.
What's rational in the arbitrary number of 10 millions for no reason at allM
First step towards a purge civilization. Also, rather narrowminded (to be expected, tho) to not expect your population to naturally grow beyond 10m (at 9.1 now) just based on the normal progress of healthcare and wellbeing.
It would be saner to set a cap that is in some way tied to ecological footprint, food production, energy generation capacity, and other factors that make a country sustainable and sovereign. Trouble is, I expect that would put nearly every country way over.
So is everyone in Europe calling the Swiss a bunch of phobic racists for wanting to place restrictions on immigration; or is that judgement just reserved for Americans?