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Recent, related New Yorker article that goes into the background leading up to the vote https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/15/could-switzerland-become-
by brightbeige 3mo ago
Recent, related New Yorker article that goes into the background leading up to the vote
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/15/could-switzerland-become-the-first-country-to-limit-its-population https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/15/could-switzerl...
Despite the prosperity, many Swiss had mixed emotions about the guest workers, who came largely from Southern Europe. As the Swiss novelist Max Frisch observed, “We wanted workers, but we got people.”
- viking123 3mo agoThen do like UAE? No permanent residency or naturalization
- FabCH 3mo agoWe do. Swiss naturalization is famously difficult. But EU citizens can basically live forever in CH even though technically they don’t have permanent residency.
- kgwgk 3mo agoThere are 40k naturalisations each year (a similar number relative to population as in the US). Around 13% of the Swiss citizens have acquired the nationality via naturalisation (8% in the US).
- FabCH 3mo agoHow many of those were born in CH? How many people born in CH never become Swiss? Because for the US, that number is ~0%. And before you say: "well the US have different rules", well, ok, but then don't compare us to the US on the other number either, compare us to other EU countries with similar types of rules but different implementations. CH has stricter naturalization laws than many EU countries and CH has mandatory military service which discourages many males from naturalizing, even those born in the country.
- kgwgk 3mo ago> How many of those were born in CH? About one third. That would bring the fraction of naturalised foreign-born citizens in line with the US (which is also a kind-of-hard place to get citizenship, that's true). > CH has mandatory military service which discourages many males from naturalizing That doesn't make it difficult, it makes it undesirable and suggests that many people could get it but choose not to.
- Gud 3mo agoBig difference between permanent residency and naturalisation.
- throwawaycan 3mo agoWhen people have no hope of not making it as a permanent resident or citizen, their incentives to perform well are not as high. Also immigration is a global market, you compete with other countries that might offer better conditions so you lose on the best workforce.
- WarmWash 3mo agoI don't know the overall ratio, but my experience working with many immigrant workers is that they had no real intention of staying and instead are just arbitraging cost of living between [rich country] and [poor country] for their family back home. Emphasis on home.
- BloondAndDoom 3mo agoSounds like you have a really limited interaction with immigrants. I’m lifelong immigrant (4 different countries) in every single one of those countries majority of immigrants want to stay. Permanent residency is a constant conversation topic. There are definitely immigrants thinking like your explanation, but definitely a minority. .
- WarmWash 3mo agoIt seems to depend a lot on whether it's skilled or unskilled work.
- skywhopper 3mo agoThere are all sorts of reasons people emigrate. It varies based on the jobs they’re doing, where they’re from, and where they’re going. And whatever their intentions, things change. And, why must there be a universal answer for everyone?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 3mo agoAmnesty International report that things are fairly bad in the UAE for foreign workers. https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/united-arab-emirates/report-united-arab-emirates/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-af...
- mrtksn 3mo agoYes, that’s the dilemma of the rich countries. They want their life be taken care by the people they don’t want around and if they have to have them around they want them be the kids from people from their kind but not theirs. It’s a special kind of NIMBY, not necessarily xenophobia. More like a class thing, they want other rich people’s kids do the shitty jobs so they don’t have to have these poor people doing the jobs and hanging around. It’s first “I don’t want illegal immigrants”, when the immigration is legal they start doing things like take back control(UK) or sustainability (Swiss). What they should have done was unprotected heterosexual sex 20 years ago or robots now. I find it annoying that they screw other stuff just because they don’t want to face the truth about their character.
- vladms 3mo agoProbably the solutions mentioned (sex/robots) are not the only ones. Many complain loudly about what might be a minority of the workers, so just knowing more people would have improved their opinion. Others do not have anything better to do, and they pick up this type of "crusades" with low impact on them, but big impact on others. But yes, probably an improved psychology (in terms of understanding yourself, trying to learn, be curious, etc), would fix a lot, still feels like a daunting task anywhere in the world.
- lotsofpulp 3mo ago>What they should have done was unprotected heterosexual sex 20 years ago Unprotected heterosexual sex and births were decoupled 55 years ago. Almost as tenuous is the link between births and well raised children who can and will provide the labor that is wanted.
- Saline9515 3mo agoThey don't want their son to do it because immigrants prevent the salaries of those jobs to rise naturally. Mass immigration is capitalism's answer to the Baumol law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect The "locals don't want to do those jobs" comptemptuous rethoric of the bourgeois left has always been false, locals don't want to clean the sewers for the minimal wage, but will do it for a proper salary. My grandfather was a cook in Paris, he was making a decent wage and could buy a summer house back then. Now the restaurant where he used to work has a Sri Lankan who works for half the minimum wage (half of his hours are undeclared) and lives in a slum to save on housing costs. Yeah, locals don't want to live like slaves, so what? Is that the end state that we must reach through mass immigration?
- roysting 3mo ago[flagged]
- neofrommatrix 3mo agoWhat did I just read!? Looks like an AI trained exclusively on 4chan
- roysting 3mo agoIronic for someone that thinks in standard NPC tropes
- Gud 3mo agoMate I live in Switzerland (Zürich) and it’s not exactly hell on earth. And Switzerland just voted no to a hard population cap, in a direct democratic vote.
- roysting 3mo agoDon't worry, your path of good intentions will get Switzerland there too soon enough. Are you at all aware only 3.5% of the population (all urban and not ethnically Swiss) determined the outcome of that referendum, regardless of how clumsy of an attempt it was by the indigenous to preserve their culture, heritage, and people? I understand you may have never thought of it as such since the "education" we provide the common people deliberately obscures the true nature of the "democratic vote", the process by which the lowest common denominator is easily manipulated to control and effectively frack a whole society. It's our dirty little secret about "democracy". The common understanding of democracy is not at all democratic, it's effectively tyranny wrapped in a nicer bow and with a cute image makeover and far more subtle mechanism; tyranny by a simple "majority" and the even smaller delta, the defector in the stag hunt that brings down whole countries. We rely on your continued belief in and support of democracy and you are doing a good job of that, even when it's no more democracy than a small group of traitors throwing open the gates of a besieged fort in the middle of the night. It's actually why what you believe is good and just, democracy, is actually the most diabolical dark pattern evil humanity has ever devised, a pernicious mental virus that makes a people seek their own destruction; mostly because it hides in plain sight and looks cute on the face of it. Consider this a peek into reality.
- collinmcnulty 3mo agoAs Terry Pratchett put it in Carpe Jugulum: > And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.