BERLIN — Swiss and European leaders reacted warily on Monday to Swiss voters’ narrow approval of a proposal to limit the number of foreigners allowed to live and work in Switzerland.
A bare majority voted in a referendum on Sunday to cut immigration quotas and require that Swiss nationals be given priority in hiring. The result could have far-reaching implications for relations between Switzerland and the 28-member European Union, of which it is not a member.[my emphasis]
Why is it "Alarming" that citizens of a sovereign state, created for the benefit of said citizens first and foremost, vote to make sure that the government it created, operates to benefit said citizens first? That isn't alarming. That's common sense.
Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, said Monday that the European Union would have to reconsider its relationship with Switzerland.
“It is a vote that causes concern because it means that Switzerland wants to withdraw into itself,” Mr. Fabius told RTL radio.
Laurent is an idiot. Saying that the duly elected representatives ought to be putting the citizens of it's country first is not "withdrawing into itself". And the Frenchman should watch his mouth. France, a country that does everything it can to make sure it's language isn't "polluted" by other languages should keep silent when citizens vote in the interest of their own country.
Switzerland has one of the highest proportions of foreigners in Europe, amounting to about 27 percent of the country’s population of roughly eight million. Many job seekers have arrived from countries hit hard by the European economic crisis.
27%? And they're surprised at the vote results? 27% is a very high proportion.
The referendum on the changes to the country’s liberal immigration law was a rebuke to the Swiss government, the banking industry and business leaders, who had lobbied against the restrictions, warning that such a move could endanger Switzerland’s prosperity.
By which the business leader's mean their ability to milk the Swiss people of their money. Simple question for the "business leaders" and "bankers" who prosperous was Switzerland before it got 27% immigrant population? And can they show that Switzerland became
more prosperous as the immigrant population grew
and due to the economic activity of those persons?
The admonitions failed to drown out the warnings of the rightist Swiss People’s Party, which introduced the referendum, saying it was necessary if Switzerland was to retain its identity in the face of immigration.
Immigration has become a polarizing issue across Europe. More prosperous nations are growing worried that their welfare systems cannot handle an influx of workers from the poorer Eastern European countries and some southern member states of the European Union.
Far-right parties with anti-immigrant platforms in France, the Netherlands and Norway have gained strength in recent years, and there have been sharp debates in Britain and Germany over limiting the number of immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania because citizens from those countries gained full access to European Union job markets this year.
In reference to the welfare, one problem that these countries have is that they have stagnant to shrinking populations along with high percentages of older people. Welfare programs rely in tax income to work. And it doesn't make any sense for a country to spend it's welfare monies, planned and created to cater to it's citizens, to cover new people. Imagine if you will that you saved for your retirement and then when you retired you found out you had to support 3 other people out of that. I'm pretty sure you'd be annoyed.
In terms of national identity that underscores another issue. Do these countries and their citizens have a right to determine their culture in their own native lands? If you have an increasing population of people who do not share your culture, the language, customs, religion, what is the response to that population? What happens when or if that population does NOT want to conform to the host countries values and ways? I have said many times that the entire
reason there are different countries is because there existed at some point a set of people that did not want to live with or like another set and therefore went off and formed their own polity.
The center-right European People’s Party group in the European Parliament, which is the largest group there, took a tough line.
“The free movement of citizens is a core principle of the E.U. Switzerland has a binding bilateral agreement with the E.U. to accept and guarantee free movement for all E.U. citizens,” said a statement by its chairman, Joseph Daul, and its vice chairman, Manfred Weber.
Well if they feel so strongly about it how about they have the places where the Europeans move from pay the countries where their citizens move to for costs incurred for hosting them? Sounds fair to me. If you tell me I have to let someone in my house and eat my food, you should be willing to pay me to do so. If the sending country is unable to cover the costs of it's citizen then the EU should pay the host country itself. After all, if it wants to make a rule, it should be willing to pay for it.
