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Comment by jre | Hacker News Reader

As a swiss, I'm ashamed and angry about this vote. But I'd like to point out that all the most economically active region voted against the proposal to limit immigration. Interestingly, there was a correlation between the low number of foreigners in a region and the acceptance rate of the proposal.

Even the politicians in favor of the proposal immediately started asking for big quotas for their regions, so as not to hurt the economy - the irony...

So I'm not quite sure what will happen and the EU seems quite pissed about it (and rightly so), but looking at the tiny majority (50.3%) and the numerous lies during the campaign ("no, the EU won't do anything about it if it gets accepted"), I'm pretty confident this will either result in a law with no effect or we'll have to vote again to choose if we want to continue working with the EU or not.

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I'm Swiss and I agree with the entire comment above. The result was shameful, but hopefully it will be diluted into nothingness over the years it will take before it is implemented...

jre, i know the vote was very tight. i sympathise with you, and the other half. some of my closest friends are swiss, and i spend many winters and summers there (Nyon and Laussane). they certainly share your concerns.

i also see the irony from within. additionally, switzerland, of all the european countries, is the one which has one of the lowest levels of immigration (both legal and illegal). i think an inexistent paranoia took over many of the no so educated voters.

personally, i think the EU's stand needs to be tough, just make that 50.3% realise that what a mistake they've done. legislation won't go through until the summer, so lets hope much of the absurdity is not passed.

antr I don't know where you got the idea that Switzerland has the lowest level of immigration of the european countries....

"Switzerland and Australia, with about a quarter of their population born outside the country, are the two countries with the highest proportion of immigrants in the world"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration#cite_ref-90

It is quite large, although not in a way that really aligns with the rhetoric of the anti-immigrant parties like SVP. They are mainly attacking "culturally foreign" immigrants who fail to assimilate and don't share Swiss values, mostly meaning Muslims, and secondarily meaning poor eastern Europeans. But the majority of immigrants to Switzerland are "culturally close" and assimilate fairly easily. The two biggest groups are: German immigrants to the German-speaking region of Switzerland, and Italian immigrants to the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland. Yet somehow SVP posters don't indicate that Bavarians and Milanese are the invaders...

There are some more numbers here: http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index/themen/01/07/bla... 23% of Switzerland's population are not Swiss citizens, and Germany+Italy+Portugal+France account for about half of that.

chli, you are correct. i wasn't that aware of those numbers. although i'm guessing a big bunch of those immigrants are western europeans, not "croatians". a french in geneva, or a german in zurich are immigrants, but the swiss are not "afraid" of/referring to that immigration. am i correct on that assumption?

Liberal immigration is causing huge problems for countries ranging from the U.S. to the U.K. to France. Chalking it up to uneducated voters worrying about a nonexistent problem is disingenuous.

But hardly any of these problems are caused by immigration from EU countries, which are culturally very similar (with possible exception of Romania, see [1], though I don't personally know if that's a big problem or not).

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9618000/...

> additionally, switzerland, of all the european countries, is the one which has one of the lowest levels of immigration (both legal and illegal)

Actually, it has one of the highest levels of immigration in Europe, after Monaco, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-bo...

donquichotte, you are correct. i wasn't that aware of those numbers. although i'm guessing a big bunch of those immigrants are western europeans, not "croatians". am i correct on that assumption?

> personally, i think the EU's stand needs to be tough, just make that 50.3% realise that what a mistake they've done.

This will most certainly not happen. Instead, it will backfire. If the EU refuses a pragmatic and goal-oriented debate out of principle, it will only damage its reputation further and strengthen the anti-EU sentiment.

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