In 2014, the people of Switzerland held a referendum on measures to limit immigration. It passed by 50.3%. It was hoped that strict quotas would be placed on the numbers of migrants, and that more rigorous vetting would keep out those economic migrants who claimed to be asylum seekers, fleeing persecution. In the end, the Swiss Parliament chose not to enforce the referendum’s provisions, rendering it “toothless.” Now, nine years later, the Swiss, who have in the meantime endured still more mass migration by Muslims, are working on a second referendum. The effort is being led by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP). From an article from December that retains its relevance: “Swiss national referendum will limit population to 10 million through strict immigration control to save environment,” by John Cody, Remix News, December 30, 2022:
The SVP harshly criticized the final agreement [after the 2014 referendum was adopted]which failed to implement immigration quotas but instead offered moderate improvements regarding job market conditions for the Swiss. The SVP called it “a betrayal of voters’ wishes” and unconstitutional, while the EU commission in 2017 celebrated the “hugely watered-down version of the initiative.“
The SVP, this time around [in 2024] will include language in the referendum that outright calls for Switzerland to ignore these international agreements, but Swiss business interests and the country’s left-liberal bloc are likely to put up a serious fight should the referendum win.
The current Western model promotes the idea of endless GDP growth through mass immigration. More immigrants equal more consumers, more housing construction springing up across the countryside, and more Third World peoples adopting a First World lifestyle.
More immigration does not any longer guarantee the right kind of growth. It can mean a greater drain of government resources, expended on benefits for a certain kind of economic migrant who is unable or unwilling to be a productive member of the nation. That kind of migrant, almost always Muslim, causes a rise both in unemployment and in rates of criminality.
Left-liberal and Green parties across the Western world have simultaneously called for Europeans to have fewer children to save the environment, while promoting mass immigration from Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries, with these newcomers known for their notoriously high birth rates. At the same time, countries like Switzerland, Germany, and the United Kingdom are breaking population records due to immigration, leading to a severe strain on the environment and social welfare models within these European nations — a development that has been rejected by only a handful of nations such as Denmark and Hungary.
To encourage the peoples of the advanced West to limit their family size, so as to be less of a burden on the environment, as so many of those advanced countries are now doing (almost every country in Europe now has a fertility rate below the replacement level), and at the same time to admit into those very countries Muslim migrants who are known to have large families, is to promote “the Great Replacement” of Europeans by non-Europeans. Muslims confidently predict that by 2050, “Europe will belong to us.” Do the Swiss, or do the other Europeans, want this nightmare scenario to happen?
The right, if it wants to survive, may have to tie environmental causes and climate change, which the youth of Europe overwhelmingly believe is occurring, to soaring population growth through immigration. The Swiss referendum may be a nod to a growing reality. Any referendum that calls for immigration restriction is likely to fail given the growing pro-migration youth vote, but if it can be tied to green causes, such a referendum may have a chance.
Furthermore, the SVP argues that this endless population growth model is not only unsustainable, but actually will not result in the desired outcome of endless economic growth.
SVP National Councilor Manuel Strupler states that purely “quantitative” immigration does not guarantee higher per capita growth. Furthermore, this type of immigration “dilutes” the values of Switzerland
Population growth through immigration is not always desirable, nor does it always result in economic growth. The experience with millions of Muslim migrants in Europe has been an unhappy one. These Muslims, though they claim to be refugees seeking asylum, are in fact economic migrants, determined to take advantage of every benefit the generous welfare states of Western Europe have on offer. These include free or greatly subsidized housing, free education, free medical care, family allowances, unemployment benefits (even without a record of employment), and more. That all costs the state a great deal of money. The Muslims soak up resources that might otherwise have gone to the indigenous poor. In Switzerland, as in other European countries, Muslim migrants have shown that they are in no hurry to be employed. They find that the cornucopia of benefits that are provided satisfies most of their needs. Should they find they’d like a little extra, Muslims tend to turn to crimes of property – shoplifting, street robberies, house burglaries – and what they manage to acquire by such means can be justified as a kind of “proleptic jizyah” that non-Muslims owe to Muslims.
SVP National Councilor Manuel Strupler states that purely “quantitative” immigration does not guarantee higher per capita growth. Furthermore, this type of immigration “dilutes” the values of Switzerland.
“At some point, someone will have to pay the costs of our current policy. We have a duty to the next generation to preserve the values that have made Switzerland successful.”
What Swiss “values” do Muslim migrants reject or dilute? Individualism. Equality of men and women. Freedom of religion. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press (i.e., all media). Equal treatment of all religions. None of these are observed in Muslim countries. All of them are observed in Switzerland.
Thomas Matter argues that population growth has actually reached the point of harming economic growth and will help push the country into recession. He says that while the population increased by 2.5 percent in 2022, per capita income rose only by 2 percent:
“They want us to believe that immigration rhymes with growth. But in reality, we are heading towards a recession,” he said.
He notes that France and Germany have closed their borders to illegal immigration from Switzerland, with Switzerland increasingly seen as a transit country. He warns that “a disaster is brewing.”
Those who want this second Swiss referendum on restricting immigration to succeed would do well to emphasize the effects of mass immigration on the Swiss environment. That immigration means that more housing will have to be built in an already overcrowded country, more energy and water will be used, there will be less open space to enjoy. What the Swiss who care about the environment should strive for is to end Muslim migration into Switzerland, where those economic migrants have proven to be both a terrific expense to the state, a danger to the Swiss people, and a greater burden on the environment than they were in their countries of origin.
If we want to help the world’s Muslims, this is not accomplished by allowing them into our countries, where they have such difficulty integrating into the society of Infidels, and where their large-scale presence has created a situation that is more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for the indigenous Infidels, than would be the case without that large-scale Muslim presence. To discourage their attempts at migrating to the West, military force may be required – such as naval ships used to prevent human traffickers from taking their human cargo from North Africa to Europe, both by blockade and by destroying those smugglers’ boats while still in port. The claims of would-be migrants that they are asylum seekers rather than economic migrants must be investigated with far greater skepticism that has hitherto been shown. And if their lot at home can be bettered, that would diminish their frantic need to make it to Europe. The most immediate problem facing 50 of the 57 Muslim countries is overpopulation, and the impoverishment that comes with it. Except for the rich Arab states of the Gulf, all Muslim states face that same problem. Their numbers are outrunning their resources. Lower populations in Third World Muslim countries will not make them weaker, as so many Muslims think, but will halt their slide to greater impoverishment. That would be good for Muslims, and even better for the non-Muslims who are fed up with paying the price for Muslim overpopulation — which is the result of a deliberate demographic jihad — by being swamped with economic migrants from Dar al-Islam.
Golem2 says
+1
Chintamani Patwardhan says
You can give asylum to any body who needs it except Muslims.
Hoi Polloi says
Happy to see them more forcefully making the case that expecting any country to cut and to lose ad infinitum, especially Switzerland which already has so many laws to restrict energy use, ignores the fact that moving people to developed countries with higher per capita energy consumption is the opposite of their claims.
“the Swiss Parliament chose not to enforce the referendum’s provisions” —-/illegally, as their legal structure requires implementation of the people’s will expressed through direct referendums. The EU threatened trade and illegally required that the Swiss not implement that which their legal structure required be implemented.
Hoi Polloi says
Which, btw, is definitely not intended as a criticism. Many assume, given the nature of referendums elsewhere, that Swiss referendums result in mere recommendations, but Swiss national referendums that receive a majority of votes of those voting are constitutionally binding. The Swiss may also in this manner nullify actions of their government and they have final say regarding constitutional amendments.
So an EU parliament of such extreme levels of corruption forcing a non-member to violate its constitution or be starved of trade is criminal on multiple fronts. Every action of the EU should be nullified.
Mark Spahn says
Math problem: A referendum “passed by 50.3%.” What percentage of voters voted for this referendum?
Answer: The word “by” means that the proportion of voters who voted for the referendum was equal to the proportion of voters who voted against it (let’s call this p), plus 50.3%. Thus the proportion of “for” votes is p+.503. The total proportion of votes, both “against” and “for”, is, as always, 100%. Thus p + (p+.503) = 1, so 2p + .503 = 1, so 2p = 1 – .503 = .497, so p = .497/2 =.2485, and the proportion of “for” votes was p + .507 = .2485 + .503 = .7515 = 75.15%. This is an overwhelming percentage: 75.15% “for” versus p=24.85% “against”.
James Lincoln says
According to the feature article:
“Left-liberal and Green parties across the Western world have simultaneously called for Europeans to have fewer children to save the environment, while promoting mass immigration from Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries, with these newcomers known for their notoriously high birth rates.”
That, my Jihad Watch friends, is a recipe for absolute disaster.