Tamedia survey: Population growth & the increasing proportion of foreigners are worrying many people; 62% want to limit the number of immigrants – for example with quotas.

18 comments

  1. We accepted the Masseneinwanderungsinitative a few years back. The result: nothing chaned because of the Bilaterals I and II and the Schengen Convention that makes us a defacto EU member with free movement of people and EU citizens having the chance to take up a job here very easily. Those are just two of these agreements we signed.

  3. Im much more worried about the lack of affordable (beautiful) housing being built and the slow pace of decision making, planing and building. Also how in some cases we’re slowly trending into less mixed neighbourhoods (i.e low income, immigrant heavy). It leads to much worse integration, national cohesion and social mobility.

  4. Population growth comes with a lot of challenges; increased infrastructure needs, increased housing needs, more environmental impact and so on. I think some limits make sense to impose, but it has to be carefully balanced with the needs of economic growth. I think the immigrant population adds massively to the Swiss economy, and is a necessity. Too much of a good thing, however, seems likely to lower wages and potential damage the economy. We all complain about prices and costs in Switzerland, but higher salaries seem to offset this in part, but if suddenly wages drop, the entire system seems like it would be in trouble. I think we are currently in a good place as far as immigrant population stands, and we should keep things the way they are.

    I do not count refugees and asylum cases in the population growth number considerations, as I see those situations representing humanitarian responsibilities.

  8. I understand the frustration of an average swiss, and the reasons behind these discussions. (Also agree with points that call for more planing and building to match the projected growth of population)

    On the other hand, i am trying to hire good engineers with scientific mindset in pharma, offering decent salaries and even looking for talents without experience. 80% of applications are from non-swiss. I still can’t find the right people. I would gladly start hiring from non-EU at some point.

    Now on those comments: “economic growth does not help the average swiss”: it most certainly does. We are outsourcing factories due to lack of space and personel here, currently only non-flagship products. The experience has shown, we can get very competitive workforce, pay similar to CH wrt. norms of the country, and we can think about switching there in the near future. That will massively affect the market here, with 3k people in jeopardy. Knowledge will also be transferred, local component and material suppliers will be affected as well. And if we had good people here, average swiss or some other people, it would lead to an overall focus for expansion here.

  10. Swiss people. Their heads in the clouds.

    Constantly voting for parties who lower taxes to attract corporations, not wanting to spend the money to educate our own people for the jobs that are created, not wanting to protect foreign people in their own country from being exploited by the corporations we attracted…

    …and then wondering why there’s immigration and wanting to limit it.

    And now you want to kill off the bilaterals because you can’t perceive that the influx of foreign people is self-made.

    Just how disconnected from reality can one be?

    Why am I even wondering? Most of you are still in denial that we have an issue with latent racism while con stantlyblaming foreigners for everything.

    Arrogance and ignorance will be the downfall of this country.

    Next step: abolishing the SRG and still expecting great fact based reporting in the news for free. At least it will accelerate our downfall. Cheers.

  11. Western World: Does their best to make living in developing countries absolute hell

    Also Western World: Where are all these immigrants coming from?

  12. Just curious, are Swiss people worried about people coming to Switzerland from poor countries seeking for asylum or people from like Germany or France etc. who come to work in a specific job? 62% sounds very serious.

  13. There has to be some kind of limits before we hit >10-12 mio in my opinion. There is no point just to have a lot of people on a relatively small area in my opinion.

  16. I get this but I thought quotas were in place already? It’s difficult even for a highly qualified individual to come to Switzerland as it is. I’ll say the 62% needs to worry about how it’s own people can’t afford a house and no one is having sexy time because of this, Switzerland will slowly become Japan.

  17. I saw there was an article in the NZZ about how awful us English immigrants are. Given we are only 40,000 in number (and overwhelmingly professional did not causing trouble), we attract a lot of attention.

    I suspect it’s less about us as individuals, and more about English being required in more and more jobs – something that would remain the case if every one of us left.

  18. Cities get denser, housing gets fewer and more expensive, public transport is already overflowing, and with the climate goals and more people the energy demand rises exponemtially.

    So ye, limiting immigration would be a simple and logical first step in order to solve the deeper laying problems.

Leave a Reply