[jrflo]

So this is essentially a way to reduce immigration to the country? And if they get close to the cap they will "need to take measures, particularly in the areas of asylum and family reunification."

Would be curious to learn more about why this is being proposed.

[soco]

The initiator party wants to get Switzerland out of Schengen and of the EU bilaterals - which will happen as a consequence if this passes. Like a Brexit, basically.

Edit: but the CHexit will work just fine, because of the Swiss exceptionalism.

[amunozo]

Way worse than Brexit, as Switzerland is much smaller, landlocked and had no colonies or anything like that. This would be a suicide for the country. Just populism to mobilize the electorate.

[transcriptase]

Makes far more sense than the “population must increase forever” pyramid scheme the rest of the West is running. Check out Canada for a look at what happens when you try to juice GDP via population growth at the expense of literally everything else.

[Stevvo]

The data/facts disagree with you. In a low birth rate society a constant influx of new tax payers is required. Without it you end up with decades of stagnation like Japan.

[transcriptase]

Why shouldn’t the need for tax revenue go down as the population it’s intended to serve declines?

[aprilthird2021]

2 main reasons

1) Populations are their most expensive at their oldest age and each subsequent generation is smaller and needs to pay for an old generation larger than their own

2) infrastructure and many of the things a government provides is not scalable down and up. A road is not (much) cheaper to maintain because less people drive on it

[amunozo]

One word: ageing. Population declines but also age, so working population declines much more than total population.

[s1artibartfast]

This sounds like a strong argument for having a stable cap. It's not a total immigration ban and would freeze population at a steady state. This makes all of the boom and bust problems easier, not worse

[gambiting]

Population of most European countries is actually decreasing year on year:

https://www.worldometers.info/population/countries-in-europe...

But either way, European nations are nearly all screwed - their expenditure on pensions and healthcare will quadruple in the coming decades as the demographics change heavily towards elderly peple.

[bombcar]

Pensions are a bit harder to get out of, but healthcare is easy. You never deny, just delay.

[throwaway85825]

Or in Canada, MAID.

[ryandrake]

What happens, specifically? Not that I'm a fan of "population increase forever" but what's wrong with Canada?

[maxglute]

Pop increase faster than housing / good jobs. The usual. Tried to juice economy post covid with MASS Indian immigration, for reference peak "Chinese" immigration was post HK handover was 60k, settled at 40k per year, lots of Chinese wealth transfer to Canada. Indian immigration went from 60k per year to over 140k, outrageous amount. Bluntly, most of west including Canada gets second tier immigrants, all the good opportunities in US, Canada doesn't get to retain tier1 talent, and Indian immigrants are in aggregate less wealthy. The entire point of brain drain is to get best brains, or in lieu get wealth. Canada got neither. This not knock on Indian immigrants, who work just as hard as every other, just acknowledging value proposition is not the same.

The broader context is Canada is on paper a small pop country with sufficiently alright governance to get per capita rich selling shit from ground. The more people you have have, the less that model works, and frankly Canada at 25m in the 00s already passed that point (vs 6m Norway). It doesn't help that... foreign influence have stagnated Canadian fossil/extractive industries development. Trudeau thought it was good idea to aim for 100m Canadians by 2100 (century initiative)... which on paper makes sense - only way for Canada to compete/influence vs US is heft, but of course that means a lot of brown and eventually black people fighting for housing and opportunities in the interregnum.

Unsurprisingly, broken housing market = no one likes that interregnum.

[panick21_]

Canada is really bad with housing and inftrastructure. Blame immigrants not crack head white politicans who see bike lanes as the devil take car and oil money whole worshiping Trump and far right parties all over the world.

Yeah immigrants are really the problem.

[alephnerd]

A lot of people on the internet blame Canada's malaise on their historically lax immigration stance.

While to a certain extent it has caused some social issues (eg. Indian, Chinese, Viet organized crime took advantage of it to leave crackdowns during the 2010s and 2020s and degree mills abounded), it's impact on the economy is overstated.

Canada's economy was always a resource extraction and construction driven economy, and

1. the blocking of the Keystone Pipeline project (thus making Canadian ONG less competitive than American sourced ONG for refineries)

2. the rise of America as a net energy producer and exporter especially in ONG (thanks Obama/Biden, Trump/Pence/Tillerson, and former Govs Burgum and Perry)

3. the blocking of the GasLink LNG project (blocked the ability for Canada to build marketshare in Asia)

4. the blocking of the Northern Gateway pipeline project (blocked the ability for Canada to build marketshare in Asia)

5. the blocking of the Energie Saguenay LNG project (blocked the ability for Canada to build marketshare in Europe)

6. Bipartisan support in America for trade barriers against Canada even before the Trump tarriffs (eg. Biden and Trump's softwood lumber tariff policy)

7. (becuase this failure is bipartisan) Blue provinces halting renewables projects in Alberta and Saskatchewan while American governors on both sides took full advantage of CHIPS and the IRA, thus preventing Canada from building domestic dealflow in GreenTech

all played a much larger role than immigration in causing economic malaise for Canada.

At the end of the day, Canada's economy in the 2010s was structurally unprepared for America becoming a major energy producer and exporter by the 2020s, and was unable to successfully build infra to make Canadian ONG cost competitive against American ONG nor the ability to sell outside of North America.

THIS is the legacy of the Trudeau administration - if your economy is based on resource extraction, fighting against it for political reasons is self-harming.

Canada's GDP has essentially been stagnant for almost 15 years, and all kinds of infrastructure projects that would have helped the Canadian economy grow were blocked. Additionally, Canada has the same economic complexity [0] as Bulgaria [1] and Serbia [2] and is even less complex than Mexico [3], which makes Canada the least competitive choice for FDI within NAFTA.

Australia is in the exact same boat as Canada, but unlike Canada, their political class fully backed their resource extraction industries.

[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/124/export-complexit...

[1] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/100/export-complexit...

[2] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/688/export-complexit...

[3] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/484/export-complexit...

[kens]

Serious question: what is ONG? I assume it's like LNG (liquefied natural gas), but after multiple searches, all I can come up with is Oklahoma Natural Gas, NGO in French, and On God.

[metalman]

Here in Nova Scotia, Canada, mass imigration is driving the most intense building of everything boom, ever. And it just went up a notch. Plenty of Swiss imigrants as well.

[PowerElectronix]

No country is running a "population must increase forever". You only hear that when the public pensions are discussed because they are unsustainable. The argument is not " population must increase", it's more "human labor is the most critical resource and we must get as much as we can".

You can fear the results of runaway immigration in the short term, like cultural clashes, organized crime and brown people in your neighborhood. But you can't deny the results on the long term when you allow talent to go to your country and end up with more nobel laureates of New Zealand origin than New Zealand.

[seanmcdirmid]

This is only about the Schengen, Switzerland is not a part of the EU, and even before the Schengen, the borders between the EU and Switzerland weren't heavily controlled. I got in trouble at German airport for going by train from Lausanne to Milan, and then plane to Berlin, I had no entry step into the Schengen because they didn't bother doing that on trains (pre-Schengen).

Everything else is negotiated under separate treaties. This would revert Switzerland to pre-Schengen, which is sad, but it wouldn't be suicidal.

[tonfa]

> This is only about the Schengen, Switzerland is not a part of the EU

Not really, the bilateral are a package and the EU doesn't want CH to pick and chose.

If freedom of movement stops, a whole lot of thing also stop. It happened the last time SVP got something similar voted on (introduction of quota for foreign immigration), on a smaller scale (erasmus and horizon which are the higher ed and academic research collaboration, CH was a heavy recipient of the latter).

[JumpCrisscross]

> the bilateral are a package and the EU doesn't want CH to pick and chose

It really depends who is in power where when and if the 10mm limit is crossed. If there is a conservative in Paris or Berlin, chances are Switzerland can simply abrogate Schengen.

[jltsiren]

Schengen is a minor treaty about border controls. The actual issue are the Bilateral I agreements, which link free movement with many aspects of free trade. If Switzerland drops that, it needs new free trade agreements, which take many years to negotiate and ratify.

[tonfa]

Unlike UK, the impact to the EU is minimum and Switzerland doesn't have leverage (if the EU still stands).

Of course if you have EU dismantlers in power anyway in FR/DE, they'll just be happy to sabotage.

[izacus]

Where do you pull this kind of nonsense from? This didn't work out for much bigger UK and UK isn't sorrounded by EU.

[Yizahi]

I wish Schengen would one day apply mirror visit policies, to make countries taste their own poison. Like - "Ok UK, you want out of Schengen? Fine. You will now pay 162 EUR for a single one time entry per person. Thank you very much for your interest.". Or "Oh, you want a 5 year multi entry visa, which EU can grant for like 30-60 EUR? It will be reciprocal 1086 EUR for you. It was a pleasure of doing business with you, sir.".

And do the same with every other renegade, including reciprocal mirror tariffs and stuff. Want to play games? Let's play them together.

[mahkeiro]

Switzerland was part of Schengen from day one… New EU Entry exit/system will put CH in the same boat as UK with mandatory control at the border with scan of face and finger print + travel authorization. Switzerland would be completely locked. But some people are going to be happy as it would mean no more grocery shopping on the other side of the border.

[seanmcdirmid]

Switzerland officially joined the Schengen Area on December 12, 2008

March 26, 1995 (The Implementation): The Schengen Area officially became effective on this date. Internal border controls were finally lifted among seven member states.

[unbeli]

> Switzerland was part of Schengen from day one

I say! That's news to most.

[dnautics]

how did they ever survive in the pre-EU/schengen/EEC era?

[skywhopper]

Their neighbors were similarly restrictive back then, and the European economy was not as integrated.

[joe_mamba]

> the European economy was not as integrated

And somehow despite this, the European economies had the biggest share of global GDP back then.

And now they're more integrated than ever, have more immigration than ever, have created the EU as their "big daddy" leader and enforcer, and yet they can't stop losing share of GDP to the rest of the world. Stange. Maybe they should hit the brakes for a second and reflect that their current course of action isn't the cure but the disease.

Like ASML, Concorde and Airbus were created via European cooperation when EU was a nascent baby and present day Schengen freedom of movement did not exist. Now we EU bureaucracy, open borders unlimited freedom of movement but haven't created the next Airbus or ASML. Food for thought that the EU is tackling the wrong issues on its economic stagnation. Maybe the solution is not more EU, but less EU.

[jltsiren]

The root issue was already visible in the 1970s. When birth rates drop below replacement, you eventually end up with a society with more old people than kids. And when you have a society like that, you naturally invest more in maintaining the society and less in building the future.

[panick21_]

Yeah lets compare the world now to a world pre rise of Japan, East Asia and China. Im sure less European imtegration would have resulted in Euro dominance continuing.

I agree more bilateral agreements are good but having even more fragmented markets is not and was not a long term model of sucess.

It was simply easier back then, less competition.

[j_maffe]

> Maybe the solution is not more EU, but less EU.

You haven't given a single reason why that would be beneficial.

[ceejayoz]

Divorce is harder than a wedding.

[greenavocado]

Imagine how crazy it is to call a population cap an act of "suicide."

[amunozo]

It's not the population cap, but that bilateral agreements with the EU depend on the free movement of people. Without it, Switzerland could lose access to the EU market, which accounts for 51% of their exports. Switzerland cannot just choose whatever they like from the agreements and cancel what they don't. They will have to accept whatever in order to keep in the EU common market, or the country will suffer massive troubles. Switzerland needs the EU much more than the other way around.

[ceejayoz]

Imagine how crazy it is to think "Switzerland out of Schengen" isn't.

It's a small, landlocked country, surrounded on all sides by Schengen nations, that until recently delegated air defense to the EU outside of their air force's office hours. https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/feb/19/swis...

[seanmcdirmid]

Plenty of us remember when Switzerland was not in the Schengen though. This might be good for Americans, who haven't been able to get working visas in Switzerland since EU countries now have priority. But otherwise, I don't see much changing beyond border procedures.

[ceejayoz]

As with Brexit, leaving is likely to result in a much stricter regime than the status quo from before the establishment of the system.

[luke5441]

Most of the downsides would be on the goods side. Swiss companies would loose market access and the chance of "better" trade agreements is even worse then the UK, especially currently.

[greenavocado]

When the neighboring countries become a threat again, they will place high explosives back inside the bridges and mountain passes.

[izacus]

Well they also blow up 70% of their exports? :P

[herbst]

Not sure if they actually removed it in all the places, except that one bridge by Basel everyone know about.

[greenavocado]

I already pass through Swiss customs when driving in, so it makes virtually no difference to me besides slowing things down at the border potentially.

[ceejayoz]

Schengen covers border controls (i.e. immigration/visits), not customs ones (the stuff you bring with).

[skywhopper]

At the very least it’s an infringement of human rights.

[azan_]

Is being able to move to Switzerland really an universal human right?

[joe_mamba]

Yes, because in the human rights bill it says that everyone in the world has the right to go live in Switzerland.

[throw-the-towel]

Tell that to the EU.

[naths88]

Here you go (if you understand French, German, Italian or Romansh, there is a video)

https://www.admin.ch/fr/initiative-durabilite

https://www.udc.ch/actualites/campagnes/pas-de-suisse-a-10-m...

[fractallyte]

It's being proposed in order to maintain quality of life. No one wants to be overcrowded. This is a sane solution: collectively agree on the maximum tolerable population. Then it's down to individual responsibility to obey the norms of one's society.

Edit: unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant. Swiss voters have a right to decide how they want to live. They're not beholden to EU laws; they can make their own sovereign decisions, and everyone must respect that.

[JumpCrisscross]

> unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant

I vote in Switzerland. I’m very much interested in the thoughts and opinions of others on this vote.

[soco]

I think I'm totally missing the explanation how my quality of life will increase when Swiss products cannot be sold in the EU anymore because of the price hikes and double bureaucracy - including no more cross-border work. Job loss doesn't say much "quality of life", nor does higher prices on imports.

[Argonaut998]

You are assuming there won’t be free trade agreements. People need to stop saying what happened with Brexit will happen with Switzerland. Two completely different countries governed in two completely different ways.

[asyx]

The EU would be really stupid to give you a good deal. Like, for self preservation purposes alone it would be really beneficial if Switzerland would just really suffer after leaving the EEA especially because a lot of shit was going down in Europe and the world after brexit. Can’t really point at the cost of living in the uk and say that’s brexit when petrol is almost 2€ in Germany as well.

But a Switzerland that just collapses surely but surely? That’s gonna send a message.

[herbst]

What products are you thinking? Chocolate and cheese are actually not that relevant as some people want it to be. Gold trade, software, banking however is unlikely to decrease a lot no matter the border rules.

[soco]

I take this question as a joke, it would be regrettable to know so little about Switzerland yet comment like this. Because more than half of the Swiss exports are chemical and pharma, then come machinery and electronics and... and yeah, food altogether is 3% as well.

[FabCH]

Well I _am_ Swiss.

You missed the part where we _voluntarily_ chose to enter into a contract with the EU that does in fact beholden us to EU laws.

We can go back on that contract, but breaking your word is something that people remember for a reason.

[criddell]

Does the contract contain a section on breaking the agreement?

[brewdad]

If it doesn’t, a whole lot of European lawyers need to turn in their licenses.

[FabCH]

Yes.

And that clause famously includes the breaking of all other contracts.

[BoingBoomTschak]

Maybe not a legally smart move, but morally... when was it signed? Perhaps way before some EU countries decided to stop enforcing their borders beyond the performative level? And since these agreements basically force countries (especially rich countries with socialist systems) to somewhat share the burden of that choice they didn't make, I don't blame them in the least.

[FabCH]

These agreements do not force countries to share that burden.

Freedom of movement for EU citizens. Migrants and asylum seekers don’t have the right to live and work in Switzerland because of our EU agreements.

A migrant or asylum seeker living in Germany has 0 right to move to CH.

We do have some asylum obligations from the Dublin accords and from global human rights laws, but those we can regulate ourselves separately anyway. EU doesn’t care. Countries within EU do it already.

[BoingBoomTschak]

Although you are completely right, some of these same countries also hand citizenship almost like bread.

[SllX]

There’s never anything sane with population caps by fiat. If that’s a form of insanity they wish to indulge though, then democracy allows them that.

[JumpCrisscross]

> There’s never anything sane with population caps by fiat

Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à la one-child policy). But government has controlled immigration for generations.

I’m asking as someone who is genuinely on the fence on this vote.

[SllX]

Population Control ≠ Immigration Control.

Saying that you’re going to cap your population necessarily implies you’re going to take policy measures to grow no further than the capped amount, which are by their nature, repressive.

That said I did see in some other comments earlier after I posted this that this is a back door way to axe the Swiss-EU bilateral agreements all at once. I don’t know how true that is, but if that’s the goal, Switzerland doesn’t need to take such a back door approach. Just put it on the ballot like everything else.

[soco]

It was put on ballot as such, and overwhelmingly (by Swiss standards) rejected. Now it's time for trying different backdoors (not the first try either). It's a constant circus, EU and the EU citizens being the demon eating at the Swiss well-being.

[bootsmann]

Immigration is being controlled, EU immigrants require a work contract to come here (and consequentially 80% are employed with the rest split between spouses, kids and students). I strongly prefer this system over having some random bureaucrat in Berne decide who is "valuable" and who isn't.

[Johanx64]

> Why? It’s repressive if done to cap a natively-growing population, since that means government controlling reproduction (à la one-child policy).

There's a point where caping even natively growing population is actually the right move.

There's plenty of overpopulated shitholes (Mumbai, Dhaka, Cairo, Bangladesh, etc) where it would have been an absolute blessing if government was controlling reproduction or put a population cap in place.

If you think capping population is wrong, go visit Dhaka, I highly recommend it.

If you're still on the fence after visiting Dhaka, you're beyond saving.

[joxdosba]

[flagged]

[dweinus]

> unless you're Swiss, your opinion is irrelevant

Lol. Dude, sure the Swiss can vote however they want. But we all see you and can pass judgement on this thinly veiled anti-immigrant nonsense all day long. Respect it I will never.

[shevy-java]

Except that it is not EU conform. And won't hold up anyway. Everyone knows this.

Some politicians want to market themselves here.

> Then it's down to individual responsibility to observe the norms of one's society.

That's ok, but Switzerland decided to also partake in many EU regulations, including free movement. They can't cherry-pick individual parts. If they don't want special relations to the EU then that's also fine but the benefits will be gone as well. The UK found this out quite quickly too.

[jrflowers]

If you increased Switzerland’s population density by 50% they’d be in a crowded hellhole like (checks notes) Belgium

[plqbfbv]

Yeah, but while Belgium is basically a huge plain, Switzerland is 60% Alps.

If you account for that, the effective density of Switzerland on the usable area is 600–700 people/km².

[jrflowers]

Looks like it’s 380 in the Swiss Plateau (you might be mixing up sq km and sq mi), which puts its at about ~70% of the population density of the Netherlands as a whole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Plateau

[plqbfbv]

Fair, I had a quick look, 600-700 is likely for the big cities areas.

[ceejayoz]

There are significant differences in terrain that make that comparison a bit tougher.

[rayiner]

But Belgium does suck. I drove from Amsterdam to Paris in the early 2000s, and Belgium stuck out as being obviously worse (dirtier) than the other two.

[incognito124]

https://sive.rs/4d

[rayiner]

I was in Brussels and it sounds like it’s still a problem. https://www.reddit.com/r/belgium/comments/1dsoy9y/why_is_it_...

[skywhopper]

It’s ludicrous to think that 10 million is the “maximum tolerable population” for Switzerland. This is a racist, isolationist move and an attempt to stir up hatred among the population.

[atemerev]

This is a way to enable deportations and curb permit prolongations, to delay reaching the 10m cap (which will create really bad consequences).

As an immigrant in Switzerland, I am quite WORRIED.

[unbrice]

> As an immigrant in Switzerland, I am quite WORRIED.

If it helps : Assuming that the initiative pass and nothing is done to reduce the immigration rate, the 10M threshold would be reached by 2040 according to the Federal Statistics Office. The current regime should apply to you till 2042 which should give you 16 years to make your way to citizenship (Among many other path that would let you stay).

[atemerev]

The threshold is actually 9.5M, and we are at 9.1M already.

[shevy-java]

The people behind this are conservative politicians. They have done so a lot in the last 20 years or so and keep on trying, but the EU regularly stops their shenanigans.

For the most part the swiss already decided to try to cherry pick as much as possible. They know that if they want to limit movement, then the EU will also limit movement from swiss to other EU countries. And the swiss always disliked that, so they could not go through with it. You can also see that with the UK - they are out of the EU but suddenly want free movement and free trade. Some people can't decide what they want.

[plqbfbv]

Moved out last year after 10y in the Zurich area.

There's always been a pull-and-push between getting skilled workers and protecting the internal labor market. Right-wing political parties never made a secret of the fact that they hated immigrants, because they stole jobs and redirected/exported money that would have otherwise been received by Swiss. IIRC this was historically mostly felt in Ticino (the southern region), where Swiss companies sourced very cheap Italian labor by undercutting Swiss salaries by a lot, shrinking the job market for Swiss people (a Swiss can barely get by in Switzerland with an equivalent Italian salary).

Switzerland is geographically in the middle of Europe, but it's not part of the EU. This allowed the country to thrive outside some of the more restrictive EU regulations and keep its own currency, but because it has a smaller job market that can barely replenish the high-skilled workers pool and is often in defect (not just finance bros, but also doctors, for instance), it always had to import workforce from neighboring countries to some extent. Over the last 40 years Switzerland basically opened up to more-or-less follow many EU rules and put in place agreements to have a play in the same market and be allowed to easily keep importing people it needs.

This initiative as I understand it would be equivalent to a Brexit (because sooner or later the cap would be hit, considering more housing keeps being built), which would undo 40 years of openings and IMO greatly weaken the integration with EU, and as a result the country as a whole.

[jon_adler]

With a birth rate or 1.29, they will need to accept immigrants or face the consequences of a declining population. My guess is that in the end, the next generation of old folk will want taking care of.

[JumpCrisscross]

> With a birth rate or 1.29, they will need to accept immigrants or face the consequences of a declining population

Doesn’t the population cap somewhat elegantly deal with this? If birth rates are insufficient, a certain amount of migration is tolerated. The lower births rates go, the more immigration is allowed.

[harshalizee]

It doesn't work as straightforward as that. To have a healthy immigration channel, especially if you want younger/educated/skilled/etc. the pipeline needs to be active and streamlined. Jobs, housing, a well-beaten path that is predictably navigable is incredibly important for a migrant, since they're taking a lot of risks moving there.

If this referendum blocks EU movement, it will choke the pipeline that's filling positions that takes in a high amount of immigrants like healthcare, agriculture, etc. Once it dies out, people may not be as willing to move if they're the one paving the path.

Historically, the US has been quite successful in this area. Migrants from Philippines dominate nursing, Mexico for agriculture and Chinese/Indians for Sotware/Medical.

The migration path has to be vastly superior to their current living for this to work, if they want the same immigration. Or else, it will be mostly people who are truly in a terrible situation who'd be willing to take a chance.

[JumpCrisscross]

Counterpoint: Switzerland is rich, peaceful and pretty multicultural. That baseline will keep it as an attractive place to expat or migrate.

[harshalizee]

Counter-conterpoint : For now.

A large part of this is due to bilateral agreements and free flow migration. This referendum directly affects that.

[Der_Einzige]

Robots will take off in our life time. I will be taken care of by robots circa the 2060s and 2070s.

[vitalyan1234]

will soemone please think of the boomers? :(