53% of Swiss voters have backed plans to implement automatic expulsion for criminals who are not Swiss citizens.
The Swiss People's Party (SVP) were behind the proposals, which would see foreign rapists, murderers, drug dealers and benefit fraudsters, amongst other hardened criminals, deported upon completion of their prison sentence.
Of course, such a measure is possible because Switzerland has a genuine measure of democracy; here in Britain, such a proposal would be strangled long before it reached the referendum stage, and in all likelihood it would never be suggested in the first place.
Not everyone is delighted at this news, as the BBC's
article on the subject demonstrates:
Fabrice Moscheni, of the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), which drew up the measure, said "people we welcome in Switzerland should respect the rules of this country".
But opponents said it was another example of increasing xenophobia.
The SVP was behind last year's referendum that imposed a ban on the building of Islamic minarets. That decision was condemned by human rights groups and foreign governments.
The SVP says immigrants to Switzerland are disproportionately responsible for crime. It points to the fact that more than 60% of prison inmates do not have Swiss nationality.
Interesting. You'll note how the term right-wing is inserted in its usual context, in place of "evil sods who would like to kill everyone who's not like them" - well, I suppose the BBC must at least attempt to be impartial in these matters.
Also, if more than 60% of prison inmates in Switzerland are not Swiss, isn't that a little more than "the SVP says immigrants are disproportionately responsible for crime"?
It's either an objective fact or it's not, and if it were not presumably the BBC would have refuted it in an attempt to make the SVP and their supporters look like the raving loonies the BBC and the rest of the establishment would like them to be.
Whilst it doesn't surprise me that the opponents of the policy trot out the lazy, tired term "xenophobia," it really couldn't be less appropriate in this context. If you invite someone into your home and they steal from you or attack your wife, are you "antisocial" for throwing them out?
Also, xenophobia means irrational fear; the foreigners we are talking about here are actually criminals, some of them quite violent and unpleasant ones, so what is irrational about being afraid of them and not wanting to set them loose on society once more?
Some Swiss are absolutely convinced this is an attack on foreigners rather than criminals though:
Virginie Studemann voted against the plan. "I think it's sad for our country," she said outside a polling station in the center of Geneva. "It's part of a concerted attack against foreigners."
Which rather begs the question, what would she like to see done with violent foreign criminals who see her as little better than prey, by virtue of being Swiss? Could the fact that 60% of those in Switzerland's prisons are not citizens be used as evidence that there is a concerted attack on the Swiss taking place?
The handwringing hasn't finished yet though; the article continues:
But opponents say the measures go too far. The children of immigrants do not automatically get Swiss citizenship, so the rule would mean sending some people who were born and brought up in Switzerland to countries they know nothing of.
Convicts would serve their sentence in Switzerland first and then be deported without appeal.
The Swiss government believes mandatory deportation could violate Switzerland's obligations under international law not to send people to countries that practise torture or execution.
Shouldn't it really be the place of the individual in question to worry about such matters? If they wish to live in Switzerland they should treat the country and its people with respect and obey the law, then they and their children will continue to be safe from whatever hell-hole they've fled.
Why is that such an unreasonable position? If they're so concerned about their children, they should think about that before doing whatever it is that lands them in prison - and if they're so concerned about human rights, they should think about the person they've victimised, in their own country, whilst living off their hospitality.
We're not finished, however:
The SVP has been accused of using racist posters that depict certain ethnic groups as criminal.
The Swiss political analyst Georg Lutz says the SVP's wider strategy is to capitalise on Swiss worries that the foreign population is too big.
"This vote is not about some complex legal issues about how to deal with certain types of criminal foreigners," he says.
"What most people will want to do in this vote is make a statement against foreigners, and that is the central motivation."
Yet more utter drivel. The SVP's posters are either an attempt to display their message through humour, or an attempt to show just how far-reaching the consequences of mass immigration will be for Switzerland and Europe through allegory, as shown below.
It's a free country, and people are free to feel that the foreign population is too big, just as they're free to disagree.
Also, some ethnic groups are proportionately more prone to criminality than others; I'd imagine that most Swiss people didn't use the vote to make "a statement against foreigners" per se, but to register their dissatisfaction that large numbers of violent, unproductive Third Worlders, largely useless to an advanced economy, are being allowed to change the face of their safe, clean and efficient country.
We also have the underlying liberal assumption that criminality is some sort of compulsion or form of illness, carried out by the oppressed to get attention, rather than a stark choice between making an effort to fit in and behave or cause trouble.
Deporting people who have abused the trust and generosity of the nation they have chosen to settle in in the worst possible ways is hardly
Kristallnacht or a blanket condemnation of all foreigners, however it is dressed up.
Perhaps if the likes of Georg Lutz is so ashamed of his country, he should come to Britain - he'd fit in well with our political classes. They too seem to feel that on matters such as these, the plebs just aren't enlightened enough to have a say.
But then, they don't have to deal with the reality of increasing violent crime in a formerly safe country where 60% of prisoners are now foreign citizens. Ordinary people
don't have that luxury:
"I'm totally for it," said Emma Link, 86, after voting in Geneva. She blamed foreigners for what she said was rising crime, adding that she had recently been robbed on her way home from a nearby shop.
At least in Switzerland, some politicians are doing their job and looking out for such people. Right-wing or not, that makes the SVP vastly superior to the current traitorous shower we call politicians here.
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