Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

by Diccon Bewes

Having helped the right-wing SVP win the previous election, he was brought back in 2010 for his real purpose, one that made the minaret ban look tame. This time it wasn’t just Muslims who were targeted by the latest SVP hate campaign, but all foreigners. The Ausschaffungsinitiative, or deportation initiative, was a popular initiative that proposed automatically expelling foreign criminals, from rapists down to benefit cheats, back to their country of origin. No appeals, no exceptions. For Secondos born and brought up in Switzerland that might mean being sent back to some tiny village in southern Italy that their grandparents left in the 1960s. Funnily enough, the SVP’s list of crimes worthy of expulsion didn’t include corporate fraud, tax dodging or secreting away ill-gotten gains. Clearly those sorts of foreign criminals are welcome to stay, presumably because they aren’t a threat to little old ladies, but most likely because they make the country richer and the SVP didn’t want to alienate its friends in big business.