Xenophobic Swiss? No, but realistic when it comes to immigration9 reading minutes

Unpublished article - Marco Polli

On the RTS set, on January 13th, the French sociologist Ugo Palheta suggested that the «xenophobic» initiatives accepted in Switzerland were contributing to the return of fascism in Europe. More broadly, and beyond the question of Islam and Islamism, it is not uncommon for Helvetians to be accused of hostility - at least political hostility - towards immigration. This misunderstands the will of this people, who have given their country a genuine policy of welcoming foreigners. How did they do this? By rejecting six xenophobic initiatives over the past 50 years, and more recently, by accepting the conditions required to prevent Switzerland from becoming a Spanish hostel.

With 28% foreigners living within its walls, Switzerland has twice as many as its European neighbors. There are undoubtedly xenophobes in Switzerland, as in all countries. But no nation has given its people the opportunity to reject xenophobia by universal suffrage; Switzerland did so six times, from 1970 to 1988, with significant majorities. This is to its credit.

Racism«, of which xenophobia is a variant, consists in labelling a group of people with condemnable defects based on particularities such as race, nationality, gender or sexual practice. The four initiatives launched by James Schwarzenbach's Action nationale between 1970 and 1977, and the SVP's 1988 initiative, were unequivocally xenophobic. They portrayed foreigners globally as a threat to the country's identity. The first initiative in 1970 particularly targeted foreign workers, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese. Max Frisch ironically wrote: »A little people of masters feels in danger; we called for manpower, and men are arriving«. Yet these workers from Latin Europe had made the effort to integrate into local societies. We welcomed their children into our schools and can testify that, at the same socio-cultural level, they were just as, if not more, assiduous in their studies, because they received from their families the message that integration was an opportunity that came through success at school. The Swiss people understood this.

Switzerland and the reception of foreigners

What makes Switzerland so special is its «direct democracy, one of the primary forms of democracy in which the people exercise political power directly, whereas in a representative democracy it is exercised indirectly». In other words, it's the people who decide on matters drawn up by elected representatives, political parties or circumstantial groups of citizens, and it's the people who have the final say. In this way, over the decades, it has provided Switzerland with a policy of ’detailed reception« of foreigners, framed by conditions. It has done so in three stages: two that have prepared the ground, and a third that has defined the modalities for welcoming foreigners:

1. On December 6, 1992, by rejecting membership of the European Economic Area (EEA), the Swiss people preserved the country's sovereignty over its national territory;
2. In six successive votes, five of them unanimous, and at rates ranging from 54 to 84%, it condemned xenophobia;
3. Finally, on November 28, 2010, it decided to refer the foreign criminals under certain conditions, and on February 9, 2014, it regulated their reception by quotas according to its integration capacity.

It is these last two popular decisions, enshrined in art. 121 and 121a of the Federal Constitution, which define the Swiss Confederation's policy for welcoming foreigners:

• Art 121 Aliens and asylum legislation states in its 1^er paragraph that «the entry into Switzerland, exit, residence and establishment of foreigners and the granting of asylum are the responsibility of the Confederation». Paragraphs 3 to 6 specify the procedures for expelling «foreigners who threaten the security of the country», in accordance with the rule of law. These are no trifles. 
• Art 121a Immigration management puts into shape the vote of February 9, 2014. Note its first paragraph: «Switzerland manages the immigration of foreigners autonomously» completed, in case anyone has misunderstood, by the 4^thNo international treaty contrary to the present article shall be concluded«.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

It's an inescapable fact of life: good politics isn't made with good feelings, but with arguments, values and laws. The left experienced this bitterly with its «Etre solidaire» initiative of April 5, 1981, which, with arguments dripping with good intentions, presented a foreigner as good by nature. Rejected by 83.8%, it received the slap in the face it deserved.

In 1989, when the debate over the reception of refugees was raging in France, Michel Rocard, Prime Minister of the Mitterrand government, said: «France cannot welcome all the world's misery, but it must faithfully take its share of it», a statement that caused an uproar on the left. She had carefully omitted the second part of the sentence, «elle doit en prendre fidèlement sa part» ("France must faithfully take its share").», disregarding what is political and not moral, namely the prerogatives of the government of a sovereign country according to its capacity to receive immigrants. Over the years, Michel Rocard has repeatedly tried to make this second part of his argument heard, to no avail.

Well, no, the ’stranger« is neither bad nor good by virtue of the Holy Spirit. That's not the point. The November 28, 2010 initiative «Pour le renvoi des étrangers criminels» («For the deportation of criminal foreigners») was aimed at the minority who abuse our hospitality to commit crimes. The popular majority confirmed this evidence by accepting it. The wording "criminal foreigners" could be interpreted in two ways: on the one hand, objectively, targeting foreigners who have committed serious crimes, which corresponded to the wording of the text put to the vote; on the other, in terms of identity, stigmatizing foreigners in general as criminals. The people made no mistake. They accepted the initiative submitted to them, not because they agreed with the rhetoric of its promoters, the SVP, but because of its wording. In a nutshell. There is no reason to keep criminals in Switzerland to the detriment of other foreigners who respect its laws and customs, whose place they take, just as we must preserve suitable reception conditions in line with the country's capacities.

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It was by a double majority of votes and cantons, and against the unanimity of the media, that he also said YES, on February 9, 2014, to the popular initiative setting «annual quotas [of immigration] according to the needs of the economy while respecting the principle of national preference», now enshrined in the Federal Constitution. The overwhelming majority of political elites, government parties (except the SVP), trade unions, plus a large number of occasional groupings had campaigned against the initiative in the name of tolerance towards foreigners. The Unia trade union stigmatized an «inhumane and discriminatory form of apartheid», «bad for the economy». A strange untruth, given a policy aimed precisely at hiring qualified foreign workers to meet the needs of our economy. As for ’inhumanity«, we'll talk about that again in the depressed suburbs - which, of course, the elites don't frequent.

Civil peace requires integration

Welcoming foreigners is not just a matter of the constitutional provisions on which our policy is based. We also need to ensure that they are well received and encouraged to integrate. To this end, Switzerland has a number of assets at its disposal, the two most important of which are a dense network of civil society associations of all kinds, with strong integrating powers, and public education. Every inhabitant of our country belongs to one or more associations, sharing a common sporting, cultural, artistic, social or scientific activity. They are so familiar to us that we forget that they were a conquest, sometimes painful, that occupied the entire 19th century.^th century, presiding over the advent of democracy. As for public education, it currently trains 800,000 pupils aged 4 to 15 in compulsory education, and 80% aged 16 to 18. In all, 1.5 million young people represent 18% of the population, a third of whom are foreigners.

In the second half of the 20th century^th In the 19th century, Switzerland absorbed the massive influx of Hungarians in 1956, followed by Czechs in 1968, Chileans in 1973, and others from the former Yugoslavia. One after the other, they experienced the hope of returning, the duality between their country of origin and the one that welcomed them. But let's not mince our words: integration requires a shared desire. If the integration of foreigners from the above-mentioned countries has gone smoothly in just one generation, it's due to a dual, benevolent encounter between the population and newcomers who are willing to integrate.

However, since the turn of the century, powerful subversive organizations have been carrying out intense propaganda aimed at young people born in Switzerland, to put them in a conflict of loyalties between their parents' foreign origins and assimilation in the host country. Now more than ever, we need to be clear and strict if we are to preserve our conditions of welcome and safeguard civil peace at the same time. There are undoubtedly xenophobes in our country, as elsewhere, but only Switzerland has given its citizens six opportunities to reject their essentialization. We must firmly remind those who, by inverting cause and effect, try to pass off identity-based delinquents as victims.

Marco Polli is an actor and director. A retired teacher, he was also president of the Union du corps enseignant secondaire genevois and of the Commission Langues Vivantes.