Foreigners bring a wealth of business to Geneva, but the tourists are also part of the attraction for much of the city's petty crimes
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The daily police reports from Geneva police tend to confirm what too many citizens suspect, that petty crimes such as theft and drug-dealing are committed mainly by foreigners.
The latest is almost typical: police Wednesday arrested seven people for crimes ranging from shoplifting to breaking and entering to being in Switzerland without legal entry papers or a means of survival, and all were foreigners.
But there was one unusual twist, a 24-year-old American citizen who lives in Carouge was picked up for shoplifting CHF500 worth of electronic goods near Rive. He admitted to the crime and said he was getting the five items as a birthday present for his brother.
He joined, on the daily report, a Mongolian and a Tunisian who were without papers and no visible means of support, an Algerian who was picked up for theft and no papers, a Frenchman without papers who admitted to a drug habit when police traced an April incident (breaking and entering a car) to him thanks to DNA from blood, a Frenchman for breaking and entering and an Albanian without papers who turned out to have been ordered out of the country without the right to return, by canton Valais.
Foreign non-residents lax when it comes to safety gear
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss Safety Council’s latest figures for the use of safety equipment on the country’s ski slopes and off-piste show good use up to age 17, then a dip after age 25 until age 46, when skiers and snowboarders suddenly put on their safety gear again.
The council for the first time compared use of safety equipment by “foreign guests” and Swiss residents, and the foreigners fell far short, with 73 percent wearing helmets, as compared to 88 percent of Swiss residents, all ages and genders mixed.
The use of helmets has increased sharply in the past 10 years thanks in large part to the council’s safety awareness campaign, but wearing them has not been evenly adopted, with the 84 percent Swiss average hiding a big language region difference: 89 percent in German-speaking Switzerland and 71 percent in French-speaking Switzerland.
Biggest increase in helmets seen with 18-25 year-olds
The group that showed the sharpest increase in the use of safety equipment was the 18-25 year-olds, up 12 percent.
Ed. note: no explanation is provided for the difference between 88 percent for Swiss residents and the 84 percent that is the average between French and German regions; presumably Italian region use is lower than German region use.
Skiers have caught up with snowboarders in terms of helmet use, both now averaging 84 percent after 10 years of skiers gradually closing the gap. The 2002-03 season saw only 20 percent of snowboarders wearing helmets and 14 percent of skiers.
The council’s safety check, carried out on the slopes with questionnaires this year in order to include foreign residents, covered 4,521 skiers this year and 1,038 snowboarders, slightly more than the previous year. The safety council works with 20 cableway companies throughout Switzerland to compile the statistics.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Swiss unemployment rose to 3.1 percent in November from 2.9 in October, and the number of vacant jobs fell by 1,355 for a total of 17,395. Partial unemployment, a solution used by Swiss companies when business slows perceptibly, is on the increase.
The number of unemployed persons is nevertheless down by 14.5 percent compared to a year earlier, notes the Federal Statistical Office in Neuchatel.
Foreigners account for more than 45 percent of those on unemployment.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Canton Valais police raided the Visp asylum centre Monday and found 156 grams of cocaine, several hundred grams of marijuana, a fake CHF200 bill and CHF1,500 in cash.
Five people were arrested; a 20-year-old Gambian for drug abuse, a 22year-old from Equatorial Guinea for being in Switzerland illegally, two Nigerians ages 21 and 36 for drug abuse and a fifth person whose nationality was not made public, but who was sent to France for being in Switzerland illegally.
Three individuals who are being housed at other Swiss asylum centres have been banned from the Visp centre.
Monday’s raid, which is designed to limit drugs in canton Valais, comes just as the ODEA (Observatoire romand du droit d’asile et des étrangers) publishes a report on Switzerland’s immigration and asylum policy, suggesting the country may be crossing the line into illegality in its efforts to reduce illegal immigrants.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland, with a foreign population that is 24 percent of the total, is grappling with the extremes they bring: what some consider undesirable foreigners, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who help finance a more comfortable life for their communes. Most, of course, sit somewhere in the middle, attracting less attention.
Initiative “against mass immigration” needs 100,000 signatures to call for a vote
Switzerland has a surprising mix of foreigners (photo: Ellen Wallace)
Issues related to foreigners, which the right-wing UDC/SVP People’s Party have invoked for several public referendums, were in the limelight in July 2011 when the party deposited its next initiative with the federal chancellery, a vote “Against massive immigration”.
The party was widely said outside Switzerland to be heading for a record number of votes in October parliamentary elections, but it in fact lost several key seats and its numbers in parliament have fallen.
It has until January 2013 to collect enough signatures to take the initiative to the polls.
In theory, immigration is an issue covering workers given permits to live in the country, but critics of the UDC have argued that anti-immigration referendums lump together all foreigners and provoke anti-foreigner and racist hysteria. Le Temps in July described the poster linked to the initiative as using “menacing silhouettes” and argued to that is “designed to provoke an anti-foreign paranoia”, which then party-boss Tony Brunner from St Gallen (defeated in a run-off vote in November) disputed.
Foreign, living in Switzerland and rich
Bilan magazine’s 2011 list of Switzerland’s richest people, published this week, shows a hefty percentage of foreigners whose tax residence is Switzerland. Many of them live in communes where they have been granted lump-sum tax arrangements, which can considerably reduce income taxes for the rest of the commune. The list has 300 persons, but the magazine notes that if just the two main criteria (Swiss or tax residence here; assets of at least CHF100 million) are considered, there probably more than 1,000 people who could be included.
The not-entirely Swiss group includes newcomer Jim Ratcliffe, British, who brought his company Ineos to Rolle in canton Vaud (and threw his financial support behind the Lausanne Hockey Club), Glencore executives Daniel Maté, Spanish, Aristotelis Mistakidis, Greek and Tor Peterson, American, as well as their South African CEO, Ivan Glasenberg.
Room to grow: Zurich's citizen say it can go ahead with new runways and keep existing flight paths
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss voters were back at the ballot box Sunday 27 November, a month after parliamentary elections, to vote on a number of items that differed from one canton to the next.
Here are some of the highlights, as results flow in Sunday evening:
Swiss right loses most runoffs, Geneva rebuffs minimum wage
- The right-wing UDC lost heavily in cantonal runoffs for seats in the upper house of parliament
- Two key federal parliament upper house seats: in the closely watched key Zurich election Felix Gutzwiller and Verena Diener defeated Christoph Blocher; Blocher is a former federal councilor and led the UDC/SVP People’s Party to a dominant position in the last decade until he lost his seat in 2007, and in St Gallen UDC candidate and favourite to win, Tony Brunner, lost to Socialist Paul Rechsteiner
- Canton Geneva has voted against a minimum wage but Neuchatel has voted to include it in the canton’s constitution; Switzerland as a whole does not have a minimum wage
- Canton Vaud: Green Party’s Béatrice Métraux defeated UDC’s Pierre-Yves Rapaz for the cantonal upper house seat left vacant by the death of UDC councilor Jean-Claude Mermoud in September
In German-speaking ares: Zurich airport can grow, Zug taxes down and foreigners get mixed bag:
- Foreigners: they will not be given the right to vote at the communal level in Lucerne, but they were spared stiff requirements pushed by the UDC People’s Party in the city of Basel to require strong language skills in order to be naturalized, and Basel’s citizens also voted 3-1 to place the responsibility for naturalization in the hands of the local government rather than the parliament; in Schwyz, voters agreed, 2-1, to align its naturalization laws with federal law and put responsibility for this in the hands of communal commissions (TSR notes that this was necessary after a scandal in Emmen, Lucerne, where the communal council routinely turned down applications from foreigners from certain countries
- Zurich voted strongly against a motion that would have restricted the airport’s growth; it will now be able to add two new runways to and allow existing ones to be extended; the vote was a sharp rebuke to the officials from several communes who were behind a motion to limit flying over highly populated neighbourhoods and to restrict the airport’s growth
- Zug voted in a number of tax breaks, including doubling the reduction per child for families, from CHF9,000 to 18,000, and cutting the corporate tax rate to 5.75 percent from 6.5
- Lump-sum taxes for wealthy foreigners who reside in Switzerland will continue to be offered by cantons Glaris and St Gallen but the latter’s voters have chosen to tighten requirements.
- Smoking in Basel: voters rejected a proposal by restaurants to adopt less strict federal no smoking laws instead of the cantons, in a close vote with just 200 out of more than 23,000 deciding the issue.
Parliament in Bern: Steady influx of foreigners could have impact on Swiss parliamentary elections 23 October
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The number of foreigners from European Union (EU) countries grew by 4 percent between the end of August 2010 and 2011, while other foreigners increased by 0.8 percent.
Foreigners now make up 22.3 percent of the Swiss population, new figures released 10 October by the Swiss Statistical Office show.
The new figure is one of the highest in Europe and is likely to play a role in parliamentary elections 23 October, with the right-wing UDC’s campaign “Stop massive immigration” running parallel to the elections. The issue of how to integrate foreigners and limit the number of immigrants is cropping up in other countries: David Cameron, UK prime minister, announced stiffer rules Monday 10 October, reviving the polemic in Britain.
The total number of resident foreigners in Switzerland 31 August was 1,751,301, with 1.3 million of those from the EU.
The greatest increases came from: Kosovo (+17,864), Germany (+14,395), Portugal (+9,816), France (+4,388) and Great Britain (+2m,365). The Kosovo jump is deceptive, however, since most of these were already in Switzerland but they became Kosovar citizens after the country became independent in February 2008. The shift is visible when the countries were numbers have fallen are counted: Serbia (-19,910), Bosnia-Herzegovinia (-1,079), Croatia (-977), Sri Lanka (-944) and Turkey (-264).
Italians remain the largest group of foreigners resident in Switzerland, followed closely by Germans and Portuguese.
Cantonal vote also rejects education initiative
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A low turnout of voters in canton Vaud, 40 percent, Sunday 4 September rejected a proposal to give long-term foreign residents the right to vote, with 69 percent saying no to the initiative that was supported by the political left. If the measure had passed Vaud would have been the first canton to extend voting in communes to the cantonal level.
Voters rejected some changes to the education system in favour of a counter-proposal that will stream weaker students in with general courses starting in 2013 and that will notably require all students to study English and German, starting earlier than they currently do.
Voting linked to citizenship duties
The proposal would have allowed foreigners resident in Switzerland for at least 10 years, with three of those in the canton, to elect officials and vote on issues at the cantonal level.
Swissinfo cites Philippe Leuba, head of the Vaud cantonal interior office, as saying “the vote could not be interpreted as a rejection of foreigners”.
The government, encouraging long-term foreigners to become Swiss, had recommended before the vote that citizens oppose it, saying it is wrong for foreigners to separate the right to vote from the broader responsibilities that go with citizenship.
Secondary students to be grouped by ability for mathematics, languages
Voters also rejected an initiative called “School 2010: save the schools” but accepted a counter-initiative called Leo, proposed by cantonal authorities. Leo calls for a much-debated part of the secondary system to disappear, the options programme for weaker students starting in year 7, who will be streamed in with general classes starting in 2013.
Leo will also require all students to study German and English, starting at an earlier age. They will be grouped by ability for mathematics, French and German.
Swiss road tax: stickers show you've paid
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland’s annual road tax will remain the same price, CHF40, but starting in 2012 the fine for not displaying it will double, to CHF200. Switzerland does not charge road tolls for its autoroutes, but the maintenance costs are covered in part by the road tax.
A sticker, which must be displayed correctly on all vehicles, shows that the tax for the current year is paid. The sticker must be stuck on and can’t be switched between vehicles.
The sticks is valid for all travel during a year, whether you use the autoroutes daily or just once, when passing through the country, in which case it functions more like a toll.
NEUCHATEL, SWITZERLAND – The unemployment rate in Switzerland held steady at 2.8 percent in July, figures released Monday 8 August show. The number of jobless was down slightly, by 1,178 from May and down by more than 33,000, or 23.3 percent, compared to a year earlier.
The Swiss/foreign makeup of the unemployed has gone back to 2007 levels, with 2.1 percent of Swiss unemployed and 5.2 percent of foreigners registered. The figures had risen, in 2009, to 2.7 percent and 7.2 percent. French citizens and those from the western Balkans had the highest rates of unemployment, over 5 percent, in July, among foreigners.
EPFL in Lausanne: foreigners pay just a bit more than Swiss students in fees
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Swiss universities have the legal right to limit the number of foreign students in specific disciplines and they may charge higher fees than those for Swiss students, to reflect the real cost of providing the education.
A report to this effect was delivered to the Swiss Universities Rectors Conference (Crus) earlier in the year, Matthias Stauffacher, the group’s director general, confirmed Tuesday 2 August.
Swiss university students pay annual fees that are well below the cost of their education, between CHF500 and 1,300 a semester for basic fees for undergraduate students. St Gallen, which is the only Swiss university that currently has a quota for foreign students, 25 percent (it offers several programmes in English), charges foreign students less than CHF300 a year extra for foreign students.
Crus brochure, “Studying in Switzerland, Universities 2011″
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Forty-four people died and eight survivors are hospitalized with serious injuries, Russian media are reporting, when a RussAir Tu-134 airplane crashed in the northern republic of Karelie. The dead include four foreigners, a Swedish and a Dutch citizen and two Ukrainians, and a family of four with dual US-Russian citizenship, according to state news agency Ria Novosti.
The flight from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport to Russia’s northwest city of Petrozavodsk, ended several kilometres short of its destination when the plane made an emergency landing on a highway just before midnight. Petrozavodsk is about 900 km from Moscow, and it is the province’s capital.
The cause of the accident is not yet clear.
Lausanne at dusk, viewed from Lake Geneva: growing number of foreigners live in the city, its suburbs
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Geneva, with its international organizations and United Nations European seat is not likely to lose its reputation as Switzerland’s international city, but Lausanne has been creeping up on it as an international centre. From 2008 to 2010 the resident foreigners’ share of the total population in the capital of Vaud was higher than that in Geneva, and growing faster.
Figures published Monday 30 May by Badac, the Swiss cantons and cities database, show that Lausanne has had a larger percentage of foreigners than Geneva in recent years, although the two are close: Lausanne’s population in 2010 was 39.24 percent foreigners while Geneva’s was 38.58 percent, but while the increase in the foreign population in Geneva was .95 percent, Lausanne’s was 1.22 percent.
The figures take into account only the cities themselves, not their larger urban areas. Geneva’s population in 2010 was 185,958 and Lausanne’s was 125,885.
Smaller cities in the Lake Geneva region, such as some suburbs of Lausanne and Geneva, have even higher percentages of foreigners, including some of the highest rates in Switzerland: Montreux, 44.33 percent foreigners, Meyrin 33.99, Carouge 36.97, Renens 50.85, Nyon 36.39, Vevey 43.38, Morges 33.17, Versoix 33.20, Grand-Saconnex 28.40, Ecublens 43.03, Chêne-Bougeries 29.68.
Spreitenbach (50.74 percent), northwest of Zurich, and Renens (50.85), west of Lausanne, have a majority of foreigners; they are the only two Swiss cities over 10,000 where resident foreigners make up more than 50 percent of the population.
Immigrants becoming Swiss: waiting in line for the ceremony to begin (photo: Ellen Wallace)
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The 23 October 2011 elections in Switzerland are now likely to include a right-wing popular initiative (citizen-launched vote) to limit immigration and re-negotiate the Schengen accord with the European Union.
Swiss citizens vote on several popular initiatives a year. This latest one is being launched by the UDC Swiss People’s Party, which voted 396-0 Saturday 28 May at a meeting in Einsiedeln, not far from Zurich, to protect the Swiss economy from what it sees as too great a burden imposed by foreigners immigrating into or working in Switzerland.
The UDC is known in German as the SVP.
Job quotas for frontaliers would be introduced
Frontalier, or cross-border workers are targeted as well: the initiative seeks to re-introduce quotas by country and to limit the numbers of jobs that can be held by workers who live across the border in France, Germany, Austria and Italy. Figures published 26 May show the number of cross-border workers, especially in the Geneva area, growing significantly in the first three months of 2011, after a lull.
The UDC’s declaration Saturday deplores the negative impact on the economy of immigrant workers, while nodding in passing at their contribution to the economy.
“This problematic situation is the result of the free movement of persons with the European Union, a lax approach to family regroupings, the presence of many clandestine people and the increase in the number of asylum seekers,” says the UDC declaration Saturday. “According to forecasts by the Federal Office of Statistics, the population will continue to grow massively until 2035, thanks to immigration. As many as 10 million people could soon be living in Switzerland, if the different scenarios that have been laid out are to be believed.”
Swiss natural population growth, and international immigration: the federal gov’t forecasts
Ed. note: these are part of a series of federal maps, not including one showing inter-cantonal migration. This explains the difference between total growth in cantons such as Vaud, and the sum of natural growth and international migration. Note that the figures are per thousand, so in percentages, natural growth in Vaud, for example, is 1.8 percent, compared to international immigration, which is 8.6 percent. Read more…
Young Swiss residents: not as likely to live to a ripe old age as their women friends
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss resident population in 2010 reached 7,866,500, an increase of 80,700, according to preliminary figures published by the Swiss Statistical Office in Neuchatel 28 April.
The 1 percent annual growth was comparable to the previous year’s. It includes the Swiss population as well as all resident foreigners except those with short-term permits, 56,600 and people seeking asylum, 5,600 persons.
“This statistic, greatly improved in quality, is part of the new, register-based population census system and provides more precise details than the previous Annual Population Statistics,” notes the SSO.
The federal government announced in December 2010 that it is moving to an annual census and will rely far more heavily than in the past on communal and cantonal population registers, which have been harmonizing the data they gather.
Switzerland now has 1,300 people over the age of 100 and figures show that this population has doubled every 10 years since 1950. The longer lifespan of women is clearly evident here, with women accounting for 1,100 of the people over age 100.
Number of foreigners continues to climb
The number of foreigners living permanently in Switzerland rose to 1,766,400 in 2010, an increase of 52,400, to comprise 22.5 percent of the population.
The percentage at the end of 2009 was 22 percent, but the increase is due in part to the way in which data is produced under the new statistics/census system, and to changing notions of population.
More people over 65 than under 20
The population under age 20 comprises 20.8 percent of the total and those age 65 or over, 1.3 million persons, are 16.9 percent. People of working age account for 62.2 percent of the Swiss population.
Boys outnumber girls slightly under age 20 but the male population declines gradually until the number of men and women is the same, in the 55-59 age group. Women then steadily outnumber men in a growing proportion: the ages 84-89 group has twice as many women as men.
The census included the following groups:
- Swiss whose permanent residence is Switzerland
- Foreigners with residence permits of at least 12 months (B, C and Foreign Affairs Department permits: international organization workers, diplomats and members of their families)
- Foreigners with a short-term residence permit (L) for a cumulative stay of at least 12 months
- asylum-seekers (F and N permits) whose total length of stay in Switzerland is at least 12 months.
Swiss judiciary police in action - Photo GE police
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The overall crime rate fell by 1 percent in Switzerland in 2010, but the picture was mixed, figures released by the federal government Monday 21 March show.
Juvenile crime fell by 8 percent and penal code infractions were down 5 percent. But numbers for drug-related crimes and the foreigners illegally entering the country were up, 4 percent for the first and 7 percent for the second.
The last two increases could be due at least in part to better policing, given that these arrests are the result of police investigations, while property crimes are generally recorded as a result of victims posting complaints.
Switzerland’s crime rate is relatively low, compared to other countries, but recent, accurate comparisons are hard to come by and not widely considered accurate.
The Federal Statistical Office in Neuchatel cautions that 2010 is only the second year when police departments from all cantons provided harmonized statistics, some cantons that joined the nationwide crime statistics programme in 2009, the first year, were still adapting their own reporting systems. Comparison should be made with some reserve, the federal agency notes.
Most crimes were against property
The total number of crimes reported was 656,858 for a population of some 7.7 million. Eighty percent of the crimes were against property, 14 percent involved drug laws, 4 percent were illegal presence in the country and 2 percent involved breaking “other” federal laws.
Foreign criminals disproportionate to non-Swiss population
The Russian government siad 29 January it has identified the suicide bomber who killed 35 people and injured 180: a 20-year-old man from the Caucasus region. It also issued a photo of Vitaly Razdobudko, 32, who is suspected of being the mastermind behind the blast. He is wanted in connection with a number of other attacks in the recent months. Moscow Times reports that he “is a Russian-born adherent of the fundamentalist Wahhabi branch of Islam, which is popular among terrorists, a law enforcement source told RIA-Novosti.”
Link to Ria Novosti, which carries several new articles on the people behind the bomb, which Russian authorities now say was clearly aimed at foreigners.
Prisons in French-, Italian-speaking areas at “saturation” point, conditions deteriorating
Old St Antonie prison in Geneva, built in 1712 as the first centre wholly dedicated to detention
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss population of incarcerated persons, 6,181 prisoners, reached its highest level since 1999 on 1 September 2010, with an average occupancy rate in detention centres of 92.5 percent.
Prisons in French- and Italian-speaking areas have reached “saturation point”, according to the Swiss federal government, and “with an occupancy rate of 105 percent, their situation continues to deteriorate.” The country’s prison population has increased 1.5 percent since 2009. They are held in five types of centres, from open ones to prisons.
Switzerland has about 81 prisoners per 100,000 persons, low by European Union standards, where the figure was 123 per 100,000 from 2005-2007. Slovenia was the country in Europe with the lowest rate during that period, the most recently recorded, 60 per 100,000. The US figure in 2009 was 723 per 100,000.
Foreigners account for nearly three-quarters, 72 percent, of Swiss prisoners, a rate that has remained virtually unchanged since 2004, although it rose 1.5 percent from 2009 to 2010.
There has, however, been a sharp increase in the percentage of foreigners taking up prison space as a preventive measure, mainly to ensure they will not leave the country. Foreigners account for 81 percent of the 1,894 prisoners held as a preventive measure, largely because 60 percent of them have no fixed address in Switzerland.
Crime rate low, but insecurity an issue; de-centralization carries day on higher taxes for wealthy: voters strongly refuse initiative
Geneva rejects longer shopping hours, Vaud town says yes to Lake Geneva public access
Update 2, 21:10 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss media and political parties are scrambling Sunday evening 28 November to analyze the significance of a solid majority of voters approving the right-wing UDC (SVP, Swiss People’s Party) popular initiative to automatically expel foreigners found guilty of serious crimes. Fifty-two percent of voters went to the polls and approved the foreign criminals initiative by 52.9 percent. Not a single canton accepted parliament’s alternative counter-initiative. French-speaking cantons, with the exception of bilingual but French-majority Valais , rejected the UDC proposal, but all German-speaking and German-majority cantons voted for it except the city of Basel.
Voters also resoundingly rejected a Socialist popular “fair taxes” initiative that would have obliged some cantons with low taxes for wealthy people to raise their tax rates. It failed by 58.5 percent.
The Federal Justice and Police Department Sunday evening issued a notice that the government will set up a working group before the Christmas break to begin looking at how the foreign criminals vote can be implemented. In its statement it noted that:
“The working group will have the task of examining open questions and drafting a proposal as to how the initiative can be implemented, which the FDJP can subsequently put to the Federal Council. Ultimately it will fall to parliament to decide how the initiative is to be implemented in the form of a federal act. The Federal Council will also be counting on the sponsors of the initiative to keep the pledge they made before the vote to contribute constructively to producing a solution that is compatible with the constitution and international law.”
Sunday and late shopping in Geneva fails while La Tour-de-Peilz says yes to public lakefront
Voters also settled a number of cantonal and communal issues. In the Lake Geneva region: Geneva voters rejected later shopping hours while in canton Vaud the town of La Tour-de-Peilz voted in favour of making the Lake Geneva waterfront accessible to the public.
What the foreign criminals vote means
Cecile Brossard's conviction for the murder of banker Edouard Stern drew packs of journalists in 2008. She has now been sent back to France.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss go to the polls once again Sunday 28 November to vote on two popular initiatives, one to deport foreigners who commit crimes, where voters are given three options.
The second federal item on the ballot proposes to reduce the differences among Swiss cantons in their tax rates on large fortunes by calling for a Swiss-wide minimum tax rate and abolishing “degressive” tax rates. This calls for ending the practice, which some cantons have had in the past, of reducing the tax rate in proportion to the size of the fortune. Bern is opposed to the proposal, noting that in any event degressive tax rates have been outlawed in Switzerland since 2007.
In addition, some Swiss are voting on cantonal and communal issues.
Three choices for expelling foreigners or leaving the law as it stands
The voting item that has received the most attention from outside Switzerland is a proposal to automatically expel foreigners for some crimes. Recent polls, 10 days before the vote, have shown a majority of Swiss favouring the UDC proposal and a majority against the counter-initiative proposed by the government, with little movement in opinions.
The right-wing UDC party initiated the referendum on sending home foreigners who commit crimes by getting the necessary 100,000 signatures on their proposal. Swiss citizens vote three to four times a year on a number of referendums, some of which are proposed by the government while others are known as popular initiatives and are proposed by groups of interested citizens.
The UDC motion has been hotly debated, but not the fact, confirmed by the government, that the proportion of foreigners who commit serious crimes is well above the 21.7 percent of the Swiss population. Switzerland, like many other governments, already expels foreign criminals and charges them not to return for set periods of time, usually within the framework of agreements with other countries.
Cecile Brossard is a case in point: a French woman famously sentenced to prison in Geneva for murdering banking scion Edouard Stern, she was released early in October 2010 on good behaviour after serving part of her sentence. She was sent back to France with an order not to set foot on Swiss soil for 10 years.
The UDC text
Green Party member's web site to combat what he says is false information in right-wing UDC mailing
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A web site has gone live in Switzerland to uncover fictive aspects of “facts” concerning foreigners in the country that were sent to Swiss households by the right-wing UDC political party. The UDC, or People’s Party, is behind a popular referendum, which will be put to the vote 28 November, to send foreigners back to their home countries if they are found guilty of a variety of crimes. Ce que le UDC vous cache, in French and German, presents 52 factual and statistical errors: a mix of manipulations, omissions and lies, says the site’s creator, Antonio Hodgers, a Green Party politician from Geneva.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss Federal Disability Insurance system has been waging war on fraud since citizens voted for a clampdown and it said Friday 5 November that in 2009 it saved CHF4.6 million, or the equivalent of 180 full disability pensions, by cancelling fraudulent disability pensions. The office investigated 2,550 suspected cases last year and continued 640 cases opened in late 2008. It found 240 that were fraudulent. Investigations are continuing in 1,180 of the cases and 210 are under close surveillance.
The 240 cases include 30 that were discovered through surveillance after suspicions appeared to be confirmed. Twenty cases have led to the government asking for restitution and in 10 cases the federal office has taken the offenders to court to get the money back.
Fraud is not what is causing disability insurance debt to grow
Anti-fraud departments were set up within the social security system in August 2008, following a popular referendum that demanded measures to end growing abuse.
An additional reason for citizen discontent at the time was the rising cost of the AI system. The first complete year’s statistics for 2009 show, Bern points out, that while the savings is significant, the CHF4.6 million will not have a major impact on the growing AI debt, which stands at CHF1.1 billion in 2009.
Foreign abuse of social security exists, but relatively limited
A poster published by China's Statistics Bureau to encourage everyone, including foreigners in China, to take part in the 2010 census
Update 23:55 More than six million census-takers will scour 400m households over 10 days as China counts its people, in what is billed as the largest mobilization in peace-time. Census-takers will for the first time register where people are actually living, rather than where they are registered to live under China’s hukou system in an attempt to capture the estimated 200mn rural migrants in China. Foreigners will be included for the first time, although not those on short-term visas.
The government says that the new statistics will help it capture the level of urbanization, better calculate the constantly shifting migrant population and count the actual number of children born. The official one-child policy does not apply in all areas of the country and in rural areas where it does, families sometimes ignore the policy and hide children from authorities to avoid fines.
The census will cost $105m and results will be released in April 2011. The last census 10 years ago counted 1.29bn people.
Links to other sites: BusinessWeek, China Daily, CNN, Hindustan Times
OECD report says Swiss approach to unemployment generally good, but private agencies weaken public effort in some areas
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland’s decentralized unemployment system is basically sound and works relatively well, a review by the OECD (Organizastion for Economic Cooperation and Development) published Thursday 21 October shows. But the strength of private employment agencies to some extent undermines public agencies’ efforts, and two groups who suffer are the unskilled and foreign workers, for whom jobless figures are always highest.
“Immigrants could be better integrated on the labour market through more substantial up-skilling measures and efforts in recognizing of foreign diplomas/qualifications,” an OECD press release states.
Two areas where Switzerland could improve, the OECD says, are in helping the long-term unemployed get back to work and in providing better assistance for young people with learning difficulties.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - Latest Swiss federal statistics show that the Swiss are getting married more often, having more babies, divorcing less frequently and living longer. They are also dying at a faster rate.
In 2009 the country had 78,300 births, a 2.1 percent increase, with a clear trend towards having children at an older age.
Marriages were up slightly, 0.9 percent, in 2009, with 1,000 couples choosing to be married the 09.09.09.
19,300 divorces were registered, showing a slight dip, but the prognosis for the future remains weak, with 47.7 percent of couples who married in 2009 statistically likely to see the union end in divorce.
Deaths were up 2 percent in 2009 over 2008 but the figure over eight years has remained mostly stable.
Life expectancy for men is up to 79.8 percent, versus 84.4 percent for women, helping the gap close: the difference of 4.6 percent compares to 6.9 percent in 1992.
Women under 30 are having fewer babies, with the rate of birth for these women falling by 6 percent since 2001, while the rate of birth for women over 35 has risen by 43 percent during the same timeframe. The number of children per woman has risen each year since 2001, to reach 1.5 in 2009. The rate has steadily risen for Swiss women, while it has gone done slightly every year for foreign women who give birth in Switzerland.
The number of births outside marriage has virtually doubled since 2001 and now represents 17.9 percent of all births, but Switzerland remains well below the European average of 33 percent for this.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland has for the first time produced nationwide crime statistics that will in future allow for true comparisons between areas. Top of the list of crimes committed: theft and property damage, which together make up 82 percent of all crimes, with car theft more than one-third of these.
Swiss police registered 675,309 crimes in 2009.
Domestic violence: one-third of violent crimes; foreigners commit one-third of all crimes
Afghan authorities say 17 people died early Friday 26 February in a spate of attacks in Kabul that were aimed at foreigners. Suicide bombers struck in several areas, starting with one at 06:30 next to the city’s largest shopping centre. Indian and Pakistan nationals were among those who died. Other bombs went off in areas near United Nations and humanitarian groups’ offices. The blasts come just a day after the Afghan flag was raised at Marja, a longtime insurgent stronghold. Responsibility for the blasts was taken by the Taliban, according to Reuters.
Links to other sites: Bangkok Post, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Telegraph, UK
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Canton Vaud citizens will go to the polls, probably in 2011, to decide if foreigners who live in the canton should be given the right to vote. A popular referendum will be scheduled once officials verify the nearly 14,000 signatures gathered for the initiative. Only 12,000 signatures are required, so the item is likely to be added to the ballot.
Organizers of the initiative estimate that this would give 85,000 foreigners in the canton the right to vote.
Title: Report presented: “L’Ecole et l’élève d’origine étrangère”
Location: Geneva, Haute Ecole, social work (HES-GE)
Link out: Click here
Description: Authors Geneviève Mottet and Claudio Bolzman present their new book, which looks at foreign children in the Geneva school system since 1960, followed by discussion with the public.
Start Time: 12:15
Date: 2010-01-19
End Time: 13;30
Foreigners’ injuries falling, as part of whole for Swiss winter sports, avalanches biggest killers
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Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Foreign tourists are gradually becoming a smaller group among the total of those injured in winter sports in Switzerland, new statistics show.
BPA, the Swiss safety board, Monday 11 January issued its annual detailed statistics for non-work accidents: at home, doing sports, on the road.
Foreigners accounted for 40 percent of ski accident injuries, 18 percent of snowboard ones and 27 percent of injuries from other winter sports (average: 32 percent).
By comparison, the figures for 2003 were: 47, 29, 28 (average: 40 percent).
Foreigners accounted for 19 of the 39 deaths from winter sports in 2007, the most recent year noted, up from an average of 15 out of 40 deaths a year recorded for the five years from 2003 to 2007.
Knees for skiers, shoulders for snowboarders
Knees remain the most vulnerable body part for ski injuries, while shoulders and the upper arms are for snowboarders.
