Switzerland: Foreigners alarmed by expulsion vote

Switzerland: Foreigners alarmed by expulsion vote


SwissInfo also summarized the various media responses.

Via SwissInfo:

Swiss voters’ decision to adopt tough new regulations on the deportation of non-Swiss convicted of serious crimes has provoked widespread concern among foreigners.

(...)

Second and third-generation immigrants are exposed, as 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.

(...)

Bashkim Iseni, a 39-year-old political scientist from Lausanne University, said the vote was “regrettable” and underlined other political parties’ failures to cope with the People’s Party’s winning “anti-foreigner” strategy.

“There are problems of integration,” said Iseni, who was born in Macedonia to Kosovar parents, but grew up in Switzerland. “But denouncing foreign criminals is the wrong approach.”

But not everyone was unhappy with Sunday’s result.

“I think it’s good,” said Ferhat Aydin, who heads the Turkish association of the small town of Monthey in canton Valais.

“I would have voted the same. People need to adapt in the best possible way to a country. That’s the best thing for the country they are in and for the country they’ve come from. People who don’t integrate, particularly in the sense where one becomes aggressive and criminal, should be punished.”

One major unanswered question is how the vote will be implemented in practice.

“We hope that when it is translated in detail into law, they will make sure it doesn’t become automatic, particularly with regard to the secondos, for whom Switzerland is their home - their only home - that they make sure that they keep some kind of proportionality,” Petrusic told Swiss national radio.

Kahraman Tunaboylu, president of the Swiss-Turkish association, was not too concerned, however.

“I don’t see it as tricky. The other half of the population does not agree with this result... there’s an emotional mood which was exploited by those who initiated it. I think [new Justice Minister] Simonetta Sommaruga will deal with this correctly.”

(source)