Posted on 09/28/2004 7:01:26 PM PDT by MegaSilver
Switzerland has the toughest naturalization rules in Europe. If you want to become Swiss you must live in the country legally for at least 12 years—and pay taxes, and have no criminal record—before you can apply for citizenship. It still does not mean that your wish will be granted, however, and the fact that you were born in Zurich or Lugano does not make any difference. There are no "amnesties" and illegals are deported if caught. Even if an applicant satisfies all other conditions, the local community in which he resides has the final say: it can interview the applicant and hold a public vote before naturalization is approved. If rejected he can apply again, but only after ten years.
All this is intolerable to the country’s enlightened bien-pensants who run the federal government in Berne. They want citizenship applications to be processed centrally, "along national guidelines," taking the decision out of the hands of local communities. They insist that resident aliens, a fifth of the country’s 7.5 million people, need to be "fully integrated" and that the natives must accept the "reality" of multiculturalism.
For the second time in a decade such proposals were defeated in a nation-wide referendum last Sunday (September 26). Swiss voters rejected a government initiative to grant automatic citizenship to third-generation Swiss-born aliens and to simplify naturalization for the second generation. Most French-speakers (18 percent) supported the proposals, but they were heavily outvoted by the country’s German-speaking cantons which account for two-thirds of the population, and by the Italian-speaking Ticino (6 percent).
The successful "no" campaign was orchestrated by the populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), one of the four parties in the ruling coalition, led by maverick millionaire Christoph Blocher. He first achieved prominence 18 years ago when he founded a lobby group, the Campaign for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland (CINS). Blocher (64) is a strong opponent of the European Union who successfully fought a proposal to take Switzerland into the European Economic Area in 1992. He has also successfully campaigned against the abolition of the Swiss army (1989), against involving Swiss troops in UN peacekeeping operations (1994), and against the country’s EU membership (2001). He also campaigned against UN membership in 2002, but in what appears to have been an untypical fit of absent-mindedness the Swiss decided otherwise. A year ago the SVP won the plurality of the vote in parliamentary elections after an aggressive campaign in which the SVP blamed immigrants—specifically mentioning black Africans and Albanians—for the country’s rising crime rate. Last December, to the chagrin of Brussels, he joined the seven-member Federal Cabinet in which his party has two seats.
The result of the Swiss referendum should regale the heart of every true conservative for three reasons.
It is, first of all, a victory for local democratic institutions of very long standing over the tendency of state bureaucracy to centralize all power. Except for a few years of centralized government of the "Helvetic Republic" during Napoleon’s occupation, Switzerland has been a confederation of local communities as established in the Pact of 1291, with most responsibility for public affairs in the hands of the local authorities and its 20 cantons and 6 half-cantons. In other words, Switzerland is still today what the United States had been before 1861. It is a little-known fact that the Swiss Constitution of 1848 was modeled on the U.S. constitution of 1787. Its adoption was preceded by a brief civil war between Protestant liberals seeking a centralized national state and Catholic conservatives clinging on to the old order. The decentralizing Catholics won, and adopted the American constitutional model as the one best suited to their country’s traditions. The Swiss have preserved that model ever since, while America has moved on.
Secondly, the referendum reflects the ability of a Western electorate to make an accurate assessment of the implications of granting citizenship to Muslims. The SVP warned that Muslims would eventually become a majority in Switzerland if the citizenship rules were eased, and this, it is widely believed, tipped the balance. SVP’s Ulrich Schlüer said their impact showed that the government had tried to conceal and important issue from voters. In the canton of Valais the SVP further drove the multiculturalists wild with a poster featuring Osama bin Laden on a Swiss identity card and the caption, "Don’t let yourself be bullied." As it happens the warning was based on a sound precedent: one of the al-Qa’ida leader’s half-brothers, Yeslam, lives in Switzerland—and holds a Swiss passport! Another advertisement that appeared in newspapers across the country had the banner headline "Will Muslims soon be in the majority?" It warned that "the birth rate in Islamic families is substantially higher than in other families," that at present rates of growth Muslims would outnumber Christians within 20 years, and that "Muslims place their religion above our laws." All three claims were true, but nevertheless they were termed "racist" and "xenophobic" by the press all over Europe. Had Switzerland joined the EU in 2002 such ads would have been illegal.
Last but by no means least the Swiss result is encouraging because at least one civilized country in the world will continue to uphold the right of local communities to decide who will qualify for naturalization. Unique in today’s Western world, this healthy sense of Swiss citizenship reminds us of the Greek polis. It reflects an underlying assumption of kinship among citizens that cannot be fulfilled by mere residence and observance of the rules. Naturalization in Athens was possible but difficult; it was a rare privilege and anything but a right. Likewise in today’s Switzerland if you want to belong, but do not belong by blood, you have to prove a high degree of cultural and civilizational kinship with the host-society. Like in Athens, in today’s Switzerland citizenship includes the right and duty to fulfill certain functions, among which military service is very important. It is remarkable that to this day every Swiss male over 18 must be prepared to serve in the country’s citizen-army; after completing their basic training they keep their weapons at home, and refusal to perform military service is a criminal offence. The thought must have crossed the mind of a few Swiss reservists that all too many aspiring foreigners could never be trusted with those weapons. The Swiss understand, even when they do not know, that the collective striving embodied in "We the People" makes no sense unless there is a definable "people" to support it. They sense that many immigrants have no kinship with the striving and no connection to the "people," except for the unsurprising desire to partake in its wealth.
This sense is light years away from the "multicultural" understanding of citizenship promoted in the European Union and in North America. A recent feature by Radio Netherlands International illustrates the gap. It complained that the Swiss are not "quite ready to accept the reality of a multi-cultural society." It bewailed the fate of one Fatma Karademir, 23, who was born in Switzerland and has never lived anywhere else but under Swiss law she is Turkish just like her parents. The Dutch radio was indignant that Fatma’s recent application for citizenship was rejected by her village and she’ll be able to reapply in ten years:
And when she finally does come before the citizenship committee, Fatma knows the fact that she has lived all her life in Switzerland will count less than the answers she gives to the committee’s questions. "They ask if I can imagine marrying a Swiss boy, or do you know the Swiss national anthem, or which team I would support if the Swiss have a soccer game with Turkey. They ask such stupid questions."
The fact that Fatma calls such questions "stupid" illustrates (1) that she was quite properly denied naturalization; and (2) that the village (town, commune), and not some enlightened bureaucrat in Berne, should continue to have the final say in the matter.
And talking of soccer, let us recall that match in Los Angeles between Mexico and the United States in February 1998. The stands were full of Mexican flags. The fans booed The Star-Spangled Banner, and a few brave souls who dared wave American flags were pelted with beer cans and food debris—as were the American soccer players. No doubt many of the offenders were U.S. citizens. One can only wish that they, and people like them, were subjected to the test of a Swiss village naturalization board.
But as to your comment, it makes plenty of sense if you've imported those people to work for you or they've arrived for an economic reason but have no particular loyalty to the country's ideals of liberty. If you let people who are not interested in liberty become citizens in your country, but come instead because they're interested in a buck, when they take liberty away from others, you can't be surprised. America has made that mistake on many levels, and continues to respond to economic pressures before the interests of freedom for its own people, or our borders would have been shut long ago and the unpropertied would never have gotten the vote.
I give the Swiss credit for not doing so. In South Africa, whites there made the mistake of giving away citizenship to people who did not believe in liberty, simply because of pressure from the outside. Much good it's done South Africa economically. Much good it's done the liberty of South Africans having a communist run the place. I would have expelled the ANC supporters and done without the nation's maids and miners before I made people who had not built and belived in that country citizens.
The third generation of visitor-workers don't at all have the same culture or ideals as natives. Not at ALL. To say 'well, their family lived there' is not remotely like saying 'well, they think the way Swiss do.'
Would that Americans had been as smart as the Swiss in this regard.
That's how I read his comment, too.
No doubt about the fact that first generation American-born automatically become American. It's part of an interpretation of the Constitution that allows fly-in citizenship trips by thousands of Koreans, Mexicans, and other countries to succeed in attaining American citizenship with no connection whatsoever to the ideals upon which this country was founded.
The line specifically mentions the Swiss because it's talking about them. The next line after it (Would that AMERICANS had been as smart as the Swiss in this regard) should also clarify that I was talking about the SWISS when I said that
"The third generation of visitor-workers don't at all have the same culture or ideals as natives. Not at ALL. To say 'well, their family lived there' is not remotely like saying 'well, they think the way Swiss do.'"
If that doesn't, my last comment should. Sorry for the confusion.
I understand that you're talking about Swiss law. Would you support American law working the same way?
bttt
Yes. I find no objection with current Americans having to approve of citizenship being granted, nor of a lengthy residency requirement, nor of a citizens' interview opportunity, NOR of a requirement that any sons and daughters of non-citizens be naturalized before they are citizens, born here or no. Notwithstanding interpretations of the Constitutional provisions regarding citizenship that say otherwise.
ULTRABUMP
A whiter brighter America program. Just what we need! NOT
Many of the recent immigrants to the United States have contributed marvelously.
There. I said it. Now I'll state the rest my opinion: our approach to immigration from the 1950's and especially 60's has, on the whole, been DEVASTATING to the landscape and culture of the United States. Allowing large numbers of people from cultures so radically different from our own has shattered the Great American Melting Pot and endangered our long-term survival as a country (i.e., Aztlan, Muslim terrorists, etc.).
I have no problem with reforming the immigration system. However, I do know the motivation behind why some people would love to have the immigration policy be as Switzerland and it's not our nation's safety either.
Oh yes I should add that I'm for reform in immigration because I'd love to see an end to people confusing legal immigrants with illegal aliens. That's a personal pet peeve of mine.
Plenty of people will always want the right thing for the wrong reason. Here's the thing, though. It's one thing to hate people of another race and want to go around exterminating them. It's another thing to speak with honesty about the limits of assimilation when two groups both look extremely different from each other and have radically different cultural backgrounds. Simply calling for "more tolerance" as the liberals do isn't going to cut it. Groups with radically different cultural and physical characteristics are naturally going to go off into their own spaces, and accomodating this reality might sadly involve restricting immigration flow from nations with histories so distant from ours.
Now, if it's JUST that the groups look different, but have the same culture and dedications, perhaps they can overlook visible differences. African-Americans, for example, have never known anything but Anglo-American culture--yet even their full integration has been and continues to be problematic. (Incidently, some people have speculated that this might be due to our extreme relaxing of immigration laws prior to their full integration; they never got the chance to "catch up" to whites socially and economically before they became but one among many minority groups competing for attention and "equality." In fact, I'm told that the immigration of African Muslims to the U.S. has drawn some a few [not many, thankfully, but a "few" converts is still a few too many, IMHO] African-American males into the Mohammedan faith.)
Mexicans, by comparison, are more recent arrivals, more in touch with their homeland, and more prone to want to be loyal to Mexico and/or turn us into the United States of Amexica.
And what if we have a successful integration system that erases any major cultural differences between the ethnic groups? Could ethnic nationalism break out again? Possibly so, if a) the different groups for some reason suddenly have more contact with their cousins (i.e., through immigration), and b) there is a serious economic downturn. This may just be a risk that heavily multiracial countries take, and therefore I believe that heavily multiracial state should be handled with care.
Of course we should always treat everyone with respect. But if it's clear that someone doesn't want to be a part of the United States (not just an economic beneficiary), he should be denied citizenship.
But if it's clear that someone doesn't want to be a part of the United States (not just an economic beneficiary), he should be denied citizenship.
*** I agree wholeheartedly. It's too bad you can't kick out the native born enemies within!
I think we should:
1. Aztlan/Chicano nationalists should be deported to Mexico
2. Islamists should go to Iraq
3. White progressives should be forced to spend the rest of their miserable brain-dead lives in a Cuban prison
--- in today's Switzerland citizenship includes the right and duty to fulfill certain functions, among which military service is very important.
It is remarkable that to this day every Swiss male over 18 must be prepared to serve in the country's citizen-army; after completing their basic training they keep their weapons at home, and refusal to perform military service is a criminal offense.
_____________________________________
In today's America citizenship should include the right and duty to fulfill certain functions, among which basic military service should be very important.
Every American over 18 who wants to vote should be required to serve in the country's citizen-army for a short period; after completing their basic training they would keep their assault weapons at home.
Those who refuse to perform military service would be denied the privilege of voting in State or National elections.
Voting for local dogcatchers/county clerks/mayors etc, would be permissible under this new 28th Constitutional Amendment.
I agree with you. There is a big difference between legal and illegal immigration.
A lot of people just don't believe in the ability of America and American civilization in assimilating new immigrants. That's unfortunate.
Most new legal immigrants want exactly what long-term Americans want. They want the opportunity to work and raise family and do these without too much hassles from the government. In fact, they probably appreciate freedom more, if they had experienced tyranny. In this sense, they will make perfect citizens.
Agreed. There are a lot of people who are now legal American citizens who resent illegal aliens and their liberal handlers.
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