Even though its bid failed at the ballot box, the hard-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) is not giving up its push to cap immigration to stop the country’s population from reaching the 10-million mark.
As a reminder, the anti-immigration SVP party’s controversial ‘No to 10 million’ initiative was rejected by 55 percent of voters in a referendum on June 14th.
READ MORE: What exactly does the Swiss ‘no to 10 million’ anti-immigration proposal aim to do?
But while this issue is no longer a part of Switzerland’s political agenda, the party is continuing to push it further – though on a more local scale than before.
What is going on?
Having failed to obtain a widespread support at the polls on the national front, the populist SVP is scaling down its campaign, shifting it to the cantonal and municipal levels instead.
At the end of August, an SVP deputy Franz Grüter will convene the cantonal sections of the party to discuss ways to limit local growth.
“We want to see if there are instruments at the cantonal and municipal levels to curb immigration,” he said.
The MP is particularly hopeful that rural communities – which constitute the SVP’s stronghold – could lead the way in that direction.
He said that steps have already been taken in this direction at the communal level.
In the Graubènden village of Domat/Ems, for instance, an initial population growth target of 1 percent per year had sparked strong opposition, prompting authorities to revise this figure downward.
Hochdorf, Lucerne residents also voted to limit its population growth to 0.7 percent annually.
And Grimisuat, Valais decided that its population should stop growing at 5,000; currently, 4,000 people live in the community.
None of these communities have taken these measures expressely to keep foreign nationals away – rather, they target newcomers in general.
In Grimisuat’s case, the reason for the cap is the drinking water supply – the existing infrastructure just cannot accommodate a larger population.
The SVP, however, sees a great potential to be exploited in these moves, as well as willingness of local authorities to counteract the population growth – even if they don’t specifically target immigrants.
The fight is not over – it is just taking a different shape
Additionally, the rightwing party is attacking immigration on another front as well.
It is now claiming that the ratification of the new agreements between Bern and Brussels (which hasn’t happened yet, as it still has to voted on in a referendum ) will open the floodgates to more arrivals from abroad – and the worst kind at that.
According to its deputy Roman Bürgi, foreign criminals enter Switzerland “without hindrance, carry out their crimes, and leave the country a few hours later, as systematic border checks are prohibited by order of Brussels,” he argued, citing cases of armed robberies carried out in Switzerland by individuals “escaping in a car with French license plates”
READ MORE: Swiss hard-right claims EU treaties represent ‘free rein for thieves and other criminals
