NationStates Jolt Archive

It's a trait of people - especially online - to think everybody but them is Homer Simpson. They, of course, are SPECIAL. Of course, when everybody thinks that, there are issues.

Sorry, NL.

I for one believe the average man is as able to decide these issues as the average government bureaucrat, if not better. Likely better.

Maybe it's because he doesn't mix possesive adjectives with contractions.

*runs*

...So? This ain't no english class.

It's a trait of people - especially online - to think everybody but them is Homer Simpson. They, of course, are SPECIAL. Of course, when everybody thinks that, there are issues.

Sorry, NL.

I for one believe the average man is as able to decide these issues as the average government bureaucrat, if not better. Likely better.

Yup.

...So? This ain't no english class.

Sadly, we are reminded of this all too often.

Easily.

You allow free immigration. People from cultures with nowhere near the same respect to individual liberty as your own arrive and vote. You're PWNed.
I'm pwned either way. You would have noticed that my position is a minority, and this is the case a lot of the time. Whether the person voting against individual freedom is Swiss or Polish doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me.

Which basically leaves a real underlying question for you to consider: if you're happy to prevent people from voting because you think it's likely that they will vote in a way which you don't like...aren't you really taking a very undemocratic position?

Your being an immigrant does not have anything to do with it. I hold my views on immigration despite being an immigrant to Israel, and planning to move out to America in a year or two.
Why not? I expect to move where I want, live there and at least take part in the decision on how my taxes are spent. That's unlikely to be any different for you - you just happen to be in the lucky position that immigration restrictions are unlikely to be applied to you.

I know someone else who really likes the idea of living in Switzerland and wants to move there at some point. At the same time he is a rabid supporter of restrictive immigration and the SVP (who was pushing for this particular way of allowing citizenship).

He can only take the luxury of holding these two positions at the same time because he happens to be a wealthy American with a good chance of being allowed in. There is a certain hypocrisy in not taking a minute to think about the principle of the law, if it coincidentally wasn't the case that it stops him.

Peasants?
Yeah. European small town people, like the ones I had a frequent chance to spend time with in my 16 years in a European country filled with such towns. The ones were people complain that someone has started to sell Kebabs instead of whatever touristy version of medieval food is considered "traditional". People like those in the town of Schwyz.

I didn't realise I offended you. I will make an effort to be more politically correct in the future...

Are you filthy rich or something? Did you get straight A's in school? You think your something special?
The better question would be: even if I was, would that make me better?

Or does everyone have the right to be treated equally, regardless of the poverty (or lack thereof), quality of parenting and education...and geographical location of one's birth?

Questions, questions.

To actually make a point though: to me peasant is a derogatory term for people who are simple-minded when they make their decisions. People who are superstitious, irrational and who don't know the world beyond their little comfort zone. People who read boulevard newspapers. Wealth, education (to a degree) or the population density of your home makes no difference.

The problem is that a significant part, maybe even a majority, of the electorate exhibits some or all of these traits. That's not made up, that's an objective truth. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the proportion is greater in a small Swiss town in the wilderness.

Which brings us to the real question I was posing: what is so inherently great about these people, what puts them into such a great position, that they should be able to decide about something as fundamental as your right to vote on the policies that affect your life?

I for one believe the average man is as able to decide these issues as the average government bureaucrat, if not better. Likely better.
That's disputable in this case. Schwyz has just over 14,000 inhabitants. Let's say that 200 of those have some regular contact with the people decided upon. They are definitely in a good position to decide.

But that still leaves 13,800 people who have never exchanged a word with these would-be citizens, and probably never will. They have nothing to base their decisions on but their own criteria. That, in principle, puts them on par with the government. But if their criterion is "there are too many Turkish people on the subway", then we will never know. The government must make its criteria public, and certain ways of deciding are unacceptable or frowned upon both domestically and according to international law and the UN. So while it's not a given that the criteria are fair ways of judging people, at the very least government-mandated ones give us a chance to evaluate them.

Of course, that still doesn't answer the much more fundamental question: where does the voter's right to make a decision as important as this come from? We don't vote on court cases, we don't vote on basic civil rights and protections - those are considered beyond the domain of collective decision making; so fundamental that even the entire population of the country does not have the right to infringe upon them.

So with that established, why is it that the immigrant's right to vote is up for public polling, but the right of a newborn Swiss kid is not?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Spp-poster.jpg

Anyone who thinks that is appropriate is sick.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Spp-poster.jpg

Anyone who thinks that is appropriate is sick.

Erm, then why did you post it?:confused:

Erm, then why did you post it?:confused:
Not posting it, using it as a political poster in an election. It's an SVP poster.

Not posting it, using it as a political poster in an election. It's an SVP poster.

OMG, I never expected they'd be so open about it. Sick they are!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Spp-poster.jpg

Anyone who thinks that is appropriate is sick.

I do.

People who are superstitious, irrational and who don't know the world beyond their little comfort zone. People who read boulevard newspapers

I don't feel that believing in God [for example], or not having college education, makes one dumber. Or smarter. Or a less or more qualified voter. Frankly, I know college professors that believe – quite seriously – that Maoism is awesome. How are they more qualified to decide issues of importance than your average dropout?

The government must make its criteria public,

I'm sure it does. But consider this: Modern government deals, on a daily basis, with thousands of issues. Because the time – and attention span – of the legislature is limited, most of it is determined by guidelines and subguidelines issued by faceless bureaucrats somewhere. Even if their decisions are uploaded online, and the voters read them – unlikely – it is even more unlikely they can influence every issue in the same way they could had they been allowed to vote directly on it.

We don't vote on court cases,

In many countries people elect judges and participate in jury trials.

why is it that the immigrant's right to vote is up for public polling, but the right of a newborn Swiss kid is not?

What is your argument? That anybody who moves into a country should be accorded the right to vote automatically?

Isn't the purpose of a court to protect the minority from the power of the majority?

I am thinking of the recent California Supreme Court ruling in regard to this.

Isn't the purpose of a court to protect the minority from the power of the majority?



And yet judges are elected in many countries.

i come from a brown-skinned race...but i dont mind switzerland's policy...if they want to keep their race pure and shut themselves out from the rest of the world, who are we to object?

it's not that they're shooting colored people on sight or anything...and if they're not happy with swiss policy, i'm sure some other country would be happy to take them in...or better yet, why wont they return to their homeland

I do.

Then you're sick.

Then you're sick.

Somehow I expected this. :D

i come from a brown-skinned race...but i dont mind switzerland's policy...if they want to keep their race pure and shut themselves out from the rest of the world, who are we to object?

it's not that they're shooting colored people on sight or anything...and if they're not happy with swiss policy, i'm sure some other country would be happy to take them in...or better yet, why wont they return to their homeland
Oh go away, you remind me of the 'gay' conservatives and all that made-up crap on internet boards. You people are such cowards, you have to say 'I am black' or whatever so you don't get totally laughed out by your ludicrously bigoted position.

Well, guess what, I don't believe you and I am still laughing, you are a white noob and you know it, so go away.

I don't feel that believing in God [for example], or not having college education, makes one dumber. Or smarter.
Same here, to a degree. Irrationality isn't so much the non-existence of intelligence as it is the refusal to use it.

Or a less or more qualified voter.
That's where we disagree. We vote in order to introduce policies, which are actions taken with the expectation of a causal relationship that will result in some desirable effect.

Notwithstanding an argument about the desirability of effects in themselves (and I'd put it to you that there are basic desired states of society that are universal, and that those are not decided in normal elections), deciding on policies is a rational process. Given some goal, it is perfectly possible for there to exist an ideal policy, and any other option would therefore be sub-optimal and wrong.

So when this is the decision we're making, then someone who has basically no knowledge of the world is less likely to choose the correct option.

Frankly, I know college professors that believe – quite seriously – that Maoism is awesome. How are they more qualified to decide issues of importance than your average dropout?
The question being whether someone who manages to convince himself that Maoism is great is really any more aware of the world than someone who spends his entire life in some village in the mountains reading boulevard newspapers.

I'm sure it does. But consider this: Modern government deals, on a daily basis, with thousands of issues. Because the time – and attention span – of the legislature is limited, most of it is determined by guidelines and subguidelines issued by faceless bureaucrats somewhere. Even if their decisions are uploaded online, and the voters read them – unlikely – it is even more unlikely they can influence every issue in the same way they could had they been allowed to vote directly on it.
Yes, and that's why here in Oz you get "senate enquiries" and so on all the time because some reporter found something wrong with what the public service does. And god knows there have been plenty of instances of racism in immigration bureaucracy in this country.

If I thought bureaucracy was perfect, I wouldn't be as anti-statist as I am. But given an anti-statist stance, based on the idea that one can't make an accurate judgement on the worthiness of some random to become a citizen, the question is why anyone who doesn't know the person in question is in a position to make a judgement. The bureaucrat can't, because he doesn't know the detail of the case and has to use generalisations. But the very same applies to the vast majority of the people who are voting in this case.

What we're left with is that only a very select group of people are really in a position to accurately judge, namely those who the person actually interacts with: employers, landlords, friends, etc. And they're already "voting" without any government interference of any sort by deciding whether or not to interact with that person.

Adding anyone beyond that immediate circle to make a decision is stupid, because you're necessarily bound to reduce the quality of the decision. So if the outcome is going to be worse, what are the arguments in favour? They're things like "this is our country", "social cohesion", "preserving culture" and other platitudes that don't stand up to any serious investigation.

In many countries people elect judges and participate in jury trials.
The latter is a different matter. It's a decision on whether or not something happened, presumably made without detailed knowledge of the consequences. It's the attempt to get some arguably unbiased outside element introduced in the legal process, and to add transparency. What you won't find is a jury deciding whether or not someone should get the chair for a murder or simply a few years in prison.

As for electing judges, it would interest me whether or not you think that is a good idea.

What is your argument? That anybody who moves into a country should be accorded the right to vote automatically?
It's a very good start. I see no good case against it, and lots against the alternative.

now you're questioning my ethnicity? you wouldnt believe me if i gave you a hundred proofs anyway...

but you want to know my idea of bigotry?

it's that of foreigners leaving their countries to latch on to the tits of a richer state and demand for equal rights...this minority deserves special treatment thing is b*llsh*t...why dont they move someplace then where they're the majority

even when im visiting a foreign country where i obviously am part of the minority, i dont go around asking for special considerations or special treatment...it's their home turf, who am i to make demands to these people?

now you're questioning my ethnicity? you wouldnt believe me if i gave you a hundred proofs anyway...

but you want to know my idea of bigotry?

it's that of foreigners leaving their countries to latch on to the tits of a richer state and demand for equal rights...this minority deserves special treatment thing is b*llsh*t...why dont they move someplace then where they're the majority

even when im visiting a foreign country where i obviously am part of the minority, i dont go around asking for special considerations or special treatment...it's their home turf, who am i to make demands to these people?

You're full of crap Whitey.

What you won't find is a jury deciding whether or not someone should get the chair for a murder or simply a few years in prison.

Yes, you will. There are states where the death penalty requires additional approval of the jury.

Irrationality isn't so much the non-existence of intelligence as it is the refusal to use it.

I don't feel that irrational decisions are necessarily wrong or right. I choose to irrationally believe murder is evil.

Snipped your argument for brevity


Look, here's my argument:

1. Either (A)something is an intrinsic, individual right, and is not subject to voting at all. Or (B)Something is to be subject to government control to some degree. In which case, I believe the more democracy, the better. Let there be voting! For judges! For school principals! For police chiefs! For ballot initiatives! Let there be referenda!

Let there be juries – not just juries like we have them today, castrated and manipulated by judges, but grand juries, empowered to indict, and to solicit evidence, and to act in jury nullification.

And fuck yes, let us have recall elections.

So either A. Immigration should be free or B. Ze People should get a vote.

If you believe A, then I don't think there's a point of arguing B.

Oh go away, you remind me of the 'gay' conservatives.

I'm a bisexual, Jewish, secular libertarian conservative. Who are you to say I don't exist?

now you're questioning my ethnicity? you wouldnt believe me if i gave you a hundred proofs anyway...Likelihood of a brown-skinned individual espousing "racial purity" as an ideal < likelihood of a white supremacist/white racist/Nazi pretending to be a "concerned brother"

Yes, you will. There are states where the death penalty requires additional approval of the jury.
Fair enough, it's a specific case and an unfortunately picked example. Nonetheless, the nature of the punishment and the way the law treats the events is decided upon by the judge rather than the jury. The jury generally decides whether or not the person is guilty or not.

I don't feel that irrational decisions are necessarily wrong or right. I choose to irrationally believe murder is evil.
And coincidentally you'd be right. But there are rational reasons for this statement. It's much like randomly deciding that the square root of 16 is 4. It may happen to be the correct result, but I have no understanding of the reasons for it and no way of knowing whether I am in fact correct.

If you believe A, then I don't think there's a point of arguing B.
There is a point. Even though I don't accept the sort of limits on individual rights immigration restrictions represent, that doesn't mean that I'd be wrong in arguing that a meeting in a town hall is not qualified to make a decision to any greater degree than the government.

That may not change my position, but it will change yours.

So here is what I'm saying: both the bureaucrat and the voter have to decide based on generalisations, because they lack the information to judge the case on its own merit. The bureaucrat's criteria are, in theory at least, public knowledge. They may be influenced by public policy and are applied the same way to everyone.

The voters criteria are entirely unaccountable to anyone. More likely than not stereotypes and irrationality will weigh into the decision more than for the public service.

You're full of crap Whitey.

now it comes down to name calling? unexpected from someone espousing rights and all...

Likelihood of a brown-skinned individual espousing "racial purity" as an ideal < likelihood of a white supremacist/white racist/Nazi pretending to be a "concerned brother"

dont put words into my mouth...i never talked about promoting racial purity...i just want people to respect the swiss' desire of keeping outsiders out, it's their f-ing country, let them do as they please...and if the minorities are not happy about the treatment they get there, well the borders are open for them to leave...

and i definitely do not believe in one race being superior to another...im just one of those people sick of minorities in certain places who pop out from nowhere and demand for rights...

it's true, they get to contribute a lot of things to their host states, well if they're so damn amazing, then why dont they go and serve their homeland, at least there they get equal treatment

* * *

if at all, my advocacy would be that of nationalism...

of people instead of leaving their countries for greener pastures, and in effect exerting strain upon their host countries; they should just stay home and come up with ways to make living there worthwhile.

I for one believe the average man is as able to decide these issues as the average government bureaucrat, if not better. Likely better.

The recorded existence of American lynch mobs who didn't even bother with things like proof other than skin color before murdering people prove that the average man isn't and when in a mob, is to logic and rational thought what matter is to anti-matter.

dont put words into my mouth...i never talked about promoting racial purity...i just want people to respect the swiss' desire of keeping outsiders out, it's their f-ing country, let them do as they please...and if the minorities are not happy about the treatment they get there, well the borders are open for them to leave...

and i definitely do not believe in one race being superior to another...im just one of those people sick of minorities in certain places who pop out from nowhere and demand for rights...

it's true, they get to contribute a lot of things to their host states, well if they're so damn amazing, then why dont they go and serve their homeland, at least there they get equal treatment

* * *

if at all, my advocacy would be that of nationalism...

of people instead of leaving their countries for greener pastures, and in effect exerting strain upon their host countries; they should just stay home and come up with ways to make living there worthwhile.:rolleyes:

I'm a bisexual, Jewish, secular libertarian conservative. Who are you to say I don't exist?

You don't exist. And even if you do you're an aberration.

dont put words into my mouth...i never talked about promoting racial purity...i just want people to respect the swiss' desire of keeping outsiders out, it's their f-ing country, let them do as they please...and if the minorities are not happy about the treatment they get there, well the borders are open for them to leave...

and i definitely do not believe in one race being superior to another...im just one of those people sick of minorities in certain places who pop out from nowhere and demand for rights...

it's true, they get to contribute a lot of things to their host states, well if they're so damn amazing, then why dont they go and serve their homeland, at least there they get equal treatment

* * *

if at all, my advocacy would be that of nationalism...

of people instead of leaving their countries for greener pastures, and in effect exerting strain upon their host countries; they should just stay home and come up with ways to make living there worthwhile.

Oh go away fool, if I could put my hand through my monitor and slap your White face I would, so get lost Whitey your not wanted.

Oh go away fool, if I could put my hand through my monitor and slap your White face I would, so get lost Whitey your not wanted.

fool, as i define it, is a person who doesnt listen to reason and resorts to name calling

Oh go away fool, if I could put my hand through my monitor and slap your White face I would, so get lost Whitey your not wanted.Vaklavia, is that you?

of people instead of leaving their countries for greener pastures, and in effect exerting strain upon their host countries; they should just stay home and come up with ways to make living there worthwhile.

Say's the isolationist who's home nation, presumably America, has a rich history of going abroad to conquer, subjugate and threaten other nations in order to secure resources, slaves and riches for itself, while promoting the idea of manifest destiny to justify it all.

Say's the isolationist who's home nation, presumably America, has a rich history of going abroad to conquer, subjugate and threaten other nations in order to secure resources, slaves and riches for itself, while promoting the idea of manifest destiny to justify it all.

actually, i live on an american colony, and i aint happy about it...plus i'm sick of people here at home wishing that they were american when instead they could pour all their energy into making our country a better place to be in...

speaking of going abroad to subjugate lands...isnt that what some foreign minority groups do? a group from impoverished country A move to country B seeking welfare...in 10 years or so, they've got country B's government by the neck, ceaselessly barraging demands in exchange for their 'contributions' or asking for special treatment in grounds of their special 'cultural needs'

actually, i live on an american colony, and i aint happy about it...plus i'm sick of people here at home wishing that they were american when instead they could pour all their energy into making our country a better place to be in...

speaking of going abroad to subjugate lands...isnt that what some foreign minority groups do? a group from impoverished country A move to country B seeking welfare...in 10 years or so, they've got country B's government by the neck, ceaselessly barraging demands in exchange for their 'contributions' or asking for special treatment in grounds of their special 'cultural needs'A lot of times they're invited in because Country B needs labor. Then when jobs become scarcer, Country Bers start bitching about Country Aers taking away their jobs. 'Course this doesn't take into account Europe, since there's minorities that predate the majorities (like the Sorbs or Danes in Germany) or minorities that have no real country of origin (Sinti and Roma, being nomadic and all that).

and country B can bitch all they want...it's their god-damned country...as for the country A'ers, well they've got their compensation anyway...if they want to stay, let them, but they cant expect to be prioritized over country B'ers...

as for the nomads etc...three words, let 'em "live with it"

actually, i live on an american colony, and i aint happy about it


Then get out. Leave. Go back to America. But you won't. Because no matter how much you rail about immigrants and how they suck at the teat of their host countries, you're doing exactly the same damn thing.


speaking of going abroad to subjugate lands...isnt that what some foreign minority groups do? a group from impoverished country A move to country B seeking welfare...in 10 years or so, they've got country B's government by the neck, ceaselessly barraging demands in exchange for their 'contributions' or asking for special treatment in grounds of their special 'cultural needs'

For the majority case, this is nothing but a lie. The primary reason most people immigrate to richer states is to seek employment. As states develop economically, so does the cost of local labor. In order to keep prices low, foreign workers are brought in, either of their own volition, or imported through labor suppliers, another factor you seem to be either ignorant of, or would like to pretend doesn't exist.

I see you also like to pretend foreign immigrants do nothing for their host countries. Let's see how well you would like it if no new buildings were built, only a fraction of orchards were being tended, cleaning services grind to a halt, and every single industry that relies on cheap import labor collapse.

Without the 'contributions' of foreign immigrants as you so like to disparage, most first world countries would suffer an almost immediate massive inflation, followed by reduced wages across the board as the market attempted to correct for the sudden loss of labor.

As for special demands? What special demands? Most immigrants simply ask to be treated as citizens once they fulfill the citizenship criteria.

And attempting to compare legal immigration with armed conflict?

This sort of attitude you display is either the result gross ignorance or xenophobic blinkered stupidity.

and country B can bitch all they want...it's their god-damned country...as for the country A'ers, well they've got their compensation anyway...if they want to stay, let them, but they cant expect to be prioritized over country B'ers...

as for the nomads etc...three words, let 'em "live with it":rolleyes:
Where exactly were you from?

you really want to know? i live in a third world country and am desperately trying to get into the US so i could earn green money :rolleyes:

@non-allied: TLDR

* * *

i cant believe i got into an argument with you guys just because i said we should respect the swiss' policy towards immigrants

fool, as i define it, is a person who doesnt listen to reason and resorts to name calling

No, it's because I know you are not who you claim to be, that's obvious enough.

@non-allied: TLDR


Of course you didn't. The moment logic and some facts threaten your worldview, you run away.

Or maybe, you just have the attention span of a infant.

And your statistics doesn't help either. We know that a large part of the prison population are foreigners. But will these people be eligable to obtain a Swiss citizenship anyway? Surely they would fail the condition that they need to show compliance with the Swiss rule of law and that they present no danger to Switzerland's internal security. And as such, stricter rules on citizenship - especially a vote as in this case - does little if anything about making Switzerland safer from criminals.

I think the "battle" should be fought over residence permits. If you've fulfilled the criteria after more than 12 years, and you haven't shown that you don't comply with the Swiss rule of law, I see no reason why it should be up for a public vote.

So I still don't see that the questions on citizenship make Switzerland safer and more orderly.

Let me explain how it works in the real life: Even with no ballots, every community has a "community citizen's council". That's a board of politicians which are indirectly appointed by the citizens (with indirectly, I mean that the composition of this council mostly matches the composition of the community's government, thus the citizens' political attitude). In a rural community of Eastern Switzerland you'll find this council to be mostly filled with SVP politicians for example. As an applicant, you need to convince these politicians that you're fit for a citizenship. While in rural SG, there's been an example of a Turkish woman being rejected for wearing a headscarf (whatever you call them) and thus promoting islamic oppression of women, in VD you'll need more than simply doing time to keep the council from throwing a Swiss passport at you.

The difference between a criminal citizen and a criminal non-citizen is that the non-citizen can be more easily removed from society, thus making it safer. With 1/5 of Switzerland being foreigners and with foreigners being disproportionately well represented in the crime statistics (as you can see, almost half of all convicts are foreigners), dealing with foreigners is a major part of ensuring law and order. Unless each foreigner is closely examined for tendencies towards agressive behaviour, regardless whether he/she already committed a crime or will only beat people to death after getting the citizenship, the hole on the barrier remains a considerable threat to Swiss society.

While in rural SG, there's been an example of a Turkish woman being rejected for wearing a headscarf (whatever you call them) and thus promoting islamic oppression of women, in VD you'll need more than simply doing time to keep the council from throwing a Swiss passport at you.
And I thought allowing the Heathrow authorities to ban someone from boarding a plane because he had a Transformers T-Shirt was bad.

The recorded existence of American lynch mobs who didn't even bother with things like proof other than skin color before murdering people prove that the average man isn't and when in a mob, is to logic and rational thought what matter is to anti-matter.

Mobs are not anyhow examples of anything. Emergent personality is like that.

Want me to throw in piles of unfair executions decided upon by appointed judges?

Of course you didn't. The moment logic and some facts threaten your worldview, you run away.

Or maybe, you just have the attention span of a infant.

oh really?

i could read War and Peace or the Tao Te Ching for you and give you a chapter by chapter commentary...

the reason why i didnt pay any attention to your views is because you dont give due respect to the swiss people's right to manage their own affairs, by joining a band of critics who label them as racists...okay, so what if they're racist, it's their home, they have every right to do as they see fit.

you know what's funny, i think your concept of telling other countries "not to be racist" or how they should manage their affairs sounds not too far from your dreaded 'american imperialism'

SWITZERLAND
Issues of citizenship and direct democracy (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7427865.stm)
Quite an interesting article, on how letting citizens decide on whether a person should become a citizen simply leads to dark-skinned applicants being rejected, even when they meet all the other requirements for citizenship and pass stringent tests. It seems racism is alive and well in Switzerland, alas. And it points to the problem of having too few limitations on the direct political power wielded by citizens.

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/7445/tbdzd0.png

Yep, looks like the poster child for why pure democracy is a failure, when it has no checks to its power.... Having the power to vote is a good thing... Having the power to vote out particular racial/ethnic groups is not.

oh really?

i could read War and Peace or the Tao Te Ching for you and give you a chapter by chapter commentary...


Yet, a 5 paragraph reply which is at best half a page long gets:


@non-allied: TLDR



the reason why i didnt pay any attention to your views is because you dont give due respect to the swiss people's right to manage their own affairs, by joining a band of critics who label them as racists...okay, so what if they're racist, it's their home, they have every right to do as they see fit.


And how do you know what my views are if:


@non-allied: TLDR


Hmmm? Oh! I know! You're dreaming up words and putting them into my posts. You're not really arguing with me or anything. You're yapping into the air like this deranged old lady I know, and I mistakenly assumed you were referring to me.

oh really?
you know what's funny, i think your concept of telling other countries "not to be racist" or how they should manage their affairs sounds not too far from your dreaded 'american imperialism'

You have no idea what I'm saying, since it's clear you're not reading what I'm writing and just making it up.

Mobs are not anyhow examples of anything. Emergent personality is like that.

Want me to throw in piles of unfair executions decided upon by appointed judges?

By all means, so long as you admit that mobs, even voting mobs, aren't necessarily tied to things like logic or rational behavior.

By all means, so long as you admit that mobs, even voting mobs, aren't necessarily tied to things like logic or rational behavior.

1. WTF is a voting mob? People voting for stuff you don't like?

2. I never said logic or rational behavior were good, or the exlusive method for reaching a good decision.

It might not be discrimination based on skin color - It might be discrimination based on incompatible culture.
Culture, you say?
"I feel Swiss, I was born here, all my friends are here. For me, this is like my country, my identity," says Elias.

That's extremely silly.

There's a difference between representative democracy and pure democracy. The latter is rejected as unfeasible, precisely because, in many cases, the majority of citizens are not intelligent, rational and educated enough to exercise the responsabilities it would imply.

Are you seriously suggesting that, if the majority ruled that Blacks can no longer use public transport, it should be done? Or that all synagogues should be closed? Or that all ethnic Chinese should be deported? Or that all persons with Arab names should have their phones tapped?

If not, then you agree that there have to be limits on the rights of the majority to hurl the country around on the basis of its irrational whims.

I've always thought that these rules would make a great country. Or world.

Culture, you say?
Yes.

Your quote shows exactly one perspective to the issue. I personally would like to know how they treat women or children first and whether their values are compatible with western society in general before making the call.


I do concur that in this case they'd most likely be better Swiss than the Swiss themselves but in general some prejudices are hard to shake and the burden of proof, so to speak, might be seen to belong to the immigrant according to majority.

1. WTF is a voting mob? People voting for stuff you don't like?

Mobs that vote/support something using the exact same rationale that lynch mobs did. None at all, beyond unfounded hate.


2. I never said logic or rational behavior were good, or the exlusive method for reaching a good decision.

Bad decisions can often be made with irrational behavior, more often than the converse.

A mob is an instance where in 'emergent' psychology operates, making a group of people do something they wouldn't do individually - thus, a lynching.

A hundred of people each acting separately are not a mob.

Bad decisions can often be made with irrational behavior, more often than the converse.

Not necessarily. Any political opinion is formed based on a set of assumptions on human nature, made irrationally.

now you're questioning my ethnicity? you wouldnt believe me if i gave you a hundred proofs anyway...

but you want to know my idea of bigotry?

it's that of foreigners leaving their countries to latch on to the tits of a richer state and demand for equal rights...this minority deserves special treatment thing is b*llsh*t...why dont they move someplace then where they're the majority

even when im visiting a foreign country where i obviously am part of the minority, i dont go around asking for special considerations or special treatment...it's their home turf, who am i to make demands to these people?

Now I don't think they should get special treatment, but do you think they should get equal treatment?

Now I don't think they should get special treatment, but do you think they should get equal treatment?

They should not be admitted unless they are to of signficant economic advantage to the host state, and unlikely to produce excessive tension in doing so.

They should not be admitted unless they are to of signficant economic advantage to the host state, and unlikely to produce excessive tension in doing so.
Well said. And current immigration rates, notably from the Balkans, have not generally helped Switzerland that much economically and have not only produced but almost literally invented ethnic/multicultural tension in Switzerland.

Let me explain how it works in the real life: Even with no ballots, every community has a "community citizen's council". That's a board of politicians which are indirectly appointed by the citizens (with indirectly, I mean that the composition of this council mostly matches the composition of the community's government, thus the citizens' political attitude). In a rural community of Eastern Switzerland you'll find this council to be mostly filled with SVP politicians for example. As an applicant, you need to convince these politicians that you're fit for a citizenship. While in rural SG, there's been an example of a Turkish woman being rejected for wearing a headscarf (whatever you call them) and thus promoting islamic oppression of women, in VD you'll need more than simply doing time to keep the council from throwing a Swiss passport at you.
However, after the ruling, applicants will have the power of appeal, and that would strengthen equality.

The difference between a criminal citizen and a criminal non-citizen is that the non-citizen can be more easily removed from society, thus making it safer.
...because a citizen cannot be deported.

With 1/5 of Switzerland being foreigners and with foreigners being disproportionately well represented in the crime statistics (as you can see, almost half of all convicts are foreigners), dealing with foreigners is a major part of ensuring law and order.
And that will be dealt with through permits and the expulsion system when it comes to their immigration status.

Unless each foreigner is closely examined for tendencies towards agressive behaviour, regardless whether he/she already committed a crime or will only beat people to death after getting the citizenship, the hole on the barrier remains a considerable threat to Swiss society.
No, I still don't see it. After 12 years of respecting the Swiss rule of law, and not being a threat to internal Swiss security, I can't see how a person would be such a threat to society that he couldn't be dealt with satisfactorily through the internal criminal justice system.

And you don't have to follow the guy closely. In my opinion, going without any criminal record for such a long time should be more than sufficient. Hell, consider the rules in other countries for being given citizenship. (Only a period of 3 years of permanent residency is required in Canada, for example) I don't see that it's undermining their electoral and political systems, but rather aids in integration and naturalisation.

Of course what you are syaing is that if I was born in China I am then Chinese? Even if I mo9ved to China now and lived there for 25 years, leanring a language knowing and abiding by the rules, customs and traditions of China, that still dosen't make me Chinese even if I get a Chinese passport.
I think you might not see it that way after those 25 years. And I think that if you were born in China by British parents, and have your upbringing in China, you may feel Chinese.

I for one believe the average man is as able to decide these issues as the average government bureaucrat, if not better. Likely better.
I don't think so at all. Especially since the bureaucrats are experienced and paid to look deeper into each individual case. The average voter wouldn't care sufficiently, I'm afraid.

It's a very good start. I see no good case against it, and lots against the alternative.
I like the idea about giving immigrants the right of vote when they get citizenship. That gives them a chance to get to know the country, the society, the political system and the culture, and lessens the possibility of undue influence by "good helpers" that tend to be there as they arrive.

Now I don't think they should get special treatment, but do you think they should get equal treatment?
I agree. Predictability and equality are extremely important principles here.

However, after the ruling, applicants will have the power of appeal, and that would strengthen equality.

So criminals and likely criminals (those with a record of aggressive behaviour for example) who don't get the citizenship will get it anyway, through a court. Great. If equality means that criminals must have the same rights as law-abiding people, don't be surprised that at least a third of the country will oppose it.

...because a citizen cannot be deported.

Exactly, that's why criminals shouldn't become citizens in the first place.

And that will be dealt with through permits and the expulsion system when it comes to their immigration status.

Will it? So far I thought you opposed dealing with them in such a manner.

No, I still don't see it. After 12 years of respecting the Swiss rule of law, and not being a threat to internal Swiss security, I can't see how a person would be such a threat to society that he couldn't be dealt with satisfactorily through the internal criminal justice system.

Just look at the very example I presented! They're citizens who didn't break the law previously and now they killed someone. And no, the judiciary system will NOT deal with them adequately. Adequately means that a murderer gets permanently (or at least for a long time) removed from society. Were these people foreigners, they'd be deported. Now, they'll have to do a couple of years for manslaughter and will be released in 1-2 years because it's their first offence. Citizenship just got the society a few murderers who won't be dealt with.

And you don't have to follow the guy closely. In my opinion, going without any criminal record for such a long time should be more than sufficient. Hell, consider the rules in other countries for being given citizenship. (Only a period of 3 years of permanent residency is required in Canada, for example) I don't see that it's undermining their electoral and political systems, but rather aids in integration and naturalisation.

See the example. I don't know, if a couple of foreigners bashing a Swiss guy to death makes you say that our requirements are sufficient, what would make a criminal be unworthy of a citizenship in your eyes? Genocide? FFS, the filter has failed and is continuing to fail, and you say it's sufficient and all is well? I almost wanted to present you with one of the several cases of ex-Yugoslavian and Albanian juveniles raping 12 year old Swiss girls, but I'm starting to get the feeling of you repeating yourself and saying "So what, they didn't break the law before. Help them integrate, will ya? Ye bloody nazis!".

And yes, Canada is a bad example for the Swiss. There are countries where the immigration policy serves as a negative example for Switzerland and Canada is among them (Sweden as well btw). Just because Canadians let everyone in, it doesn't mean we have to.

So criminals and likely criminals (those with a record of aggressive behaviour for example) who don't get the citizenship will get it anyway, through a court. Great.
Says who? They would still have to fulfill the conditions, like show that they could adhere to the Swiss rule of law. So criminals won't get it. "Likely criminals" will, because, well, the nation should also respect the rule of law and not condemn anybody because of a hypothetical.

If equality means that criminals must have the same rights as law-abiding people, don't be surprised that at least a third of the country will oppose it.
Good thing it doesn't mean that then.

It does, however, mean that you can't turn down a woman because of the way she dresses.


Exactly, that's why criminals shouldn't become citizens in the first place.
I tend to agree. And that's why it's a condition for acquiring citizenship.


Will it?
Yes, I believe so.

So far I thought you opposed dealing with them in such a manner.
Not at all. I'm strongly in favour of expelling criminals and those who abuse the immigration system.


Just look at the very example I presented! They're citizens who didn't break the law previously and now they killed someone. And no, the judiciary system will NOT deal with them adequately. Adequately means that a murderer gets permanently (or at least for a long time) removed from society. Were these people foreigners, they'd be deported. Now, they'll have to do a couple of years for manslaughter and will be released in 1-2 years because it's their first offence. Citizenship just got the society a few murderers who won't be dealt with.
Your example is not a good one, since - as I've mentioned before - they've apparently not been convicted. And as such, you can't show that the criminal justice system won't deal adequately with them, nor that they could be considered any greater threat to society than your average Joe Swisscheese.

See the example. I don't know, if a couple of foreigners bashing a Swiss guy to death makes you say that our requirements are sufficient, what would make a criminal be unworthy of a citizenship in your eyes? Genocide?
No, crime before the citizenship was granted would be enough. Well, not all crime, let's be honest. Petty crimes shouldn't be an obstacle either.

Also, see above.

FFS, the filter has failed and is continuing to fail, and you say it's sufficient and all is well?
In this case, yes. And I say again, it's not meant to be a "filter" to lock out people who may commit a crime. But after 12 years, you've shown that you can be trusted. If you violate that trust, then the criminal justice system should be sufficient. If you feel that it isn't because the criminal gets such a low sentence, then it's the criminal justice system that needs fixing and not the rules on citizenship.

I almost wanted to present you with one of the several cases of ex-Yugoslavian and Albanian juveniles raping 12 year old Swiss girls, but I'm starting to get the feeling of you repeating yourself and saying "So what, they didn't break the law before. Help them integrate, will ya? Ye bloody nazis!".
You try very hard to be a mind reader, but you don't always succeed.

And yes, Canada is a bad example for the Swiss. There are countries where the immigration policy serves as a negative example for Switzerland and Canada is among them (Sweden as well btw).
How is Canada a bad example for the Swiss? :confused:

You need to have had a residence permit for at least 5 years in Sweden (some exceptions).

And they have a fun system for criminals:
You must have a clean record in Sweden (the good conduct requirement)

One of the conditions for acquiring Swedish citizenship by application is that you have kept a clean record during your stay here. If you have committed a criminal offence, however, you can still become a Swedish citizen, although you will have to wait for a while depending on how serious the crime was and what punishment you were given. When we examine someone’s conduct we consider how they have behaved so far and how we believe they are likely to behave in the future.

Longer wait after a crime
The time that must elapse after a criminal conviction before you can be granted Swedish citizenship is called the qualifying period (karenstid). This is normally calculated from the date of the crime, but if you have been given a lengthy prison sentence the time is calculated from the date when the sentence has been served. Before convicted persons can be granted Swedish citizenship, they must have served their prison sentence, their probationary period in the event of a conditional release must have been completed and any fines they may have been sentenced to must have been paid.

Special correctional treatment
If you have been sentenced to special care (särskild vård) after a crime, we look at the penalty normally prescribed for the crime in question.


Qualifying period
30-day fine* - 1 year after the crime
60-day fine - 2 years after the crime
100-day fine - 3 years after the crime
Conditional sentence - At least 3 years after the sentence became legally valid (went into effect)
Probation - At least 4 years from the day the probationary period began
Prison for 1 month - 4 years after the crime
Prison for 4 months - 5 years after the crime
Prison for 8 months - 6 years after the crime
Prison for 1 year - 7 years after the crime
Prison for 2 years - 8 years after the sentence has been served
Prison for 4 years - 9 years after the sentence has been served
Prison for 6 years - 10 years after the sentence has been served

* fine based on the defendant’s daily income

The qualifying period is longer in the case of conditional sentences or probationary periods linked to a prison sentence or to a fine of 60 days’ income or more.

If you have committed a crime on more than one occasion, the qualifying period may be longer than in the table above.

Individual examination of the qualifying period in other cases
If there is some other form of misconduct on your record sheet, we examine the qualifying period individually.
If you have been guilty of further misconduct

Your application may be turned down if you have not paid taxes, fines or other charges. You may also be refused citizenship if you have not paid maintenance (alimony) as required. Certain kinds of debts to private companies or such like may also result in your being refused Swedish citizenship.
Link (http://www.migrationsverket.se/english.jsp?english/emedborg/emedborg.html)

Just because Canadians let everyone in, it doesn't mean we have to.
I'm not demanding that either. It was just an example.

Says who? They would still have to fulfill the conditions, like show that they could adhere to the Swiss rule of law. So criminals won't get it. "Likely criminals" will, because, well, the nation should also respect the rule of law and not condemn anybody because of a hypothetical.
If they're not criminals, they don't have anything to hide. If they are, a close inspection would detect them before they'd gain citizenship. My example was a good one, because it showed that people who used to make the streets unsafe, but didn't break the law with being convicted are very likely to break it once they have the safety of a Swiss citizenship. The people wouldn't care about their rights to veto the handout of citizenships if the filter which should be there to KEEP OUT CRIMINALS would work. But apparently, it's NOT working.

It does, however, mean that you can't turn down a woman because of the way she dresses.
That was an example showing that you don't need ballots to get completely insane decisions in this matter.

I tend to agree. And that's why it's a condition for acquiring citizenship.
No - it - isn't. The only condition for acquiring citizenship is convincing a board of politicians that you'll behave well. Been selling pot to youngsters? In Glarus you'd be booted, in Lausanne you'd be greeted. The word "criminality" has a cosmetic value of 80% in the current system.

Yes, I believe so.
I know (see) that it doesn't right now.

Not at all. I'm strongly in favour of expelling criminals and those who abuse the immigration system.
Then why oppose measures which would do just that?

Your example is not a good one, since - as I've mentioned before - they've apparently not been convicted. And as such, you can't show that the criminal justice system won't deal adequately with them, nor that they could be considered any greater threat to society than your average Joe Swisscheese.
How do you know they weren't convicted? The article was written during the trials, I hardly believe you could predict the outcome from the example I gave you. Or are you just speculating? Actually, the trial still goes on. The problem is, they CAN'T be dealt with adequately, because the absolute maximum they could give them would be 10 years. With this being their first conviction, you can't expect more than 5 years. Not - enough. Murderers ought to be removed from society and the only option would be deporting them, which CAN'T be done, because they're CITIZENS. I repeat: you - can't - free - society - from - these - murderers - thanks - to - the - loose - citizenship - requirements - that - let - these - thugs - in. Joe Swisscheese doesn't organise a gang in secondary school, these did. Joe Swisscheese doesn't have a reputation of cutting faces with bottles, these do.

No, crime before the citizenship was granted would be enough. Well, not all crime, let's be honest. Petty crimes shouldn't be an obstacle either.
They would be enough, but aren't. That's the point. The people deciding who to let in are looking for voters. And no, nobody wants ANY kind of criminal, not even petty ones. It's NOT okay to break the law and if you really take a dump on a society's rules by either doing drugs or selling them, feel free to go elsewhere.

In this case, yes. And I say again, it's not meant to be a "filter" to lock out people who may commit a crime.
What else should it be???

But after 12 years, you've shown that you can be trusted. If you violate that trust, then the criminal justice system should be sufficient.
The violation of this trust should be detected first, shouldn't it? The commitees are doing a bad job detecting... who am I kidding? The commitees don't even try to detect such violations of trust, as you put it.

If you feel that it isn't because the criminal gets such a low sentence, then it's the criminal justice system that needs fixing and not the rules on citizenship.
They both need fixing and ironically, fixing the criminal system is at least as important for the SVP as fixing the bounds on immigration, it just doesn't get as much media coverage abroad (because who cares about Swiss policemen doubling patrols and the like? They want to hear about ze naaaaziiiis to make them feel better about themselves). Immigration isn't the A and O of crime, but it supplies half of it. Fixing the rules on citizenship wouldn't eliminate crime, but it certainly would crack down on a considerable part of it.

You try very hard to be a mind reader, but you don't always succeed.
You didn't prove me wrong yet.

How is Canada a bad example for the Swiss? :confused:
You just said that being a resident for 3 years in Canada grants you the citizenship. That's bad. Okay, the Canadians may like it, but for Switzerland, it would mean the end of detecting criminals before they drop anchor.

You need to have had a residence permit for at least 5 years in Sweden (some exceptions).

And they have a fun system for criminals:

Link (http://www.migrationsverket.se/english.jsp?english/emedborg/emedborg.html)
It doesn't seem to be working:
Welcome to Sweden (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JBpVAj4ILM)

Not necessarily. Any political opinion is formed based on a set of assumptions on human nature, made irrationally.
That's not true. It's plain relativism you're talking about.

Well said. And current immigration rates, notably from the Balkans, have not generally helped Switzerland that much economically and have not only produced but almost literally invented ethnic/multicultural tension in Switzerland.
No, Swiss right-wingers invented ethnic/multicultural tension. I have a feeling you won't find a whole lot of immigrants into Switzerland who feel particularly offended by Swiss people on the subway speaking their silly Swiss languages.

their silly Swiss languages.

Try not to be offensive, Schwabe... Yes, I'm totally aware I just did the same thing. If you consider being called Swabian offensive, that is.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Spp-poster.jpg

Anyone who thinks that is appropriate is sick.
I think it's quite appropriate. It translates to roughly "creating security", which is being done by booting out criminal elements from society. Naturally, enemies of the SVP will say "it's racist! You want to kick out the darkies"....without, of course, having any understand of the reality of the situation, for if they would, they'd know that many of the criminal elements the SVP want to boot out come from White/European immigrants to Switzerland from the Balkans.

That gets lost somewhere to enemies of the SVP though.
I'm pwned either way. You would have noticed that my position is a minority, and this is the case a lot of the time. Whether the person voting against individual freedom is Swiss or Polish doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me.
Except that let's say it's Swiss voting on in these communities and they voted in favor or iniativies that would keep their communities Swiss, which is obviously the reason you moved there in the first place. Nothing wrong with that.

How are you "pwned either way" when you compare that to let's say...a community of Albanians creating their community in the mirror image of a society which values zero freedom for women, where honor killings are not unheard of, where intermarriage into non-Albanian families is forbidden, and where pre-maritial sex is punishable by expulsion from the community.

Imagine being in Switzerland and finding your community transformed into that. I'd imagine you'd be alot more "pwned", and if you still don't realise it, wait until your daughter grows up in that kind of enviornment.

Du weißt voll nicht wie die "schweizerische" Shipis leben. Sie wollen nicht ein Teil von der Schweiz sein. Punkt. Sie schaffen so viele Probleme während einfach nichts positiv mitbringen. Ehrlich. Und wie würdest du eigentlich wissen was sie machen? Du warst noch nie in der Schweiz.

I know someone else who really likes the idea of living in Switzerland and wants to move there at some point. At the same time he is a rabid supporter of restrictive immigration and the SVP (who was pushing for this particular way of allowing citizenship).

He can only take the luxury of holding these two positions at the same time because he happens to be a wealthy American with a good chance of being allowed in. There is a certain hypocrisy in not taking a minute to think about the principle of the law, if it coincidentally wasn't the case that it stops him.
The difference is that the Swiss immigration system recognize differnet kinds of immigrants.

1. Educated/wealthy immigrants that are economically or socially beneficial for the nation.

2. Workers. Switzerland hasn't been needing as many of these, but that's how most of the Italians got to Switzerland, and indeed I believe Italians are Switzerland's biggest minority group.

3. Asylum. Mostly how the Balkan people ended up in Switzerland. This class of immigrant causes the most problems, are the most poor and uneducated and the most violent/criminal. This class is the problem. Indeed this is where the SVP is most outspoken.

I'm sure he understands that when he takes into account immigrating to Switzerland, if he truley wished to do that.

Yeah. European small town people, like the ones I had a frequent chance to spend time with in my 16 years in a European country filled with such towns. The ones were people complain that someone has started to sell Kebabs instead of whatever touristy version of medieval food is considered "traditional". People like those in the town of Schwyz.
These are their cultures and traditions, why should they be forced to accept change and new (often) incompatible people and cultures into them? If they're not broken, don't try to fix them.


I didn't realise I offended you. I will make an effort to be more politically correct in the future...
Don't be silly. If someone gets offended over the internet, they're not ready for real life.;)


That's not true. It's plain relativism you're talking about.


No, Swiss right-wingers invented ethnic/multicultural tension. I have a feeling you won't find a whole lot of immigrants into Switzerland who feel particularly offended by Swiss people on the subway speaking their silly Swiss languages.
Hahahah, that's a good joke. Are you serious dude? The SVP grew in size and power ridiculously simply because Swiss people (even traditionally "anti-establishment" people like skaters and such) have gotten so fucking tired of the Balkan people and their gangs, fighting, ghettos and simple disrespect of Swiss people, culture and laws in general.

These problems hardly existed in Switzerland before mass immigration arrived to this alpine country.

If you go to Switzerland and go out (with Swiss people), you are told to avoid "d Albaner" so they don't go "Yo! Schwiizerkäsman!" and then try to jump you for one of any reasons, or sometimes if they really don't have one, just because you looked in a direction their sister/cousin happend to be in. It's pathetic and a burden on Swiss society. They don't bring anything positive and far too much negative.

speaking their silly Swiss languages.
Du hesch scho rächt. D Sproche isch huerre komisch.:p

Swiss politics must have alot more room for outrageous behavior, I mean even in America the GOP would never get away with a sickening racist poster like that.

But go ahead SVP, try and create a new Apartheid, it will only empower the leftist parties even more.

Du hesch scho rächt. D Sproche isch huerre komisch.:p

But funnily enough, it's closer to English than German is :)

Swiss politics must have alot more room for outrageous behavior, I mean even in America the GOP would never get away with a sickening racist poster like that.

But go ahead SVP, try and create a new Apartheid, it will only empower the leftist parties even more.
lol

1. did you even read anything I wrote?

I'll re-quote it:

I think it's quite appropriate. It translates to roughly "creating security", which is being done by booting out criminal elements from society. Naturally, enemies of the SVP will say "it's racist! You want to kick out the darkies"....without, of course, having any understand of the reality of the situation, for if they would, they'd know that many of the criminal elements the SVP want to boot out come from White/European immigrants to Switzerland from the Balkans.

That gets lost somewhere to enemies of the SVP though.


2. An apartheid? lol lol lol. Don't be so ignorant of the country you are so quick to jump at.

It's a myth that the majority of ordinary people are wiser than the government. They're not, and they're proving it. When direct democracy produces grotesque and indefensible results, it's time to rethink some aspects of it.
Indeed. We should rethink democracy in full. Perhaps that'll purge the world of the execrable leftism that dominates these days.

Ossama Obama;13743853']Indeed. We should rethink democracy in full. Perhaps that'll purge the world of the execrable leftism that dominates these days.
You didn't think most people already know this? Leftism is synonymous with democracy and civil rights, and right-wing governments can only survive with massive police and military forces to keep them in power, along with a parasitic oligarchy stealing everyones wealth.

You didn't think most people already know this? Leftism is synonymous with democracy and civil rights, and right-wing governments can only survive with massive police and military forces to keep them in power, along with a parasitic oligarchy stealing everyones wealth.

LOL

Tell that to China, Cuba, North Korea, the former Eastern Block, USSR, various leftist african marxist revolutionary movements and so on.

Please...do go on. You living in a dream world is giving me the giggles.

You didn't think most people already know this?
No, I don't.

Leftism is synonymous with democracy and civil rights, and right-wing governments can only survive with massive police and military forces to keep them in power, along with a parasitic oligarchy stealing everyones wealth.
It would seem to me to be the reverse of this though, with countries like Sweden being the exception rather than the rule.

LOL

Tell that to China, Cuba, North Korea, the former Eastern Block, USSR, various leftist african marxist revolutionary movements and so on.

Please...do go on. You living in a dream world is giving me the giggles.
Pinochet, Franco, Suharto, Syngman Rhee etc etc etc?

Please don't give me that crap, all those brutal dictators were right-wingers.

LOL

Tell that to China, Cuba, North Korea, the former Eastern Block, USSR, various leftist african marxist revolutionary movements and so on.

Please...do go on. You living in a dream world is giving me the giggles.

Exactly how is an autocratic, centralized government that runs roughshod over the populace "left"?

A mob is an instance where in 'emergent' psychology operates, making a group of people do something they wouldn't do individually - thus, a lynching.

A hundred of people each acting separately are not a mob.


And I suppose you're going to pretend that common unifying factors like racism, fear mongering through word of mouth and other factors don't exist?

Pinochet, Franco, Suharto, Syngman Rhee etc etc etc?

Please don't give me that crap, all those brutal dictators were right-wingers.
Those guys were right wingers...but that doesn't negate in the least bit my comment that you ignored. Try again.

Exactly how is an autocratic, centralized government that runs roughshod over the populace "left"?

Strawman I assume.

Exactly how is an autocratic, centralized government that runs roughshod over the populace "left"?

By their own statements and judgement. They called and considered themselves communist, and that's as far left on the scale as you get.

Try not to be offensive, Schwabe...
That would work a lot better if I was actually from around there. As it is, the simple truth of the matter is that anyone south of the Elbe is simple-minded mountain folk. ;)

Except that let's say it's Swiss voting on in these communities and they voted in favor or iniativies that would keep their communities Swiss, which is obviously the reason you moved there in the first place. Nothing wrong with that.
1) They didn't vote in favour: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,557089,00.html
A Debacle for the Xenophobes

The right-wing SVP wanted to flex its muscles in a weekend referendum on immigration in Switzerland. Instead, the party's dramatic failure shows just how badly SVP figurehead Christoph Blocker miscalculated. The party could now be facing a slide to insignificance.

2) It's quite possible, even likely, that I don't move somewhere because it happens to be Swiss. I move somewhere because there's a job there that pays well, I can pay lower taxes, I like the landscape or climate etc. The expectation that the people however stay locked in time to conform with the mental image I formed of the place is stupid.

How are you "pwned either way" when you compare that to let's say...a community of Albanians creating their community in the mirror image of a society which values zero freedom for women, where honor killings are not unheard of, where intermarriage into non-Albanian families is forbidden, and where pre-maritial sex is punishable by expulsion from the community.
First of all, that's not exactly Albanian. Muslims =/= froth-at-the-mouth radical mysoginist Islamist.

Secondly, I can live in Switzerland and not be part of the Albanian community there. And that's true even if the majority of people in Switzerland were Albanian.

Imagine being in Switzerland and finding your community transformed into that. I'd imagine you'd be alot more "pwned", and if you still don't realise it, wait until your daughter grows up in that kind of enviornment.
My doughter is responsible for herself. If she's being an idiot, she'll find that there are consequences.

As it is, I choose my community regardless of location and time by choosing the individuals I actually interact with. There's a lot of bogans around where I live, but I choose not to associate with them.

Du weißt voll nicht wie die "schweizerische" Shipis leben. Sie wollen nicht ein Teil von der Schweiz sein. Punkt. Sie schaffen so viele Probleme während einfach nichts positiv mitbringen. Ehrlich. Und wie würdest du eigentlich wissen was sie machen? Du warst noch nie in der Schweiz.
Oh, I stand corrected. Holidaying there makes you an expert into the attitudes and troubles of immigrant communities in Switzerland.

Of course, I was in Switzerland too, but my holiday was clearly inferior to yours. On the plus side, I did grow up in a place with a large immigrant population, I am an immigrant and so are many of my friends here.

But I guess since most of us aren't Muslim, and some of us are even of European descent, that has no relevance to the topic at hand.

The difference is that the Swiss immigration system recognize differnet kinds of immigrants.
Yeah, and coincidentally you happen to fall into a certain category, while someone else does not.

1. Educated/wealthy immigrants that are economically or socially beneficial for the nation.
I like how you equate education and wealth with usefulness. Of course, in some people's case they have yet to prove any usefulness, despite having money and schooling bestowed upon them through no particular merit of their own. In some cases wealthy and educated people never turn out to be useful, while poor and uneducated people sometimes do.

The whole idea is that you get the people who don't have anything here, so when they create something, they do it here. Their inventions, their creation and provision of value can then benefit everyone here directly. Vastly superior to rich retirees, that.

2. Workers. Switzerland hasn't been needing as many of these, but that's how most of the Italians got to Switzerland, and indeed I believe Italians are Switzerland's biggest minority group.
Switzerland needs as many workers as Swiss employees are happy to employ. No state interference necessary.

3. Asylum. Mostly how the Balkan people ended up in Switzerland. This class of immigrant causes the most problems, are the most poor and uneducated and the most violent/criminal. This class is the problem. Indeed this is where the SVP is most outspoken.
The thing about asylum seekers is that they don't get the support systems. They tend to get shut away from communities, and in every way they deal with outside world it is made clear to them that they're temporary, a burden and probably should go sooner rather than later.

Exactly how do you expect someone like that, who is refused the permission to earn a living with honest work, to "assimilate"?

These are their cultures and traditions, why should they be forced to accept change and new (often) incompatible people and cultures into them? If they're not broken, don't try to fix them.
They're not forced to do anything. What the hell does it matter to your culture what the neighbour does on Christmas?

Look, if we're going to get anywhere in these discussions, you have to be very clear in how you treat these subjects. You have to provide a definition of culture that fits your point of view and which we can take from there. If culture is things like what you wear, what you eat, how you treat other people, what holidays you celebrate and so on, then immigration doesn't affect those to any significant degree. If you become more hazy and you talk about thinks like knowing that others do the same things and you don't feel alone, so that you can feel part of the collective more completely, then we have to ask very honestly: does that sort of feeling really trump the freedom of someone to live and work where they want to, or their wish to be protected from violence or get a better opportunity to escape poverty?

These problems hardly existed in Switzerland before mass immigration arrived to this alpine country.
And if people weren't "so fucking tired", there would be no problem. Crime can be dealt with by normal Swiss law, it's not an extraordinary circumstance and it really shouldn't be considered beyond criminal law. If we had a study that the children of ex-cons are more likely to be criminals, we wouldn't go ahead and de-sex everyone who goes to prison just to make sure we limit the inflow of criminals.

Everything beyond that is in people's heads. The question is: is there a good reason for it to be there?

If you go to Switzerland and go out (with Swiss people), you are told to avoid "d Albaner" so they don't go "Yo! Schwiizerkäsman!" and then try to jump you for one of any reasons, or sometimes if they really don't have one, just because you looked in a direction their sister/cousin happend to be in. It's pathetic and a burden on Swiss society. They don't bring anything positive and far too much negative.
Yeah, "they" say the same about Turks in Germany, Aboriginals here, Black people in the States and so on.

What you'll find is that if you don't listen to what "they" say and just see what happens, it turns out that "they" don't know what they're talking about.

By their own statements and judgement. They called and considered themselves communist, and that's as far left on the scale as you get.

left/right=false dichotomy. Even the modern political compass isn't that one dimensional, it has a libertarian/authoritarian area as well. And even that compass isn't totally correct.

So if you want to use some outdated French political polarization, that's fine, just don't look for accuracy.

By their own statements and judgement. They called and considered themselves communist, and that's as far left on the scale as you get.

Calling themselves communists and actually being communists are two different kettles of fish. I have yet to see evidence that they were actually "left". If labeling is all that matters, then I have some gla- I mean diamonds, to sell you.

You didn't think most people already know this? Leftism is synonymous with democracy and civil rights, and right-wing governments can only survive with massive police and military forces to keep them in power, along with a parasitic oligarchy stealing everyones wealth.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh wait you were serious.

I think you might not see it that way after those 25 years. And I think that if you were born in China by British parents, and have your upbringing in China, you may feel Chinese.

Maybe, but that dosen't change the fact that I am not Chinese.

I agree. Predictability and equality are extremely important principles here.

Yes but the problem is that some (not all) immagrants think and demand that they should get special treatment. And then they and people living in far off countries wonder why they don't want them around.

left/right=false dichotomy. Even the modern political compass isn't that one dimensional, it has a libertarian/authoritarian area as well. And even that compass isn't totally correct.

So if you want to use some outdated French political polarization, that's fine, just don't look for accuracy.

It may not be entirely accurate, but it is the recognized standard. And whether, on the two-dimensional axes, they are far left and Authoritarian, or far left and Libertarian, they are still far left.

Non Aligned States

Calling themselves communists and actually being communists are two different kettles of fish. I have yet to see evidence that they were actually "left". If labeling is all that matters, then I have some gla- I mean diamonds, to sell you.

The evidence is quite plain. Their economic structure of choice corresponds very nicely to Engels' centralized economic planning and decision making models. Likewise, they clearly emulated the ideas of some of the more radical of the german communists in the political structures - as they believed that localized control (Marx's model) was insufficient to the needs of the industrialized state.

If you want to call them false Marxists, I'd actually agree. But Marx was not the be all and end all of communist thought, and they were certainly communists.

Du weißt voll nicht wie die "schweizerische" Shipis leben. Sie wollen nicht ein Teil von der Schweiz sein. Punkt. Sie schaffen so viele Probleme während einfach nichts positiv mitbringen. Ehrlich. Und wie würdest du eigentlich wissen was sie machen? Du warst noch nie in der Schweiz.
Oh, I stand corrected. Holidaying there makes you an expert into the attitudes and troubles of immigrant communities in Switzerland.

Of course, I was in Switzerland too, but my holiday was clearly inferior to yours. On the plus side, I did grow up in a place with a large immigrant population, I am an immigrant and so are many of my friends here.

But I guess since most of us aren't Muslim, and some of us are even of European descent, that has no relevance to the topic at hand.
Do stand corrected. I don't know what Atlantian's sources are, but he happens to be as correct as he can be. It's not just the Albanians, hell it's not just people from the Balkans (and definately not all of the Muslims, see Serbs for example), but it's an immigrant group referred to as "Schipis", whether they're Albanian or not. Yes, the Albanians provided the name to a whole group of social nuisances. And trust me, they ARE like that. I live in a part of the city where number of immigrants just stepped over the 50% boundary. I went to school here. There were a LOT of Swiss who were either avoiding me at first or downright hating me because of their previous experience with immigrants, but the biggest problems I had was with the immigrants themselves. Bad times.

The only problem with prejudices, as justified as they may be (they're pretty up-to-date), is that there's a minority of immigrants (the minority inside the minority), that isn't like that and takes collateral damage. I'm part of this minority and let me tell you, we're the ones who are REALLY "pwned" as you put it.

The only problem with prejudices, as justified as they may be (they're pretty up-to-date), is that there's a minority of immigrants (the minority inside the minority), that isn't like that and takes collateral damage. I'm part of this minority and let me tell you, we're the ones who are REALLY "pwned" as you put it.
I grew up in Hamburg-Jenfeld, it was a similar situation. You get a lot of newcomers and their children, which have nowhere else to go and not a whole lot of opportunities to fix things up. The German school system is particularly bad (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2020915,00.html) on this issue, but the basic gist of it is the same pretty much everywhere on the continent. Parents only slowly learn the new language (I saw it with my parents and English) and are unable to teach their young kids, who then enter primary school or Kindergarten with very poor or no German. The only kids they can talk to are other immigrants, and their minders and teachers are not trained or unwilling to make an effort to prepare them further. They end up lagging behind and never manage to catch up.

Add a popular culture that isn't exactly conducive to following rules or making an effort to learn and work hard (which is again strengthened by just how difficult it seems to be to do well even if you do all the right things), and you get disproportional numbers of young people from immigrant families pushed into a certain direction. You'd be well aware of that.

The question is how to react. One option is to make it easier to fit in, the other is to give into the essentially xenophobic impulses which caused the problem in the first place. Back when the first immigrants came in they were shut into their own communities because no self-respecting German would speak to them. And now, 20 years or so later, those same self-respecting Germans are saying that the immigrants are "refusing to integrate" and want to get rid of all the foreigners.

There is something wrong with that reaction. It doesn't take into account cause and effect, it hurts those immigrants like you and me who did manage, it violates basic rights of human beings, it violates the basic obligations that justify the existence of government in the first place, it costs more than it brings in in the long run and more often than not the real underlying motives of the proponents are even less acceptable than any arguments about integration or social cohesion.

I learned to speak the language in 2-3 years, I came here when I was 11. Some are already citizens and still can't speak properly. Even more of them are here ever since they were toddlers and they still can't speak German in a decent way. Integration is solely a matter of will and is up to the immigrant. Natives can either help or stall it, but there are both types of natives in every single bloody country, so you can't blame society. Personally, I found a lot of friends who are mainly right-wing and who genuinely admire my will to integrate. It's nothing to admire, it ought to be common sense. Yet it's harldy a requirement. Nothing forces immigrants to integrate, and you know people. They won't lift a finger without someone forcing them to. Well-integrated foreigners aren't a minority, but they can't be called a majority either and that's the problem.

We're starting to live in a society completely void of responsibilities. Burned your tongue? It's McDonald's' fault for making the coffee so hot! Ate a super-glue-sandwich? It's the company's fault for not printing NOT DIGESTEABLE on the tube! Can't speak German if your life depended on it and hanging around in a crowd where you'll only speak Serbocroatian/Turkish/Albanian and the only cool thing to do is mug people? Blame the Swiss!

I was about to ask if it's just me or is there something wrong with society, but I'm beginning to think that I don't want to hear the answer.

... I feel sympathy for the Swiss. They're at home and have been at home since the Middle Ages. Nowadays their environment changed into something more hostile. They trusted their democratic system to take care of it and it failed them. They got angry (who's to blame?) and tried to take matters into their own hands, inefficiently but in an honest way and now people are calling them racists and oppressors. Not just any people, but people from countries where they're too comfortable to do something about their own government violating human rights (and no, citizenship in any country is NOT a human right). I admire the SVP not because its immigration policy, not even for its stance on law and order, but because it's the only party that has the courage to tell the world (be it the EU, the US, or China) "who the hell are you to try to interfere?".

Zuerst vor der eigenen Türe kehren!

Those guys were right wingers...but that doesn't negate in the least bit my comment that you ignored. Try again.

Ignore him. Really, just ignore his posts; no amount of reason, fact or intelligence will do anything for him. Let him wallow in his ignorance, spew forth his polemic and make a gold standard arse of himself.

I learned to speak the language in 2-3 years, I came here when I was 11. Some are already citizens and still can't speak properly. Even more of them are here ever since they were toddlers and they still can't speak German in a decent way. Integration is solely a matter of will and is up to the immigrant. Natives can either help or stall it, but there are both types of natives in every single bloody country, so you can't blame society. Personally, I found a lot of friends who are mainly right-wing and who genuinely admire my will to integrate. It's nothing to admire, it ought to be common sense. Yet it's harldy a requirement. Nothing forces immigrants to integrate, and you know people. They won't lift a finger without someone forcing them to. Well-integrated foreigners aren't a minority, but they can't be called a majority either and that's the problem.

We're starting to live in a society completely void of responsibilities. Burned your tongue? It's McDonald's' fault for making the coffee so hot! Ate a super-glue-sandwich? It's the company's fault for not printing NOT DIGESTEABLE on the tube! Can't speak German if your life depended on it and hanging around in a crowd where you'll only speak Serbocroatian/Turkish/Albanian and the only cool thing to do is mug people? Blame the Swiss!

I was about to ask if it's just me or is there something wrong with society, but I'm beginning to think that I don't want to hear the answer.

... I feel sympathy for the Swiss. They're at home and have been at home since the Middle Ages. Nowadays their environment changed into something more hostile. They trusted their democratic system to take care of it and it failed them. They got angry (who's to blame?) and tried to take matters into their own hands, inefficiently but in an honest way and now people are calling them racists and oppressors. Not just any people, but people from countries where they're too comfortable to do something about their own government violating human rights (and no, citizenship in any country is NOT a human right). I admire the SVP not because its immigration policy, not even for its stance on law and order, but because it's the only party that has the courage to tell the world (be it the EU, the US, or China) "who the hell are you to try to interfere?".

Zuerst vor der eigenen Türe kehren!

Well said I think. You do find a lot of people who are living in their own comfortable world, and have no idea of the situation and then criticise the people who have had to live with problems for attempting to fix them.

Logically, I'd say that the people of the country have the right to say who enters their country and who doesn't. It's sort of like "I don't want him in my house!" except on a bigger scale.

Logically, I'd say that the people of the country have the right to say who enters their country and who doesn't. It's sort of like "I don't want him in my house!" except on a bigger scale.

No don't be stupid, you should let anyone in your house, however, they want to come in whenever they want to come in and you shouldn't be allowed to have a say about it.

No don't be stupid, you should let anyone in your house, however, they want to come in whenever they want to come in and you shouldn't be allowed to have a say about it.

You don't own your country. Huge difference there. And since when was the last time your house could evict you when it deems necessary? Eminent domain remember?

You don't own your country. Huge difference there. And since when was the last time your house could evict you when it deems necessary? Eminent domain remember?

I was always under the impression that the people of the country control that particular country.

I was always under the impression that the people of the country control that particular country.

Well, yes and no. In theory, they should be, in practice they aren't. Plus it's sometimes better to leave certain matters to experts instead of the unqualified: trade agreements for example. Hell, I'd even approve of the government having the last say in case of citizenships if they did it right, which they don't.

Let's put it this was: the people of the country should always have the possibility of regaining or retaining control of that particular country.

If they're not criminals, they don't have anything to hide. If they are, a close inspection would detect them before they'd gain citizenship.
That doesn't make sense in the context of my last post. You claim "likely criminals" who don't get the citizenship will get it anyway, through a court. That's wrong. And if they're not criminals, a closer inspection won't be able to predict the future.

My example was a good one, because it showed that people who used to make the streets unsafe, but didn't break the law with being convicted are very likely to break it once they have the safety of a Swiss citizenship. The people wouldn't care about their rights to veto the handout of citizenships if the filter which should be there to KEEP OUT CRIMINALS would work. But apparently, it's NOT working.
No, your example failed.

And we are talking about humans here. There's no guarantee that they won't ever do anything illegal at some point. You can't guarantee that you or I won't do something illegal for the rest of our lives either.

And if it's a problem, fix it. Don't start creating new problems.

That was an example showing that you don't need ballots to get completely insane decisions in this matter.
Yes, but that doesn't matter, because - as I said - with the ordinary process you get a right to appeal the insane decisions. On the other hand, should the government agency that hands out citizenship be too lenient, the politicians (and the voters) can make them tighten up their policies. That's the right way of fixing the problem in a democratic state where the rule of law is respected.

No - it - isn't. The only condition for acquiring citizenship is convincing a board of politicians that you'll behave well. Been selling pot to youngsters? In Glarus you'd be booted, in Lausanne you'd be greeted. The word "criminality" has a cosmetic value of 80% in the current system.
If it's that obvious you should have no problem proving your statement.

I know (see) that it doesn't right now.
Why not?


Then why oppose measures which would do just that?
Because, as I've said, of predictability and equality, and that being granted citizenship is something more and different than be granted a residence permit. And when you've managed to aquire citizenship, especially after the long period and strict rules that you find in Switzerland, you should be protected.

As I've said before: Once you've gone 12 years without a criminal conviction you should have earned the trust of the society and be allowed to take part in the political life of your new nation.

You shouldn't keep individuals outside the political life of the nation because of the actions of other individuals.


How do you know they weren't convicted? The article was written during the trials, I hardly believe you could predict the outcome from the example I gave you. Or are you just speculating? Actually, the trial still goes on.
See? The bolded part is the important part.

The problem is, they CAN'T be dealt with adequately, because the absolute maximum they could give them would be 10 years. With this being their first conviction, you can't expect more than 5 years. Not - enough. Murderers ought to be removed from society and the only option would be deporting them, which CAN'T be done, because they're CITIZENS. I repeat: you - can't - free - society - from - these - murderers - thanks - to - the - loose - citizenship - requirements - that - let - these - thugs - in. Joe Swisscheese doesn't organise a gang in secondary school, these did. Joe Swisscheese doesn't have a reputation of cutting faces with bottles, these do.
And I don't care what reputation they had. I care about their previous criminal records, which it seems that the two people holding Swiss passport had none of.

And if what you stutter is true, than it is again a failure of the Swiss criminal justice system, not the rules for granting citizenship. After all, one of the three was not a citizen, so there's no basis to claim that it wouldn't have happened if the other two didn't get citizenship. And there's not been any evidence presented here that they serve as a future threat either, making it vital to have them deported.


They would be enough, but aren't. That's the point. The people deciding who to let in are looking for voters. And no, nobody wants ANY kind of criminal, not even petty ones. It's NOT okay to break the law and if you really take a dump on a society's rules by either doing drugs or selling them, feel free to go elsewhere.
You would call selling drugs a petty crime? I wouldn't. I was thinking of speeding, or parking violations, or singular instances of shoplifting, or drinking in a public place.

What else should it be???
A "filter" to decide who can take part in the political system of the host country.

The violation of this trust should be detected first, shouldn't it? The commitees are doing a bad job detecting... who am I kidding? The commitees don't even try to detect such violations of trust, as you put it.
They don't investigate an applicants criminal record?

They both need fixing and ironically, fixing the criminal system is at least as important for the SVP as fixing the bounds on immigration, it just doesn't get as much media coverage abroad (because who cares about Swiss policemen doubling patrols and the like? They want to hear about ze naaaaziiiis to make them feel better about themselves). Immigration isn't the A and O of crime, but it supplies half of it. Fixing the rules on citizenship wouldn't eliminate crime, but it certainly would crack down on a considerable part of it.
I think you're completely wrong on the last part.

You know, if you showed some statistics on the crime rates and the recidivism rates among naturalised citizens, you might be able to back up your claim.

You didn't prove me wrong yet.
So you can point to a single instance of me using the term "nazi" can you? :rolleyes:

And try to provide valid examples next time too.


You just said that being a resident for 3 years in Canada grants you the citizenship. That's bad. Okay, the Canadians may like it, but for Switzerland, it would mean the end of detecting criminals before they drop anchor.
Why is it bad? Is Canada being destroyed by naturalised criminals / citizens subverting their democratic system?


It doesn't seem to be working:
Welcome to Sweden (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JBpVAj4ILM)
Heh. No. Fox News has no credibility.

Besides, the clip doesn't show that the problems are caused by naturalised citizens, and that a stricter policy on granting citizenship would do anything to minimize any problems shown. So it's irrelevant.

Maybe, but that dosen't change the fact that I am not Chinese.
What would you be then?


Yes but the problem is that some (not all) immagrants think and demand that they should get special treatment. And then they and people living in far off countries wonder why they don't want them around.
I'm unsure of what kinds of "special treatment" some immigrants demand. Can you enlighten me?

I'm unsure of what kinds of "special treatment" some immigrants demand. Can you enlighten me?

Like when they said they wanted Sharia in the UK?

Like when they said they wanted Sharia in the UK?

Is that demanding "special treatment"?

Am I demanding special treatment if I'd said that I wanted the taxes placed on small businesses to be reduced too?

Like when they said they wanted Sharia in the UK?
All the immigrants in the UK got together and said they wanted Sharia?

And which interpretation of Sharia did they demand? Do you even know what 'Sharia' refers to?

Get your facts straight.

Easily.

You allow free immigration. People from cultures with nowhere near the same respect to individual liberty as your own arrive and vote. You're PWNed.

Given the 'respect to individual liberty' that "my own" "culture" has, I welcome the immigrants. I welcome their business, which in the sense of employers means more successful businesses, and in the sense of employees means more hard working employees. I like the fact that they have different foods and languages and traditions. It's a refreshing change, and I think the US is actually built on it whether it wants to be or not.

Or, you disallow free immigration. Everything stagnates - the economy, the society, until finally it turns into the equivalent of a bunch of paranoid rednecks huddling together in a barn and mumbling conspiracy theories.

Is that demanding "special treatment"?

Am I demanding special treatment if I'd said that I wanted the taxes placed on small businesses to be reduced too?

no because this would apply to all small businesses.

the Muslim immigrants who were requesting their interpretation Sharia, were in essence requesting that they have their own set of laws applied to them rather then the common law that exist in the UK.

this was mostly targeting family law and Debt law. Not in the UK so if any Britons wish to correct me or add too please feel free. I don't have the time to do more then skim your domestic issues.

That doesn't make sense in the context of my last post. You claim "likely criminals" who don't get the citizenship will get it anyway, through a court. That's wrong. And if they're not criminals, a closer inspection won't be able to predict the future.
How do you know that's wrong? My example shows that it's right. Just because you keep calling it a bad example, it doesn't make it one. They could've been filtered out, yet they weren't, so now they did something irreversably criminal with 2 of the 3 getting a mild sentence instead of deportation. A closer examination wouldn't have predicted a murder, but it would've shown that they're making society unsafe, which is more than enough imo (and in the opinion of many others) to refuse citizenship.

No, your example failed.
The only thing "wrong" about my example is that it concentrates a series of facts together. Facts you ignore like it's nobody's business.

And we are talking about humans here. There's no guarantee that they won't ever do anything illegal at some point. You can't guarantee that you or I won't do something illegal for the rest of our lives either.
Probability. As I said, almost half of all criminals are foreigners, which makes every foreigner more likely to commit crimes. If you detect those who have a history of criminal behaviour (see my example), you'll be able to make society safer by not letting him in (so when he commits a serious crime, he can be deported). And if he doesn't commit a serious crime, he already DID have a history of making society unsafe, so it's not the loss of a good citizen anyway. I still stand by my point of not needing to wait until the shit really hits the fan for some serious intervention. Petty criminals, who aren't even on the record do almost as much damage to society and to the reputation of immigrants, than murderers like those in my example.

And if it's a problem, fix it. Don't start creating new problems.
Why not prevent it, when it's possible?

Yes, but that doesn't matter, because - as I said - with the ordinary process you get a right to appeal the insane decisions.On the other hand, should the government agency that hands out citizenship be too lenient, the politicians (and the voters) can make them tighten up their policies. That's the right way of fixing the problem in a democratic state where the rule of law is respected.
I promise you that there WILL be initiatives to tighten the immigration laws. It's SVP policy to do so. But laws and carrying them out are two different types of ale. Right now, the law isn't being enforced properly, because nobody forces the commitees to lift a finger in the matter of determining whether someone is a criminal or not. Had this law been passed, communities would've had a chance to reform their citizenship procedure, but with a NO, every chance of improving the current bureaucratic system giving out citizenships has been wiped away.

If it's that obvious you should have no problem proving your statement.
Just because you're ignoring facts here, it doesn't mean I didn't prove my statement.

Why not?
See example. It's a good one.

As I've said before: Once you've gone 12 years without a criminal conviction you should have earned the trust of the society and be allowed to take part in the political life of your new nation.
It takes a lot to be convicted. If you spend your time mugging people or simply beating them up for fun, there's a very slight chance for the police to catch you. An investigation against unknown persons with baggy clothes, baseball hats and Balkanese accents never brings any results. You have to check deeper than the criminal record to locate criminals.

You shouldn't keep individuals outside the political life of the nation because of the actions of other individuals.
Don't worry, not even the own actions of an individual have a considerable chance of keeping one outside the nation. Actions of other individuals just stir hatred against the entire group.

See? The bolded part is the important part.
Ah, there's a huge difference between not being convicted and not being convicted yet. You made them sound innocent. You know, they will be convicted, because the evidence is overwhelming, it's just a question of what they'll get. The foreigner may or may not get deported, the two Bosniaks may get 2 years each on probation, they may even get 5. It's a matter of making them seem like a couple of victims of society, or as primitive brawlers.

And I don't care what reputation they had. I care about their previous criminal records, which it seems that the two people holding Swiss passport had none of.
As I said, not having a criminal record doesn't mean you aren't a criminal. One of them attacked and hurt someone with a broken beer bottle, yet he had a clean sheet. That's wrong, but just because the criminal system failed once, it doesn't mean that all safety nets of society must be cut as well. It's like saying that a car doesn't need airbags, because it's your job not to collide with things.

And if what you stutter is true, than it is again a failure of the Swiss criminal justice system, not the rules for granting citizenship.
It's the failure of both. Immigration authorities are also responsible for keeping out undesirable citizens. It's been their failure not to enquire about these individuals, because if they would've, they could've seen that they had a history of violence, which the police could've investigated. Double failure.

After all, one of the three was not a citizen, so there's no basis to claim that it wouldn't have happened if the other two didn't get citizenship.
Oh, it's not a matter of preventing first crimes, it's a matter of removing criminals from society for good. The citizens will not be removed, so murderers will be on the loose some years from now. The foreigner may be removed, that's one murderer less in Switzerland. Big difference.

And there's not been any evidence presented here that they serve as a future threat either, making it vital to have them deported.
They killed someone. That's evidence enough that they don't belong in society at all.

You would call selling drugs a petty crime? I wouldn't.
It's considered one of the lightest crimes in Switzerland. See, there is a difference between crimes and offences. That's why I consider EVERYONE having at least one crime listed in their register not eligible to become a citizen. But that's just me (and 1/3 of Switzerland).

I was thinking of speeding, or parking violations, or singular instances of shoplifting, or drinking in a public place.
Speeding and parking violations are offences, those aren't registered in the crime record. Fyi, the only thing you have to do when applying for citizenship is to acquire an extract from the crime record. If it's blank, you're surely on the boat. Even if it's not blank, you may be in, depending on your location. Shoplifting isn't considered a crime below a certain value of goods. Drinking in public is allowed.

A "filter" to decide who can take part in the political system of the host country.
That's utter nonsense. You can't possibly judge anyone's ability to vote. If you do, you might be an elitist, or you might be politically biased towards a certain political ideology or party. This is the very problem: Nowadays, immigration means that you have to convince a board of politicians that you'll vote for them. That's what the Swiss wanted to change.

They don't investigate an applicants criminal record?
See above.

I think you're completely wrong on the last part.
I repeat: nearly half of all criminals aren't citizens yet and a majority of prisoners are foreigners. That's considerable. So I think I'm completely right.

As I've said before: Once you've gone 12 years without a criminal conviction you should have earned the trust of the society and be allowed to take part in the political life of your new nation.
See above. It's hard to get caught with petty violence being so widespread and with so few possibilities of identifying the offenders in this case.

You know, if you showed some statistics on the crime rates and the recidivism rates among naturalised citizens, you might be able to back up your claim.
Once you become a citizen, you're recorded as one of the Swiss. Political correctness or the like. But I think you know that well enough. As far as charts go, the one I provided would be sufficient for someone who doesn't filter out inconvenient facts. Once again: almost half of all convicts are foreigners. That's more than 40000 criminals that ought to be barred from ever acquiring citizenship, a large majority of these should also be deported as soon as possible. As for those criminals who already got their Swiss passports, you can't do anything about them. Plus, why would you want a chart differentiating between immigrant citizens and real Swiss, when you've got a wonderful example of the very same kind of people and disregard it with dodgy explanations.

So you can point to a single instance of me using the term "nazi" can you? :rolleyes:
I believe you're referring to this:
Oh but Turaan you burgeois/racist/discriminating sod,
Irony is an intelligent form of humour. If you don't understand it, I'll refrain from using it in the future.

And try to provide valid examples next time too.
Both my example and my statistics are valid. The latter is by the government, the former is backed up by a guy's life who got bashed to death by 2 naturalised foreigners with a shady background and an unnaturalised one for which there's still hope to be deported. You're not exactly THE authority of invalidating facts.

Why is it bad? Is Canada being destroyed by naturalised criminals / citizens subverting their democratic system?
Read my post again. I said the Canadians may like this (thus it may be good for them), but such policies would be bad for Switzerland.

Heh. No. Fox News has no credibility.
Ah, so it's a hoax? Maybe they all made this up. AND they payed those Swedish policemen to give false statements, eh? Convenient enough.

Besides, the clip doesn't show that the problems are caused by naturalised citizens, and that a stricter policy on granting citizenship would do anything to minimize any problems shown. So it's irrelevant.
You weren't asking for the Swiss problem shown in a Swedish perspective. I posted that link as an answer to your claims that Sweden has tight laws for criminals. This was to show that laws don't mean anything when they're not applied or can't be applied anymore. Don't mix up contexts.

no because this would apply to all small businesses.

the Muslim immigrants who were requesting their interpretation Sharia, were in essence requesting that they have their own set of laws applied to them rather then the common law that exist in the UK.

this was mostly targeting family law and Debt law. Not in the UK so if any Britons wish to correct me or add too please feel free. I don't have the time to do more then skim your domestic issues.

There's been thread on this before, and if the demand for Sharia courts correspond to the Orthodox Jewish courts already in effect, how is it really asking for "special treatment"?

And the call for Sharia courts is less of an individual demand and more of a collective one - like my demand for small business tax breaks. It's a political statement, and not so much an individual demand of "special treatment".

That would work a lot better if I was actually from around there.

That response would make sense if I was trying to guess your Bundesland. But actually, anybody north of the Rhine is a 'Schwob' in some of our silly languages, so Hamburg-Jenfeld qualifies you as a Schwabe quite nicely.

That response would make sense if I was trying to guess your Bundesland. But actually, anybody north of the Rhine is a 'Schwob' in some of our silly languages, so Hamburg-Jenfeld qualifies you as a Schwabe quite nicely.

Huh? Swabians are a Southern German people. If he's from Hamburg he's likely a Saxon if anything. Huge difference. You can even tell by the language.

the Muslim immigrants who were requesting their interpretation Sharia, were in essence requesting that they have their own set of laws applied to them rather then the common law that exist in the UK.

this was mostly targeting family law and Debt law. Not in the UK so if any Britons wish to correct me or add too please feel free.
Gladly.

UK Muslim communities, not all 1st-generation immigrants, were arguing for civil cases to be heard in Islamic courts. Under UK law, disputing parties in civil cases can, and indeed are encouraged to, settle their dispute outside of the UK law courts, providing both parties freely agree. Currently, courts such as the Jewish Beth Din do just that.

However, criminal cases are not held outside of the UK law courts, and it is illegal to do so. Moreover, any Islamic court would still have to abide by UK law, so the idea that this is a back-door for corporal punishment or other oppressive measures is mistaken at best.

How do you know that's wrong? My example shows that it's right. Just because you keep calling it a bad example, it doesn't make it one. They could've been filtered out, yet they weren't, so now they did something irreversably criminal with 2 of the 3 getting a mild sentence instead of deportation. A closer examination wouldn't have predicted a murder, but it would've shown that they're making society unsafe, which is more than enough imo (and in the opinion of many others) to refuse citizenship.
How were they - these two individuals with no prior convictions - making society unsafe before this case? Disregarding for a moment that they have yet to be convicted?

The only thing "wrong" about my example is that it concentrates a series of facts together. Facts you ignore like it's nobody's business.
Oh dear.

You see, "still not convicted" (they may go free, who knows?) and "having no previous criminal record" (the third one has one, but he's not convicted of violence before) invalidates your example. I'm sorry, but it is a bad example and it fails. You should rather bring on the rape cases you mentioned.

Do you really wish to filter out people not based on anything they've done, but on what they may do, because of their country of origin? Because I would have to call that both bigoted and discriminatory.


Probability. As I said, almost half of all criminals are foreigners, which makes every foreigner more likely to commit crimes. If you detect those who have a history of criminal behaviour (see my example),
...which fails there, because of no prior convictions...
you'll be able to make society safer by not letting him in
...which would be an immigration issue regulated by residence permits and the like...
(so when he commits a serious crime, he can be deported). And if he doesn't commit a serious crime, he already DID have a history of making society unsafe, so it's not the loss of a good citizen anyway. I still stand by my point of not needing to wait until the shit really hits the fan for some serious intervention.
You don't. But you cannot rely on sweeping generalisations and guesswork. You have to have something concrete - like a prior criminal record.

Just because you come from the same country as a douchebag, doen't mean I should expect you to be a douchebag too.

Why not prevent it, when it's possible?
So now you would ban all immigrants from the country?

I don't think that's a good idea. A country needs immigration.

I promise you that there WILL be initiatives to tighten the immigration laws. It's SVP policy to do so.
And that would be an internal policy matter.


But laws and carrying them out are two different types of ale. Right now, the law isn't being enforced properly, because nobody forces the commitees to lift a finger in the matter of determining whether someone is a criminal or not. Had this law been passed, communities would've had a chance to reform their citizenship procedure, but with a NO, every chance of improving the current bureaucratic system giving out citizenships has been wiped away.
I don't believe that. Now you have a chance to reform the system while safeguarding the rule of law for immigrants, fighting discrimination, and allowing equality through a system of appeals. But you still have the opportunity to reform it - after all, you are a democracy.

Just because you're ignoring facts here, it doesn't mean I didn't prove my statement.
I'm not ignoring any facts, you have failed to provide them. Your statement that In Glarus you'd be booted, in Lausanne you'd be greeted after selling pot to youngsters is unproven, as is the claim that The word "criminality" has a cosmetic value of 80% in the current system.

You do know that "just because I say so" doesn't constitute proof, right?
See example. It's a good one.
Not at all.

It takes a lot to be convicted. If you spend your time mugging people or simply beating them up for fun, there's a very slight chance for the police to catch you. An investigation against unknown persons with baggy clothes, baseball hats and Balkanese accents never brings any results. You have to check deeper than the criminal record to locate criminals.
So... what? You should place them under surveillance? Deny them citizenship based on guesswork and hunches? Because they're the same ethnicity of someone who did something bad?

How would you check deeper?


Don't worry, not even the own actions of an individual have a considerable chance of keeping one outside the nation. Actions of other individuals just stir hatred against the entire group.
So convicted murderers will get citizenship, and you can show me cases of this?

Ah, there's a huge difference between not being convicted and not being convicted yet. You made them sound innocent. You know, they will be convicted, because the evidence is overwhelming, it's just a question of what they'll get. The foreigner may or may not get deported, the two Bosniaks may get 2 years each on probation, they may even get 5. It's a matter of making them seem like a couple of victims of society, or as primitive brawlers.
When they are convicted and sentenced, get back to me. Until then, I see no reason to go on further about this case. It's not a good example as it is now, and speculation - as you do - won't help either.

As I said, not having a criminal record doesn't mean you aren't a criminal.
But what else should the government go by? Guesswork and conjecture? (Sorry, I'm repeating the question now)


It's the failure of both. Immigration authorities are also responsible for keeping out undesirable citizens. It's been their failure not to enquire about these individuals, because if they would've, they could've seen that they had a history of violence, which the police could've investigated. Double failure.
I disagree. See above.


It's considered one of the lightest crimes in Switzerland. See, there is a difference between crimes and offences. That's why I consider EVERYONE having at least one crime listed in their register not eligible to become a citizen. But that's just me (and 1/3 of Switzerland).
What's the penalty for selling drugs?




That's utter nonsense. You can't possibly judge anyone's ability to vote. If you do, you might be an elitist, or you might be politically biased towards a certain political ideology or party. This is the very problem: Nowadays, immigration means that you have to convince a board of politicians that you'll vote for them. That's what the Swiss wanted to change.
It's not nonsense, it's what citizenship is all about.

And change it to a bord of bureaucrats then. They wouldn't take such considerations, and the rights to an appeal and to be given a reason for the rejection would still remain.


I repeat: nearly half of all criminals aren't citizens yet and a majority of prisoners are foreigners. That's considerable. So I think I'm completely right.
Actually, your claim that "Fixing the rules on citizenship wouldn't eliminate crime, but it certainly would crack down on a considerable part of it." is still an unproven statements, and you have presented few if any facts to back it up.


See above. It's hard to get caught with petty violence being so widespread and with so few possibilities of identifying the offenders in this case.
Heh, well, you've starting to paint a picture here. It's not that the rules on citizenship fails to protect Switzerland, it's that the police are incompetent and the courts are weak and lenient. Yet again, problems you should fix, and that you shouldn't blame on the rules on citizenship for existing.

Once you become a citizen, you're recorded as one of the Swiss. Political correctness or the like. But I think you know that well enough. As far as charts go, the one I provided would be sufficient for someone who doesn't filter out inconvenient facts.
So you can't provide evidence for your claims, and you only offer conjecture and guesswork based on statistics talking about just one part of the whole picture. That and unconvincing "facts". I see...

Plus, why would you want a chart differentiating between immigrant citizens and real Swiss, when you've got a wonderful example of the very same kind of people and disregard it with dodgy explanations.
Because your example sucks and isn't an example that's valid in this debate.

Regardless, you still only offer guesses.

I believe you're referring to this:

Irony is an intelligent form of humour. If you don't understand it, I'll refrain from using it in the future.
No, I was referring to this:
I almost wanted to present you with one of the several cases of ex-Yugoslavian and Albanian juveniles raping 12 year old Swiss girls, but I'm starting to get the feeling of you repeating yourself and saying "So what, they didn't break the law before. Help them integrate, will ya? Ye bloody nazis!".

Reading comprehension makes for intelligent debates. I suggest using it it in the future.

Both my example and my statistics are valid. The latter is by the government, the former is backed up by a guy's life who got bashed to death by 2 naturalised foreigners with a shady background and an unnaturalised one for which there's still hope to be deported. You're not exactly THE authority of invalidating facts.
Your statistics are valid, but lacking and not showing us what we'd like to see. The example is invalid and inapplicable.

Read my post again. I said the Canadians may like this (thus it may be good for them), but such policies would be bad for Switzerland.
Ah. I see what you mean now. Good thing I never suggested it be implemented in Switzerland :)

Ah, so it's a hoax? Maybe they all made this up. AND they payed those Swedish policemen to give false statements, eh? Convenient enough.
With Fox, you never know...

You weren't asking for the Swiss problem shown in a Swedish perspective. I posted that link as an answer to your claims that Sweden has tight laws for criminals. This was to show that laws don't mean anything when they're not applied or can't be applied anymore. Don't mix up contexts.
Um, no. I never made any such claims (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13743451&postcount=310). I showed you the system of "qualifying periods" in Sweden, but made no suggestions about any tightness of laws or lack thereof.

So you responded to a claim I never made by posting a link to an irrelevant story about how laws can't be applied - a story that doesn't say anything, neither directly nor indirectly, about citizenship at all. You missed the mark completely on that one. So much for your "context".

However, criminal cases are not held outside of the UK law courts, and it is illegal to do so. Moreover, any Islamic court would still have to abide by UK law, so the idea that this is a back-door for corporal punishment or other oppressive measures is mistaken at best.

Mistaken at best, and most likely a cynical ploy playing on Western fears of the Ebil Mozlem Terrorizt Hyvemynd stereotype.

Huh? Swabians are a Southern German people. If he's from Hamburg he's likely a Saxon if anything. Huge difference. You can even tell by the language.

In the very post you were quoting, I was saying that it didn't matter where he actually came from. Nationalism works this way.

I learned to speak the language in 2-3 years, I came here when I was 11. Some are already citizens and still can't speak properly. Even more of them are here ever since they were toddlers and they still can't speak German in a decent way. Integration is solely a matter of will and is up to the immigrant.
The question is though: when you came to Switzerland, who taught you the language? I mean, it's likely that your parents weren't able to, just as my parents couldn't have taught me English.

I went to school, and I was lucky enough that they had a "German Immersion" program here where classes were taught in German to Australian kids who were doing well in German class. Being with those kids allowed me for a period to listen to them speaking English to me while I was able to speak German to them.

Those are the sort of habits that come when you come to an environment and you can't communicate with anyone: you grasp at straws, and even knowing that it won't help you learn the language won't stop you from doing so. If in doubt, being able to communicate now is more important than learning a new language 2-3 years from now.

So if there is already a large enough group of kids from your country around, those are the people you're more likely to talk to and spend time with, the result being that none of you improve your language skills. In my case a lot of the people I met weren't in German Immersion and I had to speak English to them, and the program ended about 2 months after I came here. In the case of a lot of those immigrants, they're never really forced to expand their horizon.

That's the problem, and it's a problem of schooling more than anything else. Ultimately when you get large proportions of kids with different language backgrounds, you need to change the way teaching in class works, rather than going along as you used to and then blaming those kids from not taking part. Yes, obviously personal engagement is a big, maybe the biggest, part of it, and you can't really manufacture that in people. But that is true in Swiss kids as well: there are plenty who couldn't care less about how they do at school.

Nothing forces immigrants to integrate, and you know people. They won't lift a finger without someone forcing them to. Well-integrated foreigners aren't a minority, but they can't be called a majority either and that's the problem.
Force isn't required. As you say, integrating to the point where you can function well is common sense. It has clear benefits (and the easier it is to become a citizen and be accepted in mainstream native society, the greater those benefits are), but it also has costs. The more difficult it is the more likely that the costs to the person exceed the benefits.

Again, a primary way to address this is the education system. Realistically, if people would just ignore for a minute the quite secondary point that these people are immigrants, it would become clear to them that the way to fix a proportion of young people who grow up disillusioned and without any particular goals or will to engage with the world beyond their little clique is in fact in the classroom.

But somehow I don't think that the SVP would happily vote in favour of an expansion of school budgets to allow for bilingual teaching and all the other techniques that might make sense.

Can't speak German if your life depended on it and hanging around in a crowd where you'll only speak Serbocroatian/Turkish/Albanian and the only cool thing to do is mug people? Blame the Swiss!
If I am to learn a language, it has to make some sense to me. Unless I just learn it for fun, I need to be able to use it. If Swiss people won't talk to me because I have the wrong skin colour, and they'll publically humiliate me by voting down my application several times, exactly what do I get by learning the language?

You can't go around saying: "I don't like you, I don't want you to be here, I don't want to see your funny foods and customs around here, but you must learn my language." Why would I bother?

... I feel sympathy for the Swiss. They're at home and have been at home since the Middle Ages.
No, they're at home since they moved or were born there. I'm reasonably certain that no Swiss person is old enough to have seen the Middle Ages, and therefore none of them have been at home for that long.

That's precisely the same as with the immigrants, by the way.

Nowadays their environment changed into something more hostile. They trusted their democratic system to take care of it and it failed them.
They're making it up in their own heads. Whenever anyone talks about "the good old days" where things weren't as bad as they are today, chances are this world they're looking back to never existed. People tend to overlook the problems of the past when they're looking at the problems of the present.

They got angry (who's to blame?) and tried to take matters into their own hands, inefficiently but in an honest way and now people are calling them racists and oppressors.
That's because their anger is not at criminal youths. Their anger is at immigration. There is no causal relationship between the two, and that's blatantly obvious to anyone who would bother to have a look.

They don't bother, which means they have some alternative reason why they're talking about immigration rather than youth crime. And guess what, from what I've seen back in Hamburg, there is no better way to describe a lot of those people than as "racist".

Not just any people, but people from countries where they're too comfortable to do something about their own government violating human rights (and no, citizenship in any country is NOT a human right).
Well does the government have the right to stop me from moving somewhere within the country? Nope.
Does the government have the right to stop me from moving out of the country? Nope.

A pretty good argument is thus made that ceteris paribus, we consider a right to free movement on public property and the right to acquire shelter from whoever and wherever we want does exist.

So, what is really different about the case of immigration? I'm still waiting for someone to tell me. And until someone can make a convincing case, I'm afraid that I don't consider it seperately from any other form of moving.

As for citizenship: to the extent that it confers the right to vote to someone who is paying taxes and wants to decide how they're spent, or is otherwise affected by government decisions, I'd most certainly say that one should have a right to citizenship. We don't exclude people who happen to have been born in the country from voting and it would be quite a scandal if the government tried.

I admire the SVP not because its immigration policy, not even for its stance on law and order, but because it's the only party that has the courage to tell the world (be it the EU, the US, or China) "who the hell are you to try to interfere?".
You must be a huge fan of the Burmese Junta then.

How were they - these two individuals with no prior convictions - making society unsafe before this case? Disregarding for a moment that they have yet to be convicted?
Answer:
"One of the three was involved in a fight. He attacked a youngster with a broken beer bottle and injured him on the face." According to Gobbi, the offender fled.


You see, "still not convicted" (they may go free, who knows?) and "having no previous criminal record" (the third one has one, but he's not convicted of violence before) invalidates your example. I'm sorry, but it is a bad example and it fails.
They killed someone, stop ignoring it. The only thing that would invalidate my example would be that guy rising from the dead and denying that he was ever attacked, because only that would provide us with the illusion you're trying to create with your posts: that there has been no killing.


Do you really wish to filter out people not based on anything they've done, but on what they may do, because of their country of origin? Because I would have to call that both bigoted and discriminatory.
No, and I've been telling you this for the last 3 posts or so. But I'm too tired to type them again, so I'll just refresh your memory by quoting myself:
If you detect those who have a history of criminal behaviour (see my example), you'll be able to make society safer by not letting him in (so when he commits a serious crime, he can be deported).
...
It's been their failure not to enquire about these individuals, because if they would've, they could've seen that they had a history of violence, which the police could've investigated.
If they're not criminals, they don't have anything to hide. If they are, a close inspection would detect them before they'd gain citizenship.
Unless each foreigner is closely examined for tendencies towards agressive behaviour,...
I want each and every foreigner to be examined for criminal behaviour, so criminals will be kept out, non-criminals will be let in and everybody's happy. Period. Ah, but who am I kidding... if you've ignored this thrice, what will make you realise this now?

...which fails there, because of no prior convictions...
As I said, not having a criminal record doesn't mean you aren't a criminal. One of them attacked and hurt someone with a broken beer bottle, yet he had a clean sheet.

...which would be an immigration issue regulated by residence permits and the like...
Residence permits? So basically you would approve of the filtering measures I proposed, but only if they're carried out during the application for a residence permit, but not during the application for citizenship? It doesn't make the slightest sense to me, seeing that less time to examine gives the authorities a harder time determining whether the applicant is a criminal or not.

You don't. But you cannot rely on sweeping generalisations and guesswork. You have to have something concrete - like a prior criminal record.
Or like a thorough examination by authorities. As I already quoted myself in this post, you can commit crimes and not having them on the record in practice.

Just because you come from the same country as a douchebag, doen't mean I should expect you to be a douchebag too.
No you shouldn't and neither do I.
The only problem with prejudices, as justified as they may be (they're pretty up-to-date), is that there's a minority of immigrants (the minority inside the minority), that isn't like that and takes collateral damage. I'm part of this minority and let me tell you, we're the ones who are REALLY "pwned" as you put it.

So now you would ban all immigrants from the country?
Haha, who's putting words into whose mouth? As for my prevention methods, see above.

I don't think that's a good idea. A country needs immigration.
Who are you arguing against? Since I never said that I want to ban all immigrants, I didn't really have an idea for you to think it's bad, eh?

And that would be an internal policy matter.
Nobody said otherwise, but let me repeat:
It's the failure of both [the criminal justice system AND the immigration policies].

I don't believe that. Now you have a chance to reform the system while safeguarding the rule of law for immigrants, fighting discrimination, and allowing equality through a system of appeals. But you still have the opportunity to reform it - after all, you are a democracy.
Did you actually READ the law that was trying to be passed? Democracy or not, a law being rejected by the people has little chances of being passed in the future. And this was THE law to reform the naturalisation process. By saying no, the people ruled that it's all right as it is.

Not at all.
A STRIKING ARGUMENT! Oops, I forgot I should refrain from being ironic. Sorry.

So... what? You should place them under surveillance? Deny them citizenship based on guesswork and hunches? Because they're the same ethnicity of someone who did something bad?

How would you check deeper?
Check for offences he made, check the school records for disciplinary entries and make them take a psychoanalytical test similar to the one taken by recruits to the army. If nothing is found, give them the green light. I admit that there'll still be a number of foreigners that simply never could get caught, but for those who WILL get caught and barred, society just made a leap towards safety. And I don't even want disproportionate "penalties": three extra years to wait for the citizenship and stay clean for setting fire to a tree in school, five for smoking pot and ten for selling it would be a good start. Of course, experience would show where to invest in this system...
A friend of mine had the idea to give each foreigner five penalty points. Shoplifting or speeding would deduce one point, doing drugs 3 points, stealing or assault (such as attacking someone with a broken beer bottle) 4 points, rape or above 5 points which would already mean an instant deportation. At the end of the 12year period, you'll get another 3 years to wait for every point you lost, at 1 point you'd be barred from becoming citizen.
About the exact methods of keeping criminals out, I'm even ready for a discussion. The main thing is, that right now, criminals, who could be deported if the system worked, are either on the loose in Switzerland or will soon be. That's what this law was about: scrap the old system and every community makes a new one for itself: because quite frankly, everything would be better than a bunch of politicians admitting potential voters and rejecting probable political opponents.

So convicted murderers will get citizenship, and you can show me cases of this?
Who said murderers? I said criminals. Yet again you're trying to put words in my mouth. Now here's a brand new example for you to dismiss:
There had been a fight between Albanians in Grenchen, which ended in a brawl and one of them had been ejected from the club it took place in, along with his brother. The said Albanian waited for his opponents to leave the club, followed their car up to the motorway and willfully collided with him. The regional court sentenced the offender to 2 1/2 years of penitentiary because of premeditated homicide among others, since the victims escaped death narrowly. The federal court repelled this sentence, claiming that the fact that the others survived was intentional and thanks to the driving skills of the offender. Here's the protocol from the federal court. (http://jumpcgi.bger.ch/cgi-bin/JumpCGI?id=28.12.2006_6P.141/2006)
So there. An Albanian wanted to kill someone, he got convicted, but thanks to the federal court, this crime will be recorded as causing a traffic accident at worst.

When they are convicted and sentenced, get back to me. Until then, I see no reason to go on further about this case. It's not a good example as it is now, and speculation - as you do - won't help either.
Ah, your tactics of "waiting for a court response" isn't as idiotic as ignoring the case seemed at first. You seem to know well that a trial like this can go on for many months and that their first sentence won't mean a thing, because they'll take this to the federal court. Not bad, not bad at all. I wonder if the mods will approve of me resurrecting this thread in a couple of years from now. Plus, this somehow allows you to completely ignore a person's death. Why, what did the student do? What happened to him? Ooooh well, the court hasn't decided what happened to him, so we'll have to wait a couple of years now. Up to then, he could've died of an amazement-induced heart attack as he saw the three brawlers, for all that matters.

But what else should the government go by? Guesswork and conjecture? (Sorry, I'm repeating the question now)
...
I disagree. See above.
I don't want to repeat my answer. See above.

What's the penalty for selling drugs?
Selling light drugs such as pot only gives you a fine. The most extreme case of drug trafficking can get you up to 3 years of prison.

It's not nonsense, it's what citizenship is all about.
Yes, citizenship IS about voting, but the matter of giving out passports should NOT be in ANY way connected to politics. You cannot tell if an applicant is eligible to vote or not, because there are no standards for that.

And change it to a bord of bureaucrats then. They wouldn't take such considerations, and the rights to an appeal and to be given a reason for the rejection would still remain.
As I said, I'm not debating on how the immigration system should be changed, because there are more methods than I can imagine. The fact remains however, that ANY kind of change in the naturalisation process has become highly unprobable for the next 4 years or so.

Actually, your claim that "Fixing the rules on citizenship wouldn't eliminate crime, but it certainly would crack down on a considerable part of it." is still an unproven statements, and you have presented few if any facts to back it up.
1. The statistics I provided show that almost half of all convicts are foreigners and that there are well above 40000 foreign convicts in Switzerland. -> Foreigners are more likely to get convicted -> Foreigners are more likely to commit crimes
2. There are two ways one can deal with criminals. If they're citizens, the most effective way is to lock them up, thus freeing society from them temporarily. If they aren't citizens, the most effective way is to to deport them, thus preserving society indefinitely from them.
3. Thus, just as there is a higher probability for foreigners to be criminals, there is a high probability that tightening rules on citizenship will keep more criminals from getting the Swiss passport and escaping deportation in case of a serious crime.
QED
Note: since non-criminals would still get through, there will be no victims of an objective, but strict examination before naturalisation.

Heh, well, you've starting to paint a picture here. It's not that the rules on citizenship fails to protect Switzerland, it's that the police are incompetent and the courts are weak and lenient. Yet again, problems you should fix, and that you shouldn't blame on the rules on citizenship for existing.
Somehow you think that just because the police CAN'T do much about petty crime (it's got to do more with practical boundaries than incompetency), and the federal court DOES let previously convicted criminals get away with most of it (I can't and won't excuse the courts being so lenient - that's yet another grave problem), it automatically means that the police and courts are the sole problems and the immigration system shouldn't be blamed for anything. No logic there, it's just a dodgy assumption.

So you can't provide evidence for your claims, and you only offer conjecture and guesswork based on statistics talking about just one part of the whole picture. That and unconvincing "facts". I see...
Evidence is found in examples, not in statistics, because the government doesn't make a difference between immigrants and natives once they're all citizens. It's not my fault that you discard evidence as "unconvincing". Just because they don't convince you, people are still dead, injured and offended by those who supply the evidence. That's why your selective acceptance of facts doesn't go beyond this forum.


Because your example sucks and isn't an example that's valid in this debate.
...and [you] disregard it with dodgy explanations.

Regardless, you still only offer guesses.
You call them guesses, I call them examples out of real life.

Reading comprehension makes for intelligent debates. I suggest using it it in the future.
If you want to list your excuses of why you didn't understand irony, a form of humour which requires a certain intelligence on the reader's part to understand what's being meant, start another topic. Suggesting something I promised in the previous post also doesn't do anything but waste space. I already told you I'd try to stop overexerting your comprehensive capabilities with humour. It's the equivalent of me pretending that you're suffering of Asperger's. You won't have to worry about humour double-crossing your intelligence again.

Your statistics are valid, but lacking and not showing us what we'd like to see.
Thought so. They show you exactly what you don't want to see. That there is a disproportionately large amount of foreigners being convicted, which makes foreigners more likely to be convicts, thus having committed crimes than natives. I'm convinced that this wasn't what you wanted to see.

The example is invalid and inapplicable.
See above.

Ah. I see what you mean now. Good thing I never suggested it be implemented in Switzerland :)
Is this the first thing we agree on?

With Fox, you never know...
I'd expected a much more serious comment on this.

Um, no. I never made any such claims (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13743451&postcount=310). I showed you the system of "qualifying periods" in Sweden, but made no suggestions about any tightness of laws or lack thereof.

So you responded to a claim I never made by posting a link to an irrelevant story about how laws can't be applied - a story that doesn't say anything, neither directly nor indirectly, about citizenship at all. You missed the mark completely on that one. So much for your "context".
Then it was me misinterpreting what you wrote when you posted that they have a fun system for criminals. Perhaps you DID mean "fun" in the traditional sense. See, I thought you meant "effective" or "harsh on criminals", when you said "fun". Sorry I thought you made a joke or something alike.

You should rather bring on the rape cases you mentioned.
Here's one of them:
On the weekend of 11./12.9.2006, a 13 year old girl was repeatedly raped. The metropolitan police of Zürich arrested 13 persons involved in the case: 12 adolescents between 15 and 17 years of age and an 18 year old adult. The offenders are from Switzerland, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, the Dominican Republic, Italy and Bosnia-Herzegowina. All of the arrested are residents of Zürich city. Initial investigations showed that there have been more offences committed.
Source (http://www.stapo-content.ch/artikel.php?id=4665&LOG_uin=)


I'm not ignoring any facts, you have failed to provide them. Your statement that In Glarus you'd be booted, in Lausanne you'd be greeted after selling pot to youngsters is unproven, as is the claim that The word "criminality" has a cosmetic value of 80% in the current system.

You do know that "just because I say so" doesn't constitute proof, right?
The statement about GL vs VD was a conclusion, I give you that. As for the second statement, I don't know how many times I have to repeat to you that you're admitted or rejected by a board of politicians and that offences, as well as certain acts of criminality (such as causing traffic accidents) are disregarded in general.
And don't make it seem that those two statements are the only ones I presented. You disregarded the death of a person as proof of violence by three foreigners and you also disregarded statistics. Not to mention you simply refuse to use or accept the use of logics. But don't worry, now I provided you with a series of different facts you can disregard, so you don't have to ignore the same thing over and over again.

The question is though: when you came to Switzerland, who taught you the language? I mean, it's likely that your parents weren't able to, just as my parents couldn't have taught me English.
I learned it myself. The books thought me, and I had the same German teacher everyone else had. There is also an "integration class" that teaches you German enough so you can go and attend regular school. I spend 3 weeks there.

So if there is already a large enough group of kids from your country around, those are the people you're more likely to talk to and spend time with, the result being that none of you improve your language skills. In my case a lot of the people I met weren't in German Immersion and I had to speak English to them, and the program ended about 2 months after I came here. In the case of a lot of those immigrants, they're never really forced to expand their horizon.
And there's always enough natives to talk to. If you refuse to learn German because you're comfortable enough to speak Serbocroatian with the others, it's your own fault.

That's the problem, and it's a problem of schooling more than anything else. Ultimately when you get large proportions of kids with different language backgrounds, you need to change the way teaching in class works, rather than going along as you used to and then blaming those kids from not taking part.
I don't know how things used to work before I came here, but judging from what I witnessed in primary school for example, the teachers, who are mostly Swiss, are greatly limited in their control of the children. When the teacher is openly ignored by a group of foreigners and every reply you get out of them is in a language you don't speak, you're powerless.

But that is true in Swiss kids as well: there are plenty who couldn't care less about how they do at school.
If Swiss kids do badly at school, shame on them and it's their loss. But the Swiss can speak their own language well enough to set the minimal standard. And when it comes to integration, it's these standards you'll have to regard.

Force isn't required. As you say, integrating to the point where you can function well is common sense. It has clear benefits (and the easier it is to become a citizen and be accepted in mainstream native society, the greater those benefits are), but it also has costs. The more difficult it is the more likely that the costs to the person exceed the benefits.
I didn't mean "force" literally. After all, it's their loss if they don't integrate, I just don't want to hear them complain afterwards. As I said, there are people who'll hate you no matter what, and they are everywhere. But there are also people who will help you no matter what, and they are everywhere too. Defeatism is not an option. Any immigrant coming from a poorer country has an enormous incentive to integrate into Swiss society.

Again, a primary way to address this is the education system. Realistically, if people would just ignore for a minute the quite secondary point that these people are immigrants, it would become clear to them that the way to fix a proportion of young people who grow up disillusioned and without any particular goals or will to engage with the world beyond their little clique is in fact in the classroom.
The education system is full of socially open-minded people. I've been to schools with high and low percentages of foreigners and the teachers have always been social and understanding. I think the problem is rather with the children's upbringing, as their parents tend to have more influence on them than the teachers.

But somehow I don't think that the SVP would happily vote in favour of an expansion of school budgets to allow for bilingual teaching and all the other techniques that might make sense.
The SVP's policy regarding education and immigrants targets the even distribution of foreigners among classes and schools, so that every class would have an equal share of foreigners, as far as it's possible. Thus, foreigners would be compelled to learn from the Swiss, as opposed to learn from eachother primarily.

If I am to learn a language, it has to make some sense to me. Unless I just learn it for fun, I need to be able to use it. If Swiss people won't talk to me because I have the wrong skin colour, and they'll publically humiliate me by voting down my application several times, exactly what do I get by learning the language?
First of all, living in a country should be a big enough incentive to learn a language if you follow the rules of common courtesy to say the least. Second, you can't generalise and say that the Swiss won't talk to you. I mentioned before that there will always be both open-minden people and idiots, everywhere. As for voting down your application, first of all, you should already speak the language by the time you hand in your application, second of all, why would you live in a community that hates you? If I'll get rejected, I'd simply move. It's a setback, yes, but I don't want to settle in a town full of people that hate me. And if you want to just throw it all away, the world is still a big enough place for you to settle somewhere else.

You can't go around saying: "I don't like you, I don't want you to be here, I don't want to see your funny foods and customs around here, but you must learn my language." Why would I bother?
If somebody doesn't like you because of your food and customs, he/she is a racist and racists are still a minority everywhere. Chances are that if a majority hates you, it's not because of your food, but because of your deeds. Not saying that you're a criminal, but every person has a reputation, and in a village where votes were cast in citizenship matters, chances are that you could make yourself a reputation known in the entire village. It's up to you whether that'll be positive or negative. Nobody will hold you back from doing good deeds that show.

No, they're at home since they moved or were born there. I'm reasonably certain that no Swiss person is old enough to have seen the Middle Ages, and therefore none of them have been at home for that long.

That's precisely the same as with the immigrants, by the way.
I meant the Swiss nation of course. The Swiss are natives in Switzerland. Immigrants are guests who may or may not be awarded citizenship, depending on their behaviour.

That's precisely the same as with the immigrants, by the way.They're making it up in their own heads. Whenever anyone talks about "the good old days" where things weren't as bad as they are today, chances are this world they're looking back to never existed. People tend to overlook the problems of the past when they're looking at the problems of the present.
Nobody said there weren't problems before, but they were of an entirely different nature. In 1950 you had the evil Russians who threatened the free world, but you had your peace and quiet in your own country. Refugees were genuinely thankful back then. Nowadays, you don't have the red beast to swallow your democracy anymore, instead you have refugees who make the streets unsafe.

That's because their anger is not at criminal youths. Their anger is at immigration. There is no causal relationship between the two, and that's blatantly obvious to anyone who would bother to have a look.
Whoever needs to resort to anger automatically turns off his brain. Of course they are angry at everyone, even those who don't deserve it, but anger has a cause. The Swiss are peaceful people and there has to be something to piss off each of them. Saying that there is no cause and they're inherently racist is racist in itself.

They don't bother, which means they have some alternative reason why they're talking about immigration rather than youth crime. And guess what, from what I've seen back in Hamburg, there is no better way to describe a lot of those people than as "racist".
I don't know the Hamburger (pun not intended), you don't seem to know the Swiss.

Well does the government have the right to stop me from moving somewhere within the country? Nope.
Does the government have the right to stop me from moving out of the country? Nope.
I wasn't referring to you.

A pretty good argument is thus made that ceteris paribus, we consider a right to free movement on public property and the right to acquire shelter from whoever and wherever we want does exist.

So, what is really different about the case of immigration? I'm still waiting for someone to tell me. And until someone can make a convincing case, I'm afraid that I don't consider it seperately from any other form of moving.
There is no such thing as public property that belongs to every person in the world, with the exception of international waters. Even the Marktplatz in my city belongs to the citizens of St. Gallen, because they payed for building it and they're paying to keep it clean. Constitutionally, it's also open to all Swiss citizens and residents. They're NOT open however to random foreigners, because you need the approval of the Swiss authorities to come into the country. In conclusion, you have no inherent right to move to Switzerland. All of your rights here are explicitly granted to you by our government.

As for citizenship: to the extent that it confers the right to vote to someone who is paying taxes and wants to decide how they're spent, or is otherwise affected by government decisions, I'd most certainly say that one should have a right to citizenship. We don't exclude people who happen to have been born in the country from voting and it would be quite a scandal if the government tried.
That's up to the people who own the country. As I said, the only rights you have are the human rights and the rights given to you. If the Swiss government doesn't give you the right to interfere in its politics, then you simply won't have it, because nobody forced you to come here. Luckily for you, you can earn yourself that right for life and then your children will inherit those rights. You've got a wrong idea of governments. National governments are not sub-divisions of a world-state and only there to administrate a region. National governments are the ruling bodies of sovereign countries. In Switzerland, the Swiss people are sovereign. You can become one of the sovereign, but just because you're homo sapiens, you're not automatically part of it.

You must be a huge fan of the Burmese Junta then.
Do you see any connection between refusing humanitarian aid and refusing to let other governments intevene in one's own internal affairs? You're either intelligent enough not to make that connection and thus throw insults around, or the contrary...

What would you be then?

Well that would depend on what my parents were and their backgorund, if for instance they were French and both families had a long French ancestral history then I would be French, not Chinese.

You don't own your country. Huge difference there. And since when was the last time your house could evict you when it deems necessary? Eminent domain remember?

Well who does own the country then?

Well, yes and no. In theory, they should be, in practice they aren't. Plus it's sometimes better to leave certain matters to experts instead of the unqualified: trade agreements for example. Hell, I'd even approve of the government having the last say in case of citizenships if they did it right, which they don't.

Let's put it this was: the people of the country should always have the possibility of regaining or retaining control of that particular country.

Nicely put, the citizens and the government of the day should have control and a say on who comes into their country, not some 'high and mighty' person who has no idea of the situation and wishes to dictate policy from the comfort of the house many miles away. I wonder if they would be willing to take them instead, if not then put up and shut up.

I learned it myself. The books thought me, and I had the same German teacher everyone else had. There is also an "integration class" that teaches you German enough so you can go and attend regular school. I spend 3 weeks there.
Is that class open to second generation immigrants too?

If Swiss kids do badly at school, shame on them and it's their loss. But the Swiss can speak their own language well enough to set the minimal standard. And when it comes to integration, it's these standards you'll have to regard.
What if the immigrant kid then goes to work in another immigrant's business, eventually starts his or her own shop and serves more immigrants?

If a Swiss kid doesn't bother with school and ends up without an education, he or she can only function on this minimal level within a community of Swiss people who also happen to speak his or her language. The same is true for an immigrant kid.

So does that mean that the existence of "parallel communities" make it easier to get by without bothering to learn Swiss? Probably. And in turn these communities are continued by people who don't bother to branch outside them, and in that way the immigrants are no less simple-minded and tunnel-visioned than the Swiss who don't want anything to do with them.

How does one fix this vicious cycle? Not with immigration controls, because the fact of the matter is that even if the SVP's arguments were true 100% stopping immigration will simply slow the growth of parallel communities, it won't eliminate them. Fixing the problem would require some other policy, one that is based on engagement between the leaders of both communities and their ability to then create the basis for understanding and more cooperation.

The specific details of such a plan would depend on the on-the-ground situation, who the people involved are and what their particular grievances are. If it works, it would create a greater incentive for kids from immigrant families to make an effort to branch out of what they are familiar with.

That won't make all immigrants care or bother, but it should bring the percentage of deadbeat immigrants closer to the number of deadbeat Swiss.

All of this is assuming, obviously, that there is actually something wrong with the existence of parallel communities. I'm not 100% sure that it's that much different from parrallel communities within Swiss society itself.

Any immigrant coming from a poorer country has an enormous incentive to integrate into Swiss society.
But if you look at it, the countries with the most difficult conditions for citizenship also tend to have some of the most pressing issues with immigrants who don't bother integrating. Swiss law makes it particularly hard for someone to become Swiss for good, which amounts to an official recognition that you are an outsider and there is no intention of acknowledging your stay as permanent. In Germany it's a similar deal.

Obviously the reasons for why parallel communities exist vary slightly from country to country, but the way Europe has failed to realise that in the 21st century every country is an immigration country is a central theme. The realisation takes longer in the minds of people, but at the very least the government could make an effort to explain and facilitate the transition.

I think the problem is rather with the children's upbringing, as their parents tend to have more influence on them than the teachers.
I can't really comment on that, I think every parent will be a bit different in that regard. Suffice to say that when kids are 12 or 13 years old, they'll start listening more to what their friends, their music and their particular social code says than to their parents. It's not unheard of that parents do whatever they can to try and allow their kid a better chance in life (and for a proportion of immigrants that is the reason they moved in the first place) but the kids just abandon that particular cause because it's uncool.

The SVP's policy regarding education and immigrants targets the even distribution of foreigners among classes and schools, so that every class would have an equal share of foreigners, as far as it's possible. Thus, foreigners would be compelled to learn from the Swiss, as opposed to learn from eachother primarily.
In principle that sounds like a good idea, though it'd be difficult to put into practice. Lots of bussing required, I think.

So if that then leads to higher taxes to pay for the plan, do you think the Swiss would vote for it?

First of all, living in a country should be a big enough incentive to learn a language if you follow the rules of common courtesy to say the least.
Realistically, you don't live in a country, you live within the confines of your very local circle of friends, family and the people you do business with. I could move to Shanghai for a western company, live in a company-rented apartment, only spend time with my colleagues and watch my Australian TV on satellite, and it really wouldn't be the same as living in the Chinese countryside somewhere.

That's what I mean when I say that people are being narrow-minded and not looking beyond what they immediately know. That goes for immigrants as well as Swiss...what is really wrong with teaching Swiss kids Albanian for example? It could ultimately be a useful life skill.

As for voting down your application, first of all, you should already speak the language by the time you hand in your application, second of all, why would you live in a community that hates you?
My citizenship and right to vote have nothing to do with my community though. It's about my relationship with the government, and that doesn't change regardless of what Swiss people think of me or what language I speak. If I earn a franc and they tax it, it doesn't say on it that I spoke Albanian while I earned it.

Better to have multilingual ballot papers than require language proficiency for a right to vote.

If I'll get rejected, I'd simply move. It's a setback, yes, but I don't want to settle in a town full of people that hate me. And if you want to just throw it all away, the world is still a big enough place for you to settle somewhere else.
Yeah, but it's quite possible that within "Little Albania" everyone loves me, and it's just the Swiss outside who hate me. In that case I wouldn't want to move, and the Swiss could go and get screwed. But that doesn't affect my right to decide where my tax money is spent.

Chances are that if a majority hates you, it's not because of your food, but because of your deeds. Not saying that you're a criminal, but every person has a reputation, and in a village where votes were cast in citizenship matters, chances are that you could make yourself a reputation known in the entire village. It's up to you whether that'll be positive or negative. Nobody will hold you back from doing good deeds that show.
Have you read the article of the OP? Those guys didn't do anything wrong, they speak the language, they have tried multiple times to become citizens, exhibiting a clear wish to integrate in the process.

They still got shut down, and that is because people don't get a reputation in a town of 14,000 people. The inhabitants of Schwyz have their own problems to worry about, they don't have the time or the will to make an effort and research what one of those 14,000 do.

The majority decide based on generalisations and stereotypes, because that's what they're there for. And as a result, you get bad outcomes, because something as fundamental as this cannot be decided based on "all Turks are X".

And again, this is assuming that even if they didn't make their decision in this way, they'd have the right to make it. That's not a given either, because I haven't seen a solid reason why it's any of their business who is a citizen or who lives in the town or country that they also happen to live in.

I meant the Swiss nation of course. The Swiss are natives in Switzerland. Immigrants are guests who may or may not be awarded citizenship, depending on their behaviour.
That is known as collectivism, where you create generalisations based on usually arbitrary criteria that you think fit a group of people you belong to, pick the one you like in particular and then use this to conclude that you fit these criteria and are therefore someone you like. It's a fallacy.

If you want to own Switzerland, then what you'd have to do is establish a right to ownership by doing some deed that merits this reward. You need to earn this reward. In our system, that means you need to provide value to someone who will reward you with money and which you can then use to buy a piece of land. It would be a big task to buy all of Switzerland, but that's what you'd have to do to be able to say that you rightfully own it. And once you've done that, I agree with your right to keep out anyone you don't like.

But having been born at a certain latitude and longitude of the globe is not a deed that merits a reward of any kind. It doesn't confer any right different to that conferred at any other location on the planet. The Swiss don't own Switzerland because none of them earned it.

Nowadays, you don't have the red beast to swallow your democracy anymore, instead you have refugees who make the streets unsafe.
And climate change that will destroy everyone tomorrow, and peak oil that will destroy everyone tomorrow, and terrorism that will destroy everyone tomorrow etc etc.

Won't somebody please think of the children?!

If the streets in an American town are unsafe, it's not because Albanian immigrants hang out there, it's because people who are American hang out there and have no decent jobs, no education and are regarded as a nuisance and a bunch of criminals.

The Swiss are peaceful people and there has to be something to piss off each of them. Saying that there is no cause and they're inherently racist is racist in itself.
Oddly enough, you're the one who is associating certain things with "the Swiss people". I associate things with individuals, like those who complain that there is just too many foreigners around.

I don't know the Hamburger (pun not intended), you don't seem to know the Swiss.
I know the person who votes for the SVP. It's the same sort of person everywhere in Europe, and whether it's someone in Hamburg, my grandma in Bavaria or someone across the border in Switzerland, I see no reason to assume that their motives randomly change.

I wasn't referring to you.
Why not? What makes me different from Ahmed from Albania?

There is no such thing as public property that belongs to every person in the world, with the exception of international waters. Even the Marktplatz in my city belongs to the citizens of St. Gallen, because they payed for building it and they're paying to keep it clean.
And anyone who wants to pay and contribute gets to use it? So why would you exclude someone who wants to take part?

Constitutionally, it's also open to all Swiss citizens and residents. They're NOT open however to random foreigners, because you need the approval of the Swiss authorities to come into the country. In conclusion, you have no inherent right to move to Switzerland. All of your rights here are explicitly granted to you by our government.
You're begging the question, aren't you? I ask you why that is the case, and you tell me that it's the case.

National governments are not sub-divisions of a world-state and only there to administrate a region. National governments are the ruling bodies of sovereign countries. In Switzerland, the Swiss people are sovereign. You can become one of the sovereign, but just because you're homo sapiens, you're not automatically part of it.
Governments are coercive bodies that rule over a certain area. If we're lucky, they grant us the right to take part in decision making. There's an argument that their legitimate existence depends on that.

That does not make them superior to people. It makes thema body strong enough to credibly threaten anyone with violence within a given area. Whether or not they are right in doing so is not an answer that can be shrugged off by sovereignty. The rights of people come before the rights of governments, and I want to see a reason why my right to free movement should stop at Switzerland's border.

Do you see any connection between refusing humanitarian aid and refusing to let other governments intevene in one's own internal affairs? You're either intelligent enough not to make that connection and thus throw insults around, or the contrary...
Well, first of all there is the obvious similarity in that they're both telling the world to bugger off and that they're sovereign. If that's what you admire about the SVP, it stands to reason than you should also be happy if the Junta does it.

But more importantly, the Burmese Junta is, if you ask me, violating basic human rights, both by keeping away aid and more actively with the various abuses it commits itself. I don't accept their argument about sovereignty as a justification or a reason not to want it to change.

Granted, not getting killed is arguably (;)) better than being able to move to Switzerland, but the principle is the same. Something that is a quite basic human right is being curtailed by a government, and I want to know a good reason for it.

1. The statistics I provided show that almost half of all convicts are foreigners and that there are well above 40000 foreign convicts in Switzerland. -> Foreigners are more likely to get convicted -> Foreigners are more likely to commit crimes
2. There are two ways one can deal with criminals. If they're citizens, the most effective way is to lock them up, thus freeing society from them temporarily. If they aren't citizens, the most effective way is to to deport them, thus preserving society indefinitely from them.
3. Thus, just as there is a higher probability for foreigners to be criminals, there is a high probability that tightening rules on citizenship will keep more criminals from getting the Swiss passport and escaping deportation in case of a serious crime.
QED

Ah, this old argument. Again.

Let's try the same reasoning.

1. Statistics (eg http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceusandincarcerated.html) show that black persons are convicted and incarcerated disproportionately more than either hispanics or, of course, whites. -> Black people are more likely to get convicted -> Black people are more likely to commit crimes.

(Good so far? This is your exact reasoning.)

2. There are two ways one can deal with criminals. If they're citizens, the most effective way is to lock them up, thus freeing society from them temporarily. If they aren't citizens, the most effective way is to to deport them, thus preserving society indefinitely from them.
3. Thus, just as there is a higher probability for black people to be criminals, there is a high probability that locking up black people randomly will reduce crime.
QED

Now, if your logic is sound, then my racist, disgustingly offensive and regressively bigoted conclusion is perfectly valid.

Or perhaps there's a flaw in your reasoning.

Of course there is, but I've already pointed it out before in this thread when TAI committed the same mistake. (He ignored it, predictably.) Can you spot it?

They killed someone, stop ignoring it. The only thing that would invalidate my example would be that guy rising from the dead and denying that he was ever attacked, because only that would provide us with the illusion you're trying to create with your posts: that there has been no killing.
No, you're wrong. Someone has been killed, but an aquittal will invalidate your example. And that may still happen.

And that's what I've been saying all this time:

Since the court has yet to determine guilt, your example cannot be used. Since the court has yet to determine a sentence, if they should be found guilty, your
example fails when you claim that the criminal justice system cannot deal with them.

Ah, your tactics of "waiting for a court response" isn't as idiotic as ignoring the case seemed at first. You seem to know well that a trial like this can go on for many months and that their first sentence won't mean a thing, because they'll take this to the federal court. Not bad, not bad at all. I wonder if the mods will approve of me resurrecting this thread in a couple of years from now. Plus, this somehow allows you to completely ignore a person's death. Why, what did the student do? What happened to him? Ooooh well, the court hasn't decided what happened to him, so we'll have to wait a couple of years now. Up to then, he could've died of an amazement-induced heart attack as he saw the three brawlers, for all that matters.
When we're talking about law, it's the only correct thing to do:

The court is the right venue to determine guilt or innocence. And without a court ruling, it's silly to speculate in hypotheticals.

No, and I've been telling you this for the last 3 posts or so. But I'm too tired to type them again, so I'll just refresh your memory by quoting myself:

I want each and every foreigner to be examined for criminal behaviour, so criminals will be kept out, non-criminals will be let in and everybody's happy. Period. Ah, but who am I kidding... if you've ignored this thrice, what will make you realise this now?
It's not my fault that you couldn't explain what "a close inspection" meant before this post. So we'll jump to your explanation:

Check for offences he made, check the school records for disciplinary entries and make them take a psychoanalytical test similar to the one taken by recruits to the army. If nothing is found, give them the green light. I admit that there'll still be a number of foreigners that simply never could get caught, but for those who WILL get caught and barred, society just made a leap towards safety. And I don't even want disproportionate "penalties": three extra years to wait for the citizenship and stay clean for setting fire to a tree in school, five for smoking pot and ten for selling it would be a good start. Of course, experience would show where to invest in this system...
So you would still deny them citizenship based on what they might do, and childhood shenanigans done by minors, and include the school to be directly involved in the citizenship question - something the're not cut out to do.

I think it's a bad idea, and I don't see how it would make society safer.

If it would, why not go to the extreme length and use those measures on citizens as well?


A friend of mine had the idea to give each foreigner five penalty points. Shoplifting or speeding would deduce one point, doing drugs 3 points, stealing or assault (such as attacking someone with a broken beer bottle) 4 points, rape or above 5 points which would already mean an instant deportation. At the end of the 12year period, you'll get another 3 years to wait for every point you lost, at 1 point you'd be barred from becoming citizen.
You would like the Swedish system.


Residence permits? So basically you would approve of the filtering measures I proposed, but only if they're carried out during the application for a residence permit, but not during the application for citizenship? It doesn't make the slightest sense to me, seeing that less time to examine gives the authorities a harder time determining whether the applicant is a criminal or not.
I don't know why it doesn't make sense to you. In Switzerland you would have 12 years to "filter", and since you have to renew your permits over time you'll return to the "spotlight" several times. But it has got to end at some point, and as I've said before, when you've stayed in the country for 12 years without being convicted for any crimes, that should be sufficient. Placing the filter at the citizenship-phase doesn't make sense to me, because you've cleared 12 years worth of hurdles to get there. You have demonstrated that you can be trusted, welcome as a full citizen of our society.


Or like a thorough examination by authorities. As I already quoted myself in this post, you can commit crimes and not having them on the record in practice.
And as I've said, if you don't have a conviction, you only have suspicions, conjecture, and guesswork. Turning someone down because of hypotheticals and mere suspicions is not acceptable to me.

You'll have to expect that those who hand out citizenship permits follow the rule of law, and that would mean not being dictated by speculations.


Haha, who's putting words into whose mouth? As for my prevention methods, see above.
It was a question. And your suggestions wouldn't prevent it.


Did you actually READ the law that was trying to be passed? Democracy or not, a law being rejected by the people has little chances of being passed in the future. And this was THE law to reform the naturalisation process. By saying no, the people ruled that it's all right as it is.
Wow, I never knew the Swiss democracy was so rigid and unchangable. I'm disapointed.


A STRIKING ARGUMENT! Oops, I forgot I should refrain from being ironic. Sorry.
Especially since you tried and failed to be sarcastic, and not ironic. ;)


Now here's a brand new example for you to dismiss:
There had been a fight between Albanians in Grenchen, which ended in a brawl and one of them had been ejected from the club it took place in, along with his brother. The said Albanian waited for his opponents to leave the club, followed their car up to the motorway and willfully collided with him. The regional court sentenced the offender to 2 1/2 years of penitentiary because of premeditated homicide among others, since the victims escaped death narrowly. The federal court repelled this sentence, claiming that the fact that the others survived was intentional and thanks to the driving skills of the offender. Here's the protocol from the federal court. (http://jumpcgi.bger.ch/cgi-bin/JumpCGI?id=28.12.2006_6P.141/2006)
So there. An Albanian wanted to kill someone, he got convicted, but thanks to the federal court, this crime will be recorded as causing a traffic accident at worst.

So... The courts say that he didn't actually try to kill someone, but he did intentionally cause a traffic accident, but one that he didn't intend to cause fatal harm to the others?

Personally, and based on what you've described, I would have him expelled - but had he been a citizen, I wouldn't have had a problem with him being released into society.

Yet again it seems like your fight is with the courts...

1. The statistics I provided show that almost half of all convicts are foreigners and that there are well above 40000 foreign convicts in Switzerland. -> Foreigners are more likely to get convicted -> Foreigners are more likely to commit crimes
2. There are two ways one can deal with criminals. If they're citizens, the most effective way is to lock them up, thus freeing society from them temporarily. If they aren't citizens, the most effective way is to to deport them, thus preserving society indefinitely from them.
3. Thus, just as there is a higher probability for foreigners to be criminals, there is a high probability that tightening rules on citizenship will keep more criminals from getting the Swiss passport and escaping deportation in case of a serious crime.
QED
Your reasoning is flawed. See Trostias post for an idea. But also because you disregard the rules already in place, making it so that the potential criminals will have to go 12 years without comitting any crimes, and thus those who are eligible to apply for citizenship are less likely to be criminals. And you disregard the fact that even foreigners will serve prison time before being deported.


Evidence is found in examples, not in statistics, because the government doesn't make a difference between immigrants and natives once they're all citizens. It's not my fault that you discard evidence as "unconvincing". Just because they don't convince you, people are still dead, injured and offended by those who supply the evidence. That's why your selective acceptance of facts doesn't go beyond this forum.
I beg to differ, and I can even point to the recent vote as a supporting argument to my claim.

Evidence is found in both examples and statistics, and the ones you have provided is seriously lacking. It's too bad that there are no statistics that show the crime rates and recidivism rates of naturalised citizens, but as there isn't, you have failed to prove your claim.

If you want to list your excuses of why you didn't understand irony, a form of humour which requires a certain intelligence on the reader's part to understand what's being meant, start another topic. Suggesting something I promised in the previous post also doesn't do anything but waste space. I already told you I'd try to stop overexerting your comprehensive capabilities with humour. It's the equivalent of me pretending that you're suffering of Asperger's. You won't have to worry about humour double-crossing your intelligence again.

Thought so. They show you exactly what you don't want to see. That there is a disproportionately large amount of foreigners being convicted, which makes foreigners more likely to be convicts, thus having committed crimes than natives. I'm convinced that this wasn't what you wanted to see.
Heh. I see your reading comprehension fails you yet again, even after your short rant just above. I'm impressed at how you manage to choose an interpretation of my post just afterwards that completely disregrd the context of what I've said before. Now that's Irony! :p
*Savours*

Your statistics are valid, but lacking and not showing us what we'd like to see.
-->You know, if you showed some statistics on the crime rates and the recidivism rates among naturalised citizens, you might be able to back up your claim.

Also -> We know that a large part of the prison population are foreigners.

So to repeat myself since this seemed to be difficult: It's not that the statististics show me what I don't want to see, (they show me what I know), it's that they don't show me what I want to see (which is statistics on the crime rates and the recidivism rates among naturalised citizens).


Is this the first thing we agree on?
No, we've agreed on a lot of arguments here. We disagree on some important principles though.

I'd expected a much more serious comment on this.
Why? Fox News have no credibility. They tend to produce news pieces consisting of fear mongering, sensationalism, and xenophobia.


Then it was me misinterpreting what you wrote when you posted that they have a fun system for criminals. Perhaps you DID mean "fun" in the traditional sense. See, I thought you meant "effective" or "harsh on criminals", when you said "fun". Sorry I thought you made a joke or something alike.
It's OK, perhaps I should have said "creative" or "interesting."

Here's one of them:
On the weekend of 11./12.9.2006, a 13 year old girl was repeatedly raped. The metropolitan police of Zürich arrested 13 persons involved in the case: 12 adolescents between 15 and 17 years of age and an 18 year old adult. The offenders are from Switzerland, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, the Dominican Republic, Italy and Bosnia-Herzegowina. All of the arrested are residents of Zürich city. Initial investigations showed that there have been more offences committed.
Source (http://www.stapo-content.ch/artikel.php?id=4665&LOG_uin=)
And will these get citizenship? Has anybody who has done any crimes such as in that example not been expelled and gotten citizenship?


The statement about GL vs VD was a conclusion, I give you that. As for the second statement, I don't know how many times I have to repeat to you that you're admitted or rejected by a board of politicians and that offences, as well as certain acts of criminality (such as causing traffic accidents) are disregarded in general.
And that may be, but you still haven't been able to back it up with any sources. I'm sure the SVP would attack that furiously, surely they have a statement out there or something?

And don't make it seem that those two statements are the only ones I presented. You disregarded the death of a person as proof of violence by three foreigners and you also disregarded statistics. Not to mention you simply refuse to use or accept the use of logics. But don't worry, now I provided you with a series of different facts you can disregard, so you don't have to ignore the same thing over and over again.

I've disregarded the death of a person because there's no conviction yet. Without a conviction it's worthless - innocent until proven guilty.
I've disregarded the statistics because they don't bring anything new to the debate. See above.
I use logic. Sorry.
It's good to know that you have no expectations whatsoever.

Something that is a quite basic human right is being curtailed by a government, and I want to know a good reason for it.

I'm guessing you won't be satisfied with a response such as " As a matter of well-established international law and subject to its treaty obligations, a State has the right to control the entry of non-nationals into its territory"?

Bugger!

Is that class open to second generation immigrants too?
Differences aren't being made between first and second-generation non-citizens. If an immigrant child is born in Switzerland however (and assuming their parents are legally staying in Switzerland), he/she usually starts pre-school like any citizen would and thus will grow up bilingually. Practice shows that there is no need to open special pre-schools for immigrants, as they're not considerably less qualified than Swiss children. Immigrants born here are among the best integrated foreigners and they usually get their citizenship before they turn 18 (every month spent in Switzerland as a minor counts twice).

What if the immigrant kid then goes to work in another immigrant's business, eventually starts his or her own shop and serves more immigrants?
The only business that's realistically possible in is gastronomy, as there's little chance of a company, where the majority of the workers refuse to learn the local language, economically prevailing in a business where other (as in, not immigrant-only) firms provide competition. Gastronomy is a special case, because kebab restaurants, pizzerias and the like can flourish without the worry of Swiss competition. Economically, it doesn't seem to be efficient to isolate yourself from the Swiss society.

If a Swiss kid doesn't bother with school and ends up without an education, he or she can only function on this minimal level within a community of Swiss people who also happen to speak his or her language. The same is true for an immigrant kid.
No. He/she will end up on welfare. You can't and won't earn money with no education in Switzerland. Nobody will hire you without the right papers. You could deal drugs or choose another illegal way of acquiring money, but chances are that you'll get caught sooner or later. People aren't that stupid, most of them learn the language at least enough to get hired somewhere (where you don't have to work with people of course).

So does that mean that the existence of "parallel communities" make it easier to get by without bothering to learn Swiss? Probably. And in turn these communities are continued by people who don't bother to branch outside them, and in that way the immigrants are no less simple-minded and tunnel-visioned than the Swiss who don't want anything to do with them.

How does one fix this vicious cycle? Not with immigration controls, because the fact of the matter is that even if the SVP's arguments were true 100% stopping immigration will simply slow the growth of parallel communities, it won't eliminate them. Fixing the problem would require some other policy, one that is based on engagement between the leaders of both communities and their ability to then create the basis for understanding and more cooperation.

The specific details of such a plan would depend on the on-the-ground situation, who the people involved are and what their particular grievances are. If it works, it would create a greater incentive for kids from immigrant families to make an effort to branch out of what they are familiar with.

That won't make all immigrants care or bother, but it should bring the percentage of deadbeat immigrants closer to the number of deadbeat Swiss.

All of this is assuming, obviously, that there is actually something wrong with the existence of parallel communities. I'm not 100% sure that it's that much different from parrallel communities within Swiss society itself.
I assume you're talking about what you saw in Germany. You have to consider however, that Switzerland is much much smaller, and there are simply not enough foreigners from one country in one city to form a community which can effectively isolate itself from Swiss society. You can find districts, where foreigners are the majority, but they're also a heterogenous mix of ex-Yugoslavians, Albanians, Turks, Arabs and many many more. There are communities which dominate people's free time, but the people in such communities simply wouldn't survive if those unintegrated would isolate themselves. There are enough unintegrated Albanians to open all-Albanian businesses, but they wouldn't survive financially. Isolated parallel communities are not a reality, non-integration happens individually.

But if you look at it, the countries with the most difficult conditions for citizenship also tend to have some of the most pressing issues with immigrants who don't bother integrating. Swiss law makes it particularly hard for someone to become Swiss for good, which amounts to an official recognition that you are an outsider and there is no intention of acknowledging your stay as permanent. In Germany it's a similar deal.
Integration is easy if you want it. To be cynical enough, I could say that all Eastern Europeans are treated with the same prejudices by some. If a few of them who went to the same schools could integrate, there is no excuse for the rest not to. Swiss law doesn't make it hard to become a citizen, it makes you wait longer. If you were referring to Swiss authorities punishing you harder for screwing up (if that's the case in certain communities), it's your fault that you screwed up in the first place.

Obviously the reasons for why parallel communities exist vary slightly from country to country, but the way Europe has failed to realise that in the 21st century every country is an immigration country is a central theme. The realisation takes longer in the minds of people, but at the very least the government could make an effort to explain and facilitate the transition.
As I said, it's not a problem of parallel communities. Foreigners are a part of Swiss society, whether they like it or not and certain foreigners don't follow the rules of that society, upsetting others within (both Swiss and law-abiding immigrants). Around 1/3 of the country doesn't want them around.

I can't really comment on that, I think every parent will be a bit different in that regard. Suffice to say that when kids are 12 or 13 years old, they'll start listening more to what their friends, their music and their particular social code says than to their parents. It's not unheard of that parents do whatever they can to try and allow their kid a better chance in life (and for a proportion of immigrants that is the reason they moved in the first place) but the kids just abandon that particular cause because it's uncool.
Friends can be an even worse influence if they encourage crime without realising its consequences. But anyway, we were talking about education and as far as I know, there is no special period in a youngster's life where he/she is especially receptive of the teacher's influence if the parents don't raise them to listen to his/her teacher.

In principle that sounds like a good idea, though it'd be difficult to put into practice. Lots of bussing required, I think.
I share your scepcism about this. I don't expect our schooling to be realistically better in the future.

So if that then leads to higher taxes to pay for the plan, do you think the Swiss would vote for it?
Absolutely not. The Swiss mostly vote for less taxes, no matter what they would be for. This is one of the main reasons why I don't believe that our education will change for the better.

Realistically, you don't live in a country, you live within the confines of your very local circle of friends, family and the people you do business with. I could move to Shanghai for a western company, live in a company-rented apartment, only spend time with my colleagues and watch my Australian TV on satellite, and it really wouldn't be the same as living in the Chinese countryside somewhere.
Realistically, every rule you live by (laws) are passed by governments, which refers to a country (or canton in most cases here). You could move to Shanghai and if you're content with your apartment and TV programme, you're a political neutral element. If you try not to be a political neutral element, you'll quickly realise that you won't get a single step further. Even if you were Chinese, your options would consist of 1. the Communist party and 2. the Communist party. You'll quickly realise the importance of countries and governments when you'll try to raise your voice on a political level.

That's what I mean when I say that people are being narrow-minded and not looking beyond what they immediately know. That goes for immigrants as well as Swiss...what is really wrong with teaching Swiss kids Albanian for example? It could ultimately be a useful life skill.
Swiss kids are learning their own language (a must), a second language of the country (they'll need it in business at least) and English (I don't think I have to explain its importance). To teach Albanian simply as a symbol of broad-mindedness... it's a sheer waste of time and resources. And how do you expect Serbo-Croatian speakers to accept this without protesting or without at least demanding their language to be taught along Albanian as well? How will you explain to the Arabs coming to Switzerland, that they'll be taught Albanian along two official languages and English if they want to go to school in Switzerland?

My citizenship and right to vote have nothing to do with my community though. It's about my relationship with the government, and that doesn't change regardless of what Swiss people think of me or what language I speak. If I earn a franc and they tax it, it doesn't say on it that I spoke Albanian while I earned it.
As I said, acquiring the right to vote (not a human right) depends on the country you want to vote in. If you want to get the right to vote 3 years after arrival, go to Canada.

Better to have multilingual ballot papers than require language proficiency for a right to vote.
And I assume that all political discussions in parliament must also be subtitled in Albanian, Turkish, Serbocroatian, Thai, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese, among others? Not to mention all such documents (initiatives, referendums, etc.). There is a reason why there are official languages in a country.

Yeah, but it's quite possible that within "Little Albania" everyone loves me, and it's just the Swiss outside who hate me. In that case I wouldn't want to move, and the Swiss could go and get screwed. But that doesn't affect my right to decide where my tax money is spent.
You don't have that right unless it's granted to you specifically. And if you find a community that loves you, you'll get the citizenship anyway (unless of course you did something horribly wrong and you'll get rejected, in which case you shouldn't be talking about acquiring additional rights in the first place).

Have you read the article of the OP? Those guys didn't do anything wrong, they speak the language, they have tried multiple times to become citizens, exhibiting a clear wish to integrate in the process.
The article of the OP is rather POV. Whenever I hear "But I didn't do anything!", I'm usually inclined to hear the other side of the story.

They still got shut down, and that is because people don't get a reputation in a town of 14,000 people. The inhabitants of Schwyz have their own problems to worry about, they don't have the time or the will to make an effort and research what one of those 14,000 do.
If Schwyz would have a history of blockading all foreigners from a certain part of the world from becoming citizens, you wouldn't have only two examples. There would be several other foreigners who got rejected and who would seize the opportunity of speaking up against the voters in Schwyz. Why did they accept others as citizens and not those mentioned in the article? As I said, "But I didn't do anything!" just doesn't cut it.

The majority decide based on generalisations and stereotypes, because that's what they're there for. And as a result, you get bad outcomes, because something as fundamental as this cannot be decided based on "all Turks are X".
I assume you asked the majority and it proved to be racist. Or maybe you didn't, but if the majority really thinks that all Turks are X, then there would probably be NO Turkish citizens in Schwyz.

And again, this is assuming that even if they didn't make their decision in this way, they'd have the right to make it.
You also have the right to piss all over your apartment, you still don't do it and it doesn't make outlawing it mandatory. Sure, there might be single nutty exceptions, but you generally don't campaign for installing surveillance cameras inside apartments to make sure they restrict certain bodily functions to the toilet. You'd trust people not to stink up the whole building without further proof of them not doing it.

That's not a given either, because I haven't seen a solid reason why it's any of their business who is a citizen or who lives in the town or country that they also happen to live in.
It's because the people are the sovereign. The sovereign appoints the government and thus indirectly makes the rules. The rules are: they'll decide who may get the citizenship and who may not.

That is known as collectivism, where you create generalisations based on usually arbitrary criteria that you think fit a group of people you belong to, pick the one you like in particular and then use this to conclude that you fit these criteria and are therefore someone you like. It's a fallacy.
The collective of all citizens is the sovereign in Switzerland. It's based on the type of documents one has. As funny as it would be, it's not I who decides who deserves it and who doesn't, and neither you.

If you want to own Switzerland, then what you'd have to do is establish a right to ownership by doing some deed that merits this reward. You need to earn this reward.
Apparently, at the birth of Switzerland, declarations were written, battles were won, blood was spilled and the right for an own county was earned by the Swiss. And this was inherited by their sons and daughters and so on.

In our system, that means you need to provide value to someone who will reward you with money and which you can then use to buy a piece of land. It would be a big task to buy all of Switzerland, but that's what you'd have to do to be able to say that you rightfully own it. And once you've done that, I agree with your right to keep out anyone you don't like.
I don't think you understand the difference between people and persons. The Swiss people, as an entirety of citizens is constitutionally sovereign over all of Switzerland. Property has got nothing to do with it. Even if you own a patch of land and the next guy doesn't, you still can't do whatever you want on it, because the rules still apply to you, the same rules directly or indirectly written by the entirety of the people (in practice, the majority thereof). These rules apply to all of Switzerland and if you, as a newcomer, don't have the same rights as a native, then it's simply tough luck. You can't disregard the Swiss laws, just because you feel that you should have the right to.

But having been born at a certain latitude and longitude of the globe is not a deed that merits a reward of any kind. It doesn't confer any right different to that conferred at any other location on the planet. The Swiss don't own Switzerland because none of them earned it.
I already explained to you that their ancestors earned it. And no, the location of your birth doesn't matter (in Switzerland), only the citizenship of your parents matters. And just as parents inherit their property to their children, so do they inherit their rights.

And climate change that will destroy everyone tomorrow, and peak oil that will destroy everyone tomorrow, and terrorism that will destroy everyone tomorrow etc etc.
All of them being off-topic.

Won't somebody please think of the children?!
Start another topic.

If the streets in an American town are unsafe, it's not because Albanian immigrants hang out there, it's because people who are American hang out there and have no decent jobs, no education and are regarded as a nuisance and a bunch of criminals.
So for this to be relevant, I should probably replace "American" with "Swiss"? If so, you're wrong.

Oddly enough, you're the one who is associating certain things with "the Swiss people". I associate things with individuals, like those who complain that there is just too many foreigners around.
I associated peacefulness with the Swiss. I'm talking out of experience. Considering that I know a lot of them and know that exceptions are rare, I can safely say that the majority of the Swiss are, in fact, peaceful. When I meet someone new in Switzerland, I don't automatically consider him/her peaceful, but I won't be all too cautious with him/her.

I know the person who votes for the SVP. It's the same sort of person everywhere in Europe, and whether it's someone in Hamburg, my grandma in Bavaria or someone across the border in Switzerland, I see no reason to assume that their motives randomly change.
Oh, I thought you'd "associate things with individuals". Contradicting yourself, perhaps?

Why not? What makes me different from Ahmed from Albania?
By reading your posts, I assume that you're a civilized person. But if you feel yourself addressed, don't let me stop you.

And anyone who wants to pay and contribute gets to use it? So why would you exclude someone who wants to take part?
No, paying is not voluntary. You've got to pay taxes, whether you want it or not. But I don't know what you mean by "use" it. You may walk around on it, because the Swiss allow you to. You may not settle on it, because the Swiss don't allow anyone to. And unless you're a citizen, you may not give your voice on what's allowed there and what isn't, because nobody gave you the right to do so. See above.

You're begging the question, aren't you? I ask you why that is the case, and you tell me that it's the case.
You're asking me why you don't have the inherent right to vote anywhere you're staying? Because the citizens don't give you the right, that's why. You can also ask why you're not born with a moustache and why you have to reach puberty and grow it first. The best I can do is to explain that it's just the way it is, you're neither born with a moustache, nor with a right to vote wherever you please.

Governments are coercive bodies that rule over a certain area. If we're lucky, they grant us the right to take part in decision making. There's an argument that their legitimate existence depends on that.
The Swiss government is per def. the body that exercises the will of the sovereign, the Swiss people. Feel free to challenge this right by disobeying their laws, but don't go crying that they hate you afterwards.

That does not make them superior to people. It makes thema body strong enough to credibly threaten anyone with violence within a given area. Whether or not they are right in doing so is not an answer that can be shrugged off by sovereignty.
Nobody said they're superior, but they're the ones to say where things are headed in their own country. And what do you want to say by "they are right in doing so"? According to which standards? According to democratic standards, they're right. Let me sum it up: Will of the majority > Your will.

The rights of people come before the rights of governments, and I want to see a reason why my right to free movement should stop at Switzerland's border.
Moving is quite different from voting.

Well, first of all there is the obvious similarity in that they're both telling the world to bugger off and that they're sovereign.
One of these two governments is appointed by the people, the other one forces itself on the people using the military. But since it's all the same to you, why do you want to live in a democracy?

If that's what you admire about the SVP, it stands to reason than you should also be happy if the Junta does it.
The SVP isn't the government, it's a party. Whatever power they get comes from voters. Interfering in the internal affairs of a democratic country is disrespecting the will of the people. Aiding the survivors of a catastrophy against the will of the self-appointed government is disrespecting a bunch of oppressors, not interfering with the will of the people in any way. It's very, very sad that such a difference must be pointed out to you. As I said, if the will of the people doesn't mean anything for you, why do you want to vote in every country you happen to wander to?

But more importantly, the Burmese Junta is, if you ask me, violating basic human rights, both by keeping away aid and more actively with the various abuses it commits itself. I don't accept their argument about sovereignty as a justification or a reason not to want it to change.
The people being sovereign is okay, a junta being sovereign isn't. I know, I'm biased towards democracy. Oh well.

Granted, not getting killed is arguably (;)) better than being able to move to Switzerland, but the principle is the same. Something that is a quite basic human right is being curtailed by a government, and I want to know a good reason for it.
Voting isn't a human right. It's a citizen's right.

3. Thus, just as there is a higher probability for black people to be criminals, there is a high probability that locking up black people randomly will reduce crime.
The bolded part is what you're saying and I've never said. Let me quote myself (call it a reading aid if you want):
If you detect those who have a history of criminal behaviour (see my example), you'll be able to make society safer by not letting him in (so when he commits a serious crime, he can be deported).
So, I said nothing about randomness. I said that criminal behaviour of individuals can be shown using past deeds. And the outcome wouldn't be punishing them for these deeds, but adjusting the naturalisation process to that individual.

Now, if your logic is sound, then my racist, disgustingly offensive and regressively bigoted conclusion is perfectly valid.
My logic is sound, but neither racist, nor offensive or bigoted. Your example was just that, but sorry, I didn't write what you wrote.

Or perhaps there's a flaw in your reasoning.
The only flaw so far is in your ability to read and comprehend. No shortcomings in the imagination department though.

Of course there is, but I've already pointed it out before in this thread when TAI committed the same mistake. (He ignored it, predictably.) Can you spot it?
Yes, I spotted it. All the racism and bigotry and so on comes in right after you randomly read words on the screen and exactly during the process of your brain altering some of these words and adding new, own ones to them. Since the source of racism is none other than you, it'd be better to sign it with your own name, not with mine. Thank you.

Well who does own the country then?


Generally, the one who makes the rules. That usually means the government, or in some cases, a corporate conglomerate.

No. He/she will end up on welfare. You can't and won't earn money with no education in Switzerland. Nobody will hire you without the right papers. You could deal drugs or choose another illegal way of acquiring money, but chances are that you'll get caught sooner or later. People aren't that stupid, most of them learn the language at least enough to get hired somewhere (where you don't have to work with people of course).
As long as you accept that this is true regardless of the ethnicity or country of origin of the person at hand.

I assume you're talking about what you saw in Germany.
Well, probably more in Australia. They have obviously managed to deal with immigration extremely well here, and things that would produce nothing but outrage in continental Europe (for example that Melbourne is the second-largest Greek city in the world after Athens) are quite normal here, and are seen as a positive thing. And that's the thing that stumps me about the immigration debate in Europe these days: I can see here every day how things could be, but that scenario is rejected by way too many European voters because of meaningless concerns.

That's not to say that in Germany you don't also get community leaders, even if parallel communities tend to be more diverse. The last thing to do is to refuse to talk because of a failure to realise that there is someone to talk to.

Isolated parallel communities are not a reality, non-integration happens individually.
Then there are two things that need to be cleared up:

1) What is integration?
2) Why are some not doing it?

Of course, regardless of the answers to those two questions, if non-integration is something individuals do by themselves, blocking immigration or citizenship isn't really a solution to it. Any solution to an individual problem can only be developed for, and preferably in conjunction with, that individual.

Foreigners are a part of Swiss society, whether they like it or not and certain foreigners don't follow the rules of that society, upsetting others within (both Swiss and law-abiding immigrants). Around 1/3 of the country doesn't want them around.
Yes, but a large proportion of Swiss might also not want other people around: Swiss criminals, Swiss sexual predators, Swiss people who play loud music on a saturday night when you want to sleep etc etc

The question is whether the dislike is good enough to justify an unequal treatment. If it is okay to kick out an Albanian kid for not going to school, or even for mugging someone, then why can't the citizenship of a Swiss kid doing the same thing be revoked? Why can't the Swiss kid be deported?

Both are human beings, both have done exactly the same thing to merit reward or punishment - any basis for treating them differently seems flimsy at best.

Even if you were Chinese, your options would consist of 1. the Communist party and 2. the Communist party. You'll quickly realise the importance of countries and governments when you'll try to raise your voice on a political level.
I try to raise my voice on a political level right now too, and nothing happens. But that's an aside.

More importantly, unless the government does something to me, my point stands. And since there are local levels of government, and in a micro-sense, even "government" really just consists of people in my local community who work for it, I think my point still stands. If we want to determine the way you live and the things you experience in your daily life, we'd be much more able to do so by saying that you live in New York City than the United States. The smaller the environment we describe, the more accurately the description fits you.

Swiss kids are learning their own language (a must), a second language of the country (they'll need it in business at least) and English (I don't think I have to explain its importance). To teach Albanian simply as a symbol of broad-mindedness... it's a sheer waste of time and resources.
And I agree. But it may well be that as far as business is concerned, at some point knowing Albanian might be of more value than knowing French. And when that becomes a possibility, it seems to me blatantly obvious to not just offer Albanian in school, but also to expand what constitutes an "official language".

This comes back to the "what is integration" question. If I am an Albanian housewife who cares for her family all day and only meets her Albanian housewife girlfriends from time to time...am I really wrong if I choose not to waste my time learning German? Am I really showing a lack of commitment to living in Switzerland? There are many reasons why I might want to live in Switzerland, and if those are economic or political, I may well have no wish to engage in Swiss culture or mainstream life. I don't think I'd be wrong for doing so.

You could argue that I'd miss out, and you'd probably be right. But I don't think you'd be right to kick me out and say "you don't really want to be here".

As I said, acquiring the right to vote (not a human right) depends on the country you want to vote in. If you want to get the right to vote 3 years after arrival, go to Canada.

And I assume that all political discussions in parliament must also be subtitled in Albanian, Turkish, Serbocroatian, Thai, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese, among others? Not to mention all such documents (initiatives, referendums, etc.). There is a reason why there are official languages in a country.
It's quite possible. When there's a target audience, programs in various languages can be made on affairs in the country and beyond. We get ads for money transfers in Cantonese here, and one TV channel spends the first half of the day showing news programs from around the world in their various languages and without subtitles, purely for the benefit of immigrants from those countries.

You don't have that right [to vote] unless it's granted to you specifically.
An odd position to take for someone who claims to be in favour of democracy.

Fact of the matter is that the government is taking my money to do things with. That is, a priori, wrong.

The justification for this is that "we" get to decide what is being done with the money, so that it isn't really taken from me as such, but simply being spent in my name on things I couldn't spend it on myself.

Take away my right to take part in that decision however, and we are left with theft, pure and simple. It doesn't matter who is doing the thieving or for what purpose, but no justification for taxation can possibly be valid without a right to vote.

So I am, according to you, granted the right not to be stolen from. This implies that I have no such right, that it's merely a proxy, decided upon on the day by the government. The exact same argument can be made about my life or freedom. If the government can kill me or put me in prison, then the only way this could possibly be legitimate is if I have previously taken part in the decision to allow the government to do this, given certain conditions. If I haven't taken this decision, then I am being kidnapped or murdered by someone with no legitimate power over me.

In short: the only way to make your argument, ie that consent doesn't matter in these issues, consistently is to deny the existence of any right at all. Then it wouldn't matter if I get murdered, kidnapped or stolen from. But if you think it does, not because a law says so but because it's wrong, then you must agree that the only way an exception can be made is if some form of consent and participation is involved, which means voting. So voting isn't a human right as such, but it's the only way some unsavoury parts of coexisting with others aren't violations of such rights.

The article of the OP is rather POV. Whenever I hear "But I didn't do anything!", I'm usually inclined to hear the other side of the story.
It wouldn't be the first time though. I do recall the case of Emmen, which basically rejected people based on nothing but nationality. And given that Schwyz was the only Kanton that voted in favour of the law recently, there is something particular about the place.

Anyways, the BBC is unlikely to interview criminals and overlook that fact when writing a story. It's far from perfect, but it does have certain standards.

You also have the right to piss all over your apartment, you still don't do it and it doesn't make outlawing it mandatory...
Huh?

My point is that there still is no proper justification for letting others decide where I can and can't live and how I must interact with the state. If no such reason exists, then it doesn't matter whether the citizens are reasonable and fair or racist, they simply would not have the right to make the decision.

It's because the people are the sovereign. The sovereign appoints the government and thus indirectly makes the rules. The rules are: they'll decide who may get the citizenship and who may not.
That's silly. They don't decide that for newborn Swiss kids, so I don't see how they can consistently have the right to decide this for anyone else.

The collective of all citizens is the sovereign in Switzerland. It's based on the type of documents one has. As funny as it would be, it's not I who decides who deserves it and who doesn't, and neither you.
I don't think you realise the fallacy I was pointing out: there is no collective. There is no sovereign people. There is Hans and Josef and Ahmed and Johanna and a few million others.

They are all individual people, and if we're too lazy to mention all their names we can choose to group them together and call them a "community", a "society" or "the Swiss". That does not make these words any more than the sum of their parts. If we don't think Josef has the right to decide, then it doesn't matter whether we're talking about "Josef + a few million others". He doesn't magically become a different entity because we're looking at him together with other people. If Josef doesn't have the right to decide, the Swiss don't have the right to decide.

And if the Swiss have the right to decide, then Josef must have some millionth of the right to decide. I ask: how is this right justified?

Apparently, at the birth of Switzerland, declarations were written, battles were won, blood was spilled and the right for an own county was earned by the Swiss. And this was inherited by their sons and daughters and so on.
1) Many (if not most) Swiss people are not descendants of medieval Swiss people. Even fewer of them fought in any battles.
2) What my ancestors did is only to be considered when talking about them. The fact that my grandfather fought in Stalingrad doesn't make me a war hero or a war criminal. It doesn't confer any rights or responsibilities upon me, since I am my own individual, to be considered seperately from everything and everyone else.
3) Who was it that declared this right to exist? Why were they able to? Is your argument really just "might makes right"?

I don't think you understand the difference between people and persons.
I understand it all too well. Let's just say people in my country of origin have spent some time pondering it, after the results of this difference had been made obvious to everyone.

You can't disregard the Swiss laws, just because you feel that you should have the right to.
Watch me. Laws are worth absolutely nothing if they are incorrect. They are incorrect if I can break them without hurting anyone or anyone's property.

I will, whenever I feel that it would benefit me to do so, break such laws whenever I can get away with it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, morally or otherwise.

It's not my obligation to follow the laws the government makes, it's the governments obligations to make laws I should follow.

And just as parents inherit their property to their children, so do they inherit their rights.
So if your father was a judge and had earned the right to decide in court cases by virtue of studying and proving himself a person worthy of that position, then you have the same right by virtue of having been born from his seed?

So for this to be relevant, I should probably replace "American" with "Swiss"? If so, you're wrong.
My point is that the Albanian-ness of the people standing there has nothing to do with the problem at hand. Whether they're Albanian in Switzerland, or perhaps Black in the US, there is no causation between their origin and the fact that they may be criminals.

I associated peacefulness with the Swiss. I'm talking out of experience. Considering that I know a lot of them and know that exceptions are rare, I can safely say that the majority of the Swiss are, in fact, peaceful.
Oddly enough, so are Australians, Germans and Chinese people. Pure coincidence probably.

Or, it might just be that people universally don't tend to start fights for no reason.

By reading your posts, I assume that you're a civilized person. But if you feel yourself addressed, don't let me stop you.
I feel myself addressed because the whole "oh, all the others but not you" is the oldest trick in the book. You know perfectly well that none of your chosen victims is likely to answer you, so I don't think "I'm not talking to you" really works as a diversion.

If you want to treat Ahmed from Albania a certain way that is different to the one you would treat Josef from Switzerland because Ahmed is an immigrant, then I, as an immigrant, necessarily have to be concerned. Either Ahmed and Josef are uncivilised and you treat them equally as deserving by their actions, or you ignore the details of their character or actions and simply go by their country of origin.

You're asking me why you don't have the inherent right to vote anywhere you're staying? Because the citizens don't give you the right, that's why.
You're still begging the question. If the citizens don't give me the right, it's not inherent. That's an identity, one logically follows from the other.

I am asking why this identity applies. Why isn't this right inherent, and therefore why are the citizens even in a position where they can choose to give or not to give this right?

You can also ask why you're not born with a moustache and why you have to reach puberty and grow it first. The best I can do is to explain that it's just the way it is, you're neither born with a moustache, nor with a right to vote wherever you please.
No, you can explain to me how hair grows, how the various hormones work and so on. Someone that can't be explained because it is such a fundamental identity that it is impossible to explain it without using it in the process is an axiom. That's the only case in which it is ever permissible to say "it is because it is".

This is not such a case.

Nobody said they're superior, but they're the ones to say where things are headed in their own country. And what do you want to say by "they are right in doing so"? According to which standards? According to democratic standards, they're right.
According to universal standards of human existence. The ones that say Hitler was wrong for gassing the Jews even if he had a majority supporting him and even if the law said he could.

Let me sum it up: Will of the majority > Your will.
Why? What if the majority wants to burn me on a stake for saying the sky is blue?

Moving is quite different from voting.
Moving is more fundamental than voting, but as I indicated above, voting is also essential because without it any veneer of legitimacy of law starts to look quite thin.

One of these two governments is appointed by the people, the other one forces itself on the people using the military. But since it's all the same to you, why do you want to live in a democracy?
I don't necessarily want to live in a democracy. I want to live somewhere where the government leaves me alone.

Interfering in the internal affairs of a democratic country is disrespecting the will of the people.
That may well be the case. But it doesn't mean that it is the wrong thing to do.

As I said, if the will of the people doesn't mean anything for you, why do you want to vote in every country you happen to wander to?
If the government didn't take my money, I wouldn't insist on a right to decide what is being done with it. I'd have that right by virtue of having earned it.

The bolded part is what you're saying and I've never said. Let me quote myself (call it a reading aid if you want):

So, I said nothing about randomness.

It doesn't matter. It's the same logic:

1. People of ethnic background or country of origin are more likely to be convicted of crimes.
2. People of ethnic background or country of origin are more likely to be criminals.
3. Therefore, limiting the actions of people of ethnic background or country of origin will statistically reduce crime.


My logic is sound, but neither racist, nor offensive or bigoted. Your example was just that, but sorry, I didn't write what you wrote.

Your logic is no different from that used by racists and bigots, even if you are not a racist or bigot.

The only flaw so far is in your ability to read and comprehend. No shortcomings in the imagination department though.

I think I read all too well.

Yes, I spotted it. All the racism and bigotry and so on comes in right after you randomly read words on the screen and exactly during the process of your brain altering some of these words and adding new, own ones to them. Since the source of racism is none other than you, it'd be better to sign it with your own name, not with mine. Thank you.

I never signed it with your name either. I am, again, not calling you a racist or a bigot. Just pointing out how your argument uses the same kind of 'statistically, $group are criminals!' reasoning. That shouldn't bother you if you're so confident it's flawless reasoning.

3. Therefore, limiting the actions of people of ethnic background or country of origin will statistically reduce crime.
Again, I've never written anything even close to this. This, associated in any way with either me or my reasoning, is a product of your imagination.

Your logic is no different from that used by racists and bigots, even if you are not a racist or bigot.
My logic is different however from what you believe it to be, seeing that you're adding completely new ideas of your own to it (see above).

I think I read all too well.
You prove the contrary.

I never signed it with your name either. I am, again, not calling you a racist or a bigot.
But you're calling my reasoning racist, etc., disregarding the fact that the reasoning you're showing to be racist isn't mine and has huge differences from my reasoning. These differences are completely added by you.

Just pointing out how your argument uses the same kind of 'statistically, $group are criminals!' reasoning. That shouldn't bother you if you're so confident it's flawless reasoning.
No, you were doing much more than that. You were saying that I, using statistics, would cause innocent individuals that fall into that group unwarranted grief, randomly to that. First of all, I'd like all foreigners to have their previous lives thoroughly examined for criminal behaviour, if they apply for a Swiss citizenship. This isn't even causing grief, because those who are innocent have nothing to fear of. You're trying to put words into my mouth and call those words racist.

No, you're wrong. Someone has been killed, but an aquittal will invalidate your example. And that may still happen.
Nice to know that in your imaginary world, court sentences may determine reality to such extent, that it would invalidate a killing. It has nothing to do with reality however.

Since the court has yet to determine guilt, your example cannot be used.
So, for example, if you see a man shoot someone and in court, he's found to be innocent, the man didn't actually shoot him at all? Seems like you're voluntarily refraining from using logic or thinking at all and leaving it all to the courts. Kant would have a field day.

Since the court has yet to determine a sentence, if they should be found guilty, your example fails when you claim that the criminal justice system cannot deal with them.
Let me repeat myself once again: Punishments aren't there to show the offenders, that they've done wrong, but to protect society from said offenders in an adequate way. As I said before, theoretically, assuming that they'll all be found guilty, the MOST the two citizens would get is 10 years and the MOST they would serve is 5 years. That's the maximum, according to law. Thus, you've got two murderers you can't protect the society adequately from. That would prove me right in my claim.
The Croatian however, would probably get deported if he gets the maximum sentence, and thus, he will also prove me right in my claim that the criminal justice system can deal adequately with criminal non-citizens.

When we're talking about law, it's the only correct thing to do:
And since we're living in a democracy, if the people consider the law too soft on naturalised criminals and see that handing out Swiss citizenship in certain cases prevents adequate measures to be taken in the case of a serious crime. To fix this problem, they've started a referendum which ended in a vote. So far so good. The only problem I saw was this thread, where a bunch of outsiders, who see the world (especially Switzerland) through the eyes of the internet, somehow feel qualified enough to judge the Swiss people and question their democratic rights. This is why I started posting here.

The court is the right venue to determine guilt or innocence. And without a court ruling, it's silly to speculate in hypotheticals.
Does that bar people from thinking for themselves, using the same evidence the court has? Just because you refrain from thinking, it doesn't mean everyone is supposed to. Plus, I believe that you wouldn't transfer all rights to use one's brains to the judges, if the case wouldn't be so obvious.

So you would still deny them citizenship based on what they might do, and childhood shenanigans done by minors, and include the school to be directly involved in the citizenship question - something the're not cut out to do.
I said, adjust waiting times and examinations to each individual, not to bar everyone from becoming a citizen. If you broke a window, that may very well be an accident. If you participated in beating up a pupil and robbing him thereafter, that would already be on the border of excluding him from citizenship. Also, I don't think that would be considered a "childhood shenanigan" by the victim's parents, even if the offenders are 14 or so. As for schools not being cut out to get involved, that's quite subjective. Some say they're also not cut out to assist in raising children.

I think it's a bad idea, and I don't see how it would make society safer.
After explaining it to you several times, I don't think that repeating myself further in this case would help you. Re-read my previous posts.

If it would, why not go to the extreme length and use those measures on citizens as well?
You couldn't apply them 1 to 1 on citizens, due to what we call "citizen's rights". Once you're a citizen, you're part of the sovereign and you can't be deported. Hardening the penal system would be the only way to somehow ensure more justice, but that's off-topic, since citizens still can't be deported.

You would like the Swedish system.
That friend of mine would indeed.

I don't know why it doesn't make sense to you. In Switzerland you would have 12 years to "filter", and since you have to renew your permits over time you'll return to the "spotlight" several times.
Wait, so you're saying that the yearly renewal of residence permits would mean a yearly inspection of one's criminal record? I like the idea very much indeed. I'll be sure to bring it up on the next assembly. It would cost a lot more time and resources however, but that's secondary. Also, it would generate a FAR greater leftist backlash than this referendum, and the vote to pass the law would even result in a NationStates General topic with a far more biased and POV name, but that's not a priority at all.
But right no

But it has got to end at some point, and as I've said before, when you've stayed in the country for 12 years without being convicted for any crimes, that should be sufficient.
Yes, but in the present system, there is only one filter to pass and nowadays, it's more or less only a political filter. As for my opinion on committing petty crimes that don't pass the border between offences and crimes, see my previous posts.

Placing the filter at the citizenship-phase doesn't make sense to me, because you've cleared 12 years worth of hurdles to get there. You have demonstrated that you can be trusted, welcome as a full citizen of our society.
If there would be hurdles in those 12 years, I'd say you're right. But there aren't. There are just 12 years of living your life, not getting caught, not having to worry about being convicted of something that might jeopardise your chances to get the citizenship. And if you are, you can always take it further to the federal court, where premeditated homicide turns into causing a traffic accident. That's the real hurdle: to talk yourself out of a guaranteed non-citizenship.

And as I've said, if you don't have a conviction, you only have suspicions, conjecture, and guesswork. Turning someone down because of hypotheticals and mere suspicions is not acceptable to me.
I wouldn't called "past deeds" suspicions, conjencture and guesswork.

You'll have to expect that those who hand out citizenship permits follow the rule of law, and that would mean not being dictated by speculations.
I think I've already presented you how naturalisation works.

It was a question. And your suggestions wouldn't prevent it.
Oh, then I think I'll have to answer it. No, I wouldn't ban all immigrants from the country. I've never ever suggested doing so, either.

Wow, I never knew the Swiss democracy was so rigid and unchangable. I'm disapointed.
It is. Sometimes it's a good thing, because when you say no to some untransparent tax plan suggested by the government, it's a definite no. Of course, you can always re-take the referendum and go the long way of legislation again and again and again, just as the GSoA repeadetly trying to abolish the Swiss Army, or the government repeadetly trying to enter the EU. Those just fail several times.

Especially since you tried and failed to be sarcastic, and not ironic. ;)
The difference lies in how you receive it.

So... The courts say that he didn't actually try to kill someone, but he did intentionally cause a traffic accident, but one that he didn't intend to cause fatal harm to the others?
Exactly. It's a very boring text (written in the peculiar language of the lawyers), but it's worth a read. In the end, the offender's been applauded for using his advanced driving skills to knowingly limit the damage done to the victim's car. Basically, they said that the accident wasn't fatal because the offender didn't intend it to be fatal. As for the reality, it would've definately caused death, hadn't it been for sheer luck, and this has been already determined by the police investigation. But even if the police concludes something out of investigations, jurists are the ones who interpret them.

Personally, and based on what you've described, I would have him expelled - but had he been a citizen, I wouldn't have had a problem with him being released into society.
Why? What's the difference?

Yet again it seems like your fight is with the courts...
My fight is with anyone who actively tries to make this country a worse place to live in and succeeds. However, I thought this topic was about a law that had been trying to get passed.

Your reasoning is flawed. See Trostias post for an idea.
No it isn't. See my reply to Trostia's post for an idea.

But also because you disregard the rules already in place, making it so that the potential criminals will have to go 12 years without comitting any crimes, and thus those who are eligible to apply for citizenship are less likely to be criminals.
I don't think that potential criminals going 12 years behaving well (I guess that's what you meant by "without committing any crimes") instead of walking the thin line between being arrested and evading capture would be a change for the bad. That's assuming that people would actually see tighter controls as a deterrant. I'm not optimistic enough to believe that.

And you disregard the fact that even foreigners will serve prison time before being deported.
That's a detail. The main thing is that they're deported. You could justify prison time before deportation with not letting a criminal out into any kind of society (not even a foreign one) without doing SOME time in jail, but honestly, I could care less.

I beg to differ, and I can even point to the recent vote as a supporting argument to my claim.
The vote wasn't about my example being convincing or not.

Evidence is found in both examples and statistics, and the ones you have provided is seriously lacking.
It lacks the data you want to see, but not the ones I need to support my own arguments.

It's too bad that there are no statistics that show the crime rates and recidivism rates of naturalised citizens, but as there isn't, you have failed to prove your claim.
No, I merely seem to have failed convincing you, as you've been raising your standards with every single thing I brought in to support my argument.

I'm impressed at how you manage to choose an interpretation of my post just afterwards that completely disregrd the context of what I've said before.
What I wrote was all too well in context. You weren't shown what you would've liked to see. Instead I showed you something you didn't like, something that's been too inconvenient for you. So you would've liked to see something non-existant in order to use its non-existence as a reason why you fail to see my point, thus cleverly dismissing the inconvenient truths I presented. Neither irony, nor sarcasm can transcend that.

So to repeat myself since this seemed to be difficult: It's not that the statististics show me what I don't want to see, (they show me what I know), it's that they don't show me what I want to see (which is statistics on the crime rates and the recidivism rates among naturalised citizens).
If you already know it, how can you ignore it? If it's not inconvenient for you, why do you so desperately seek to discard it?

Why? Fox News have no credibility. They tend to produce news pieces consisting of fear mongering, sensationalism, and xenophobia.
They've also produced a report on Sweden that's been inconvenient for you. Whenever you can't attack the content, attack the source, is that it?

And will these get citizenship? Has anybody who has done any crimes such as in that example not been expelled and gotten citizenship?
It's hard to predict the future, but this case will not play any role in their citizenship, save for one offender (the adult). Crimes committed as a minor don't get registered, thus they won't show up on the piece of paper that sums up the criminality control of the naturalisation process.

And that may be, but you still haven't been able to back it up with any sources. I'm sure the SVP would attack that furiously, surely they have a statement out there or something?
As I said, it was merely a conclusion showing the differences between Germanic and Romance Switzerland. The Romands and Ticinese are much more open to foreigners and in Lausanne, leftism is legendary. And no, the SVP doesn't attack elected bodies of government directly (the closest thing to this was declaring itself an opposition party), this would result in a drop of support in the said region. As I said, I give you that argument.

I've disregarded the death of a person because there's no conviction yet. Without a conviction it's worthless - innocent until proven guilty.
See the beginning of my post.

I've disregarded the statistics because they don't bring anything new to the debate.
They don't bring anything you wouldn't ignore to the debate.

I use logic. Sorry.
Another striking argument.

It's good to know that you have no expectations whatsoever.
Of course I don't. I started posting into a topic started by people who are neither involved nor knowing of the situation, freely insulting the democratic rights of a nation. If you read the first page, you'll see that it's clearly a liberal attempt to drag a group of people through the mud. The cases in which I discuss the subject with expectations are the ones where I'm faced by people with personal experience, who know what they're talking about and what they're not. Hardcore left-wing idealists I've discussed this subject with have told me to disregard spokespersons of the SP when they said that "Whoever applies for a citizenship, already demonstrates his/her will to be a productive part of our society", because it's intended to be "party propaganda", just like "the SVP does it". That was quoting him.

Nice to know that in your imaginary world, court sentences may determine reality to such extent, that it would invalidate a killing. It has nothing to do with reality however.
I'm sorry to inform you that I'm the one living in the real world here. Again, you try to override the facts with guessworks and speculation on how the court may rule, and when that doesn't work, you dismiss it all by saying that I somehow invalidate a killing.

Indeed, a killing has happened, but was it a lawful killing? Was it in self defence? An accident? Provocation? We don't know, and the court hasn't concluded after looking at all the evidence. As such, I will refrain from frivilous speculation as you do, and I will stand by my claim that your example is worthless until it can be determined that the killing was unlawful. Until that time, you cannot successfully claim that the accused has violated swiss law - because you would simply be wrong.

And considering reality further, it should be noted that if the government tries to expell anyone of them based on the mere presence of a dead body it would infringe on their human rights and it would be a violation of both the Swiss constitution, immigration law and obligations under international trearies.


So, for example, if you see a man shoot someone and in court, he's found to be innocent, the man didn't actually shoot him at all? Seems like you're voluntarily refraining from using logic or thinking at all and leaving it all to the courts. Kant would have a field day.
You fail at the logic you claim to espouse.

If I see a man shoot someone and in court, he's found to be innocent, the man did actually shoot the other man - however, the man hasn't violated any laws (as is evident by the fact that he's found innocent), he wouldn't have violated the rule of law, and he wouldn't be a threat to the society.

If the guys in your example are found to be innocent, they will not be punished nor can they be expelled - even if the unfortunate dead student remains dead.

Of course I can think all the things I want and be convinced of their guilt, but the government doesn't have that luxury. And it's the government we're talking about, and they have no choice but to respect and adhere to the findings of the court, so anything they would suspect of think about this case would be irrelevant.


Let me repeat myself once again: Punishments aren't there to show the offenders, that they've done wrong, but to protect society from said offenders in an adequate way.
I disagree and think it's both, including a preventative effect both on the individual and on the general populace.

As I said before, theoretically, assuming that they'll all be found guilty, the MOST the two citizens would get is 10 years and the MOST they would serve is 5 years. That's the maximum, according to law. Thus, you've got two murderers you can't protect the society adequately from. That would prove me right in my claim.
It wouldn't.

You do, however, make a case for how the Swiss criminal justice system in general fails to protect the Swiss society against all criminals, but you don't make a case for the need for expulsion for these individuals.


The Croatian however, would probably get deported if he gets the maximum sentence, and thus, he will also prove me right in my claim that the criminal justice system can deal adequately with criminal non-citizens.
You would be incorrect, since the question of expulsion isn't dealt with by the criminal justice system.

And since we're living in a democracy, if the people consider the law too soft on naturalised criminals and see that handing out Swiss citizenship in certain cases prevents adequate measures to be taken in the case of a serious crime. To fix this problem, they've started a referendum which ended in a vote. So far so good. The only problem I saw was this thread, where a bunch of outsiders, who see the world (especially Switzerland) through the eyes of the internet, somehow feel qualified enough to judge the Swiss people and question their democratic rights. This is why I started posting here.
Ah, the old "You have no personal experience directly related to this, so you can't form an opinion" fallacy.

Welcome to NSG, a place where we debate politics, even politics that's the interior policies of any random country.

Does that bar people from thinking for themselves, using the same evidence the court has? Just because you refrain from thinking, it doesn't mean everyone is supposed to. Plus, I believe that you wouldn't transfer all rights to use one's brains to the judges, if the case wouldn't be so obvious.
You can think for yourself all you want, but you cannot override the fact that it's a condition that there exists a conviction for any expulsion decision to be contemplated. And no matter how "obvious" a case may or may not be, I would still wait until the conditions are met before I claimed to use the case as an example.


I said, adjust waiting times and examinations to each individual, not to bar everyone from becoming a citizen.
I know you didn't say everyone. But you still said you would base the examinations upon psychoanalytical tests, meaning you would place a great deal of weight on what they potentially could do. And that's problematic.

If you broke a window, that may very well be an accident. If you participated in beating up a pupil and robbing him thereafter, that would already be on the border of excluding him from citizenship. Also, I don't think that would be considered a "childhood shenanigan" by the victim's parents, even if the offenders are 14 or so.
I don't care what the parents might think. It's an act done by a minor, and even if he can be punished by it, it should only carry little weight when it comes to the questions of immigration/citizenship.

(As in Emre v. Switzerland, where the Court observed in particular that at least some of the offences committed by the applicant came under the heading of juvenile delinquency.)


As for schools not being cut out to get involved, that's quite subjective.
Not at all. Schools aren't a part of the immigration authorities, nor law enforcement. You would force them into a role that they wouldn't be comfortable with or competent to do. And having the teachers be instrumental in deciding the futures of their pupils would place undue pressure on them as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if the teachers would be hesitant to report disturbances if they knew the long term consequences it would have. Regardless, it would be a very fallible system.

After explaining it to you several times, I don't think that repeating myself further in this case would help you. Re-read my previous posts.
I don't need your help. I stated my disagreement.



You couldn't apply them 1 to 1 on citizens, due to what we call "citizen's rights". Once you're a citizen, you're part of the sovereign and you can't be deported. Hardening the penal system would be the only way to somehow ensure more justice, but that's off-topic, since citizens still can't be deported.
It's not off topic, since you claimed that stricter citizenship rules would lead to a safer society - and we're talking about how to make society safer.

So you don't think that such measures should be used on citizens to make society safer, only on foreigners... Hmm...


Wait, so you're saying that the yearly renewal of residence permits would mean a yearly inspection of one's criminal record? I like the idea very much indeed. I'll be sure to bring it up on the next assembly. It would cost a lot more time and resources however, but that's secondary.
Why should it be more costly? The immigration service surely has access to criminal records, and are notified of all convictions of foreigners? Such a warning system, if it's not in place today, should be easy to set up and to get to work efficiently.

And I know that Switzerland (in the past at least) simply refuses to renew a permit if a foreigner is convicted of a crime that the government finds to be serious enough. Simpler than actually making an expulsion decision.

Also, it would generate a FAR greater leftist backlash than this referendum, and the vote to pass the law would even result in a NationStates General topic with a far more biased and POV name, but that's not a priority at all.
Why should it cause such a backlash?



I wouldn't called "past deeds" suspicions, conjencture and guesswork.
I would, when you don't base it on convictions but on suspicions and hearsay.


Exactly. It's a very boring text (written in the peculiar language of the lawyers), but it's worth a read. In the end, the offender's been applauded for using his advanced driving skills to knowingly limit the damage done to the victim's car. Basically, they said that the accident wasn't fatal because the offender didn't intend it to be fatal. As for the reality, it would've definately caused death, hadn't it been for sheer luck, and this has been already determined by the police investigation. But even if the police concludes something out of investigations, jurists are the ones who interpret them.
Hmm, so you know better than the court and the jurists?


Why? What's the difference?
Citizenship. He has earned the protection of the state, even if he violates the trust afterwards the state has agreed to an exchange of rights and responsibilities. And the criminal justice system should always be adequate to protect society, so there would be no need to expell him.

The non-citizen however, has violated the trust before the agreement between him and the state, and shown that he's lacking what's needed to take part in the society. Hence I would expell him.

My fight is with anyone who actively tries to make this country a worse place to live in and succeeds. However, I thought this topic was about a law that had been trying to get passed.
Yes, it was, and as you see, most of your arguments in favour of the now defeated law are misguided as the belong elsewhere.


No it isn't. See my reply to Trostia's post for an idea.
It is. You see, again you fail to differentiate between the foreigners who are visiting, those foreigners living in Switzerland, and those foreigners seeking citizenship. For all we know none of the foreigners seeking citizenship are criminals, and thus making your point fail. If all the criminal foreigners are just visiting, your point also fails, as they would most likely go home afterwards and not be a further threat to the Swiss society. And if the criminals are the people seeking citizenship, you have yet to show a recidivism rate to back up the claim that the Swiss society needs protection from them after the first crime.

We don't know, because you don't analyze the group, but rather generalise based on your "logic".


That's a detail. The main thing is that they're deported. You could justify prison time before deportation with not letting a criminal out into any kind of society (not even a foreign one) without doing SOME time in jail, but honestly, I could care less.
Hardly a detail when talking about how to protect society. You make it seem like expulsion is the only way. It isn't. It's a secondary reaction to any punishment he may have. So it's primarily the criminal justice system that's tasked with dealing with criminals. And to disregard it as a "detail" says a lot, I think.



It lacks the data you want to see, but not the ones I need to support my own arguments.
As I've shown you before, you're wrong there.

No, I merely seem to have failed convincing you, as you've been raising your standards with every single thing I brought in to support my argument.
And how have I been "raising the standard"?

I've merely pointed out that your examples isn't, and that you fail to back up your claims since your statistics doesn't support your claims.



What I wrote was all too well in context. You weren't shown what you would've liked to see. Instead I showed you something you didn't like, something that's been too inconvenient for you. So you would've liked to see something non-existant in order to use its non-existence as a reason why you fail to see my point, thus cleverly dismissing the inconvenient truths I presented. Neither irony, nor sarcasm can transcend that.
What you wrote disregarded all context by defying any logical interpretation, and thus you failed completely. You have to create a bad faith in me, and yet again you try to do that by your creations. I shall explain this slowly to you:

What you showed me was not something I didn't like: It was something I already knew, as I showed in my last post.
What you showed me is not inconvenient for me, also because I already know and accept the facts that they are demonstrating - and I've known it since the beginning of this debate.
I would like to see something which, unfortunately, does not exist because that would shed some light on this subject. Hence I say that they don't show us what we would like to see, because we both would like the subject at hand to be illuminated. It does not show me something I don't want to see, however. It only shows me what I already know, and what we've already stated before in this thread, so it is nothing new.

You bring a known fact to the debate and you try to twist the statistics to show something it doesn't. When I call you on that, and ask for statistics that would prove or disprove your claim, since the statistics you have presented doesn't do either, you have a fit and falsely accuse me dismissing inconvenient truths, "truths" I might add which you have repeatedly failed to provide evidence for.

So give it a rest with your faux outrage. You don't have statistics backing you up but you want to make guesses based on the statistis you do have? Fine. But there's no point in getting pissy when I point out that the Emperor has no clothes.


If you already know it, how can you ignore it? If it's not inconvenient for you, why do you so desperately seek to discard it?
As I've said before, it doesn't bring anything new to the table. It lumps all foreigners together, whether they're visiting, residing, or seeking citizenship. It does not show if those foreigners granted citizenship have a higher rate or convictions than the average Swiss citizen, and it doesn't show the recidivism rates of the naturalised citizen. As such, it is worthless in this debate - since they cannot be used to show that the rules on citizenship in any way have an impact on crime.

They've also produced a report on Sweden that's been inconvenient for you. Whenever you can't attack the content, attack the source, is that it?
Giving Fox the benefit of the doubt for a moment: the story is still not inconvenient; it is, however, simply irrelevant.


Another striking argument.
Ah, now you're simply refusing to use or accept the use of logic.


Of course I don't. I started posting into a topic started by people who are neither involved nor knowing of the situation, freely insulting the democratic rights of a nation.
http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/sad021.gif

As long as you accept that this is true regardless of the ethnicity or country of origin of the person at hand.
Heh, it doesn't even depend on me accepting it or not. It's the reality. I accept the reality.

Well, probably more in Australia. They have obviously managed to deal with immigration extremely well here, and things that would produce nothing but outrage in continental Europe (for example that Melbourne is the second-largest Greek city in the world after Athens) are quite normal here, and are seen as a positive thing. And that's the thing that stumps me about the immigration debate in Europe these days: I can see here every day how things could be, but that scenario is rejected by way too many European voters because of meaningless concerns.
I don't know about Australia or Germany well enough to bash them. But parallel communities as you have described them are non-existant in Switzerland. Thus, they're off-topic here.

That's not to say that in Germany you don't also get community leaders, even if parallel communities tend to be more diverse. The last thing to do is to refuse to talk because of a failure to realise that there is someone to talk to.
If the Swiss had problems with Italians only working in Italian restaurants, the whole issue would be entirely different.

1) What is integration?
Integration as the Swiss understand it, consists of learning the local language well enough to be able to get along in Swiss society, but more importantly, to understand what's going on in politics (since they want to vote, this is more than appropriate). It also consists of respecting the written laws of the country and the unwritten laws of decency (which might be new to some, depending on their country of origin).

2) Why are some not doing it?
I can only speculate, but it's also secondary at best.

Of course, regardless of the answers to those two questions, if non-integration is something individuals do by themselves, blocking immigration or citizenship isn't really a solution to it. Any solution to an individual problem can only be developed for, and preferably in conjunction with, that individual.
If failure to integrate consists of not learning the language, then learn it. If it consists of not respecting laws, learn to respect them and become a useful member of your community first.

Yes, but a large proportion of Swiss might also not want other people around: Swiss criminals, Swiss sexual predators, Swiss people who play loud music on a saturday night when you want to sleep etc etc
And since they're not foreigners, those problems aren't addressed by the law we were discussing. They will have to be solved separately.

The question is whether the dislike is good enough to justify an unequal treatment. If it is okay to kick out an Albanian kid for not going to school, or even for mugging someone, then why can't the citizenship of a Swiss kid doing the same thing be revoked? Why can't the Swiss kid be deported?
Citizens' rights. It's got nothing to do with dislike, but a citizen has certain rights a non-citizen doesn't have.

Both are human beings, both have done exactly the same thing to merit reward or punishment - any basis for treating them differently seems flimsy at best.
It's not flimsy, it's simply by the rules. Hey, I also don't like the rule of criminal citizens being unable to be as efficiently dealt with as certain criminal foreigners (deportation). For example, if criminal citizens would get prison sentences that cover their youths or extend into their elderly age, I would consider the criminal justice system much more adequate and you'd probably also appreciate the level of equality. But to be more lenient on criminal immigrants simply for the sake of equality (as criminal citizens aren't dealt with adequately) is simply mad.

I try to raise my voice on a political level right now too, and nothing happens. But that's an aside.
Then, you either seem to live in a place where democracy doesn't work, in which case I'm sorry for you, or you have such a peculiar political alignment that you can't have your candidates elected even on a small, regional level. In which case, the fight is up to you to convince others if you care enough and if your arguments are sound. But that's going off-topic, I agree.

More importantly, unless the government does something to me, my point stands. And since there are local levels of government, and in a micro-sense, even "government" really just consists of people in my local community who work for it, I think my point still stands. If we want to determine the way you live and the things you experience in your daily life, we'd be much more able to do so by saying that you live in New York City than the United States. The smaller the environment we describe, the more accurately the description fits you.
There are laws which could be passed on a federal level, affecting NYC even if the congressmen and senators of NY oppose it. In that case, your microcosmos-scenario fails, as your entire state becomes subject to a law opposed by it.

And I agree. But it may well be that as far as business is concerned, at some point knowing Albanian might be of more value than knowing French. And when that becomes a possibility, it seems to me blatantly obvious to not just offer Albanian in school, but also to expand what constitutes an "official language".
At some point, every language might be more important than another. That's still no reason to make it mandatory or official. If a businessman sees that he'll probably deal with a lot of Chinese people, he'll have to learn a Chinese language for himself. He'd also do well employing people with a certain proficiency in their language. It all goes under knowing what's good for you and what isn't. Switzerland already has more official than mandatory languages. Which means that if I would move to Lugano and had the right to vote, I'd probably be screwed when it comes to voting, because the political landscape is different than the one I'm used to here and I can't speak Italian well enough to be able to vote responsibly. One mustn't worsen this situation by adding more languages.

If I am an Albanian housewife who cares for her family all day and only meets her Albanian housewife girlfriends from time to time...am I really wrong if I choose not to waste my time learning German?
You do what you want to do. If you don't want to learn German, you won't understand what the politicians are talking about. If you don't care however, it's fine by me. Just don't be disappointed when you get turned down at the naturalisation office.

Am I really showing a lack of commitment to living in Switzerland?
I'll take "commitment" as "respecting the laws and customs". No, you're not, but you fail to qualify to vote. I think we agree that being able to understand what a law is about should be a requirement to vote.

You could argue that I'd miss out, and you'd probably be right. But I don't think you'd be right to kick me out and say "you don't really want to be here".
Not getting the Swiss passport isn't kicking you out. It's just preventing you from voting.

It's quite possible. When there's a target audience, programs in various languages can be made on affairs in the country and beyond.
Such a referendum would probably not pass the stage of collecting signatures in Switzerland. It's simply more effective (not to mention appropriate) for immigrants to learn the local language than the government to add a number of foreign languages to the ones already official. But I'm not predicting the future, if the leftist parties would consider starting such a referendum I think it'd reach parliament. But I don't think either the socialists or the greens are stupid enough. Supporting such a move would cost them more votes than they could spare.

An odd position to take for someone who claims to be in favour of democracy.
Why? If it's the rule of a democratic country and I'm respecting it, it's the only democratic position to take.

Fact of the matter is that the government is taking my money to do things with. That is, a priori, wrong.
No, that's justified enough. If you're paying taxes, you're already using what they provide you. You're simply paying for public service.

The justification for this is that "we" get to decide what is being done with the money, so that it isn't really taken from me as such, but simply being spent in my name on things I couldn't spend it on myself.
No, the justification is that you're using things or made to use things (such as healthcare) which must be paid for with taxes.

Take away my right to take part in that decision however, and we are left with theft, pure and simple.
No, because you're using what you're paying for. Ergo it's not thieving. Just because you can't decide yet on what it should be spent on, it doesn't mean that you will never be able to (unless you screw up of course, but then you'd be the only one to blame).

no justification for taxation can possibly be valid without a right to vote.
Says who?

So I am, according to you, granted the right not to be stolen from. This implies that I have no such right, that it's merely a proxy, decided upon on the day by the government. The exact same argument can be made about my life or freedom. If the government can kill me or put me in prison, then the only way this could possibly be legitimate is if I have previously taken part in the decision to allow the government to do this, given certain conditions. If I haven't taken this decision, then I am being kidnapped or murdered by someone with no legitimate power over me.
This would be true if it wasn't for the tiny little fact that you're not being stolen from in any case. If you don't go to school you still need to pay taxes to keep schools running, because if you (or your child) WOULD go to school, you'd get an education worth more than the individual tax, whether you're an immigrant or a citizen. This isn't stealing. If you're referring to it as such however, I think that you'd be better off somewhere without taxes or any kind of public service. That'd be outside of civilization.

In short: the only way to make your argument, ie that consent doesn't matter in these issues, consistently is to deny the existence of any right at all. Then it wouldn't matter if I get murdered, kidnapped or stolen from. But if you think it does, not because a law says so but because it's wrong, then you must agree that the only way an exception can be made is if some form of consent and participation is involved, which means voting. So voting isn't a human right as such, but it's the only way some unsavoury parts of coexisting with others aren't violations of such rights.
See above. No human rights are violated by taxes without voting and voting still isn't one.

It wouldn't be the first time though. I do recall the case of Emmen, which basically rejected people based on nothing but nationality. And given that Schwyz was the only Kanton that voted in favour of the law recently, there is something particular about the place.
Weird. What are your sources on Emmen rejecting people based on nothing but nationality? And what nationality might've that been?

Anyways, the BBC is unlikely to interview criminals and overlook that fact when writing a story. It's far from perfect, but it does have certain standards.
I don't consider one-sided stories to be anything close to an argument, especially if the source would theoretically have the possibility of displaying the other side of the story. The BBC could've interviewed anyone who voted against those Turks, but they didn't.

Huh?
It was an analogy to being racist.

My point is that there still is no proper justification for letting others decide where I can and can't live and how I must interact with the state. If no such reason exists, then it doesn't matter whether the citizens are reasonable and fair or racist, they simply would not have the right to make the decision.
There has to be some way of deciding whether someone gets the citizenship or doesn't, and while voting on it lacks objectivity, it does have a certain democratic justification. The current system however is even more flawed, as it also lacks objectivity and is politically biased. Anyway, the law would've granted every community the right to decide who'll have the last word and that might've been a public vote or something completely different.

That's silly. They don't decide that for newborn Swiss kids, so I don't see how they can consistently have the right to decide this for anyone else.
SR 141.0 I. A. Art. 1 (http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/sr/141_0/a1.html#fn1)
By origin

The following are Swiss citizens from birth:
a.
the child, whose parents are married and whose father or mother is a Swiss citizen;
b.
the child of a (female) Swiss citizen not married to the father.

2 The under-age foreign child of a Swiss father, who isn't married to the mother, acquires the right for Swiss citizenship as he/she would by birth, the relationship to the father being the reason.

3 If the under-age child, who acquired the right for Swiss citizenship according to paragraph 2, has children of his/her own, these also acquire the right for Swiss citizenship.
The law says so. The law was made by the majority of the people. They are right.

I don't think you realise the fallacy I was pointing out: there is no collective. There is no sovereign people. There is Hans and Josef and Ahmed and Johanna and a few million others. They are all individual people, and if we're too lazy to mention all their names we can choose to group them together and call them a "community", a "society" or "the Swiss". That does not make these words any more than the sum of their parts.
There IS the collective of all citizens. It's also possible for Hans, Josef, Ahmed and Johanna to enter that collective and become part of it. It only depends on them, whether they earn it or not. You might think it's wrong, but you're not making the laws all by yourself, aren't you? That's because nobody is. Neither Hans, nor Josef, nor Ahmed, nor Johanna can pass a law. But together, and only together, agreeing that the minority accepts the ruling of the majority, can they pass a law which will apply to all of them.

If we don't think Josef has the right to decide, then it doesn't matter whether we're talking about "Josef + a few million others". He doesn't magically become a different entity because we're looking at him together with other people. If Josef doesn't have the right to decide, the Swiss don't have the right to decide.
Wrong. Josef, assuming he isn't Swiss, has a chance (actually, several chances) of becoming one of the Swiss. The Swiss have a right to decide, inherently. If Josef doesn't take his chance, he won't acquire the right to decide in Switzerland. He will still retain his citizen's rights of his home country however.

I ask: how is this right justified?
I answered it already. Either by inheritance or by a lawful acquisition of rights.

1) Many (if not most) Swiss people are not descendants of medieval Swiss people. Even fewer of them fought in any battles.
2) What my ancestors did is only to be considered when talking about them. The fact that my grandfather fought in Stalingrad doesn't make me a war hero or a war criminal. It doesn't confer any rights or responsibilities upon me, since I am my own individual, to be considered seperately from everything and everyone else.
3) Who was it that declared this right to exist? Why were they able to? Is your argument really just "might makes right"?
1) The Swiss people are either descendants of the citizens of certain cantons at their entry into the Confederation (natives), descendants of immigrants who acquired the same rights as the natives or immigrants themselves who acquired the same rights as those listed above.
2) When the concept of citizenship was made (first by Napoleon invading Switzerland and confirmed by the Swiss people after the Sonderbund war), the Swiss have estabilished ius sanguinis, declaring that the progeny of citizens will become automatically citizens. They said so. Only the Swiss citizens could abolish this, if they wanted to. However, the Swiss have never made a law declaring heroism or criminality to be hereditary. Aside from the obvious practical difficulties and the lack of demand for such a law, there simply isn't anything that states that heroism or criminality are hereditary, as opposed to citizenship.
3) Those who drafted the first constitution AND every subsequent generation of Swiss voters that has changed and adjusted the citizenship law many times but didn't change ius sanguinis. The first who decided this might've been able to because they just won a civil war, but the subsequent generations did so without any pressure from the past. The fact that it's still in place today is because the present Swiss voters say so. "Might is right" might've partially be correct in 1848, but definately not today. It's "the law is right" or "the majority is right".

Watch me. Laws are worth absolutely nothing if they are incorrect. They are incorrect if I can break them without hurting anyone or anyone's property.
Ah, but then you'd have to face the police which carries out the will of the majority whenever you break a law passed by them. If you feel that a law is incorrect, the only thing you can do is to write a referendum, make a campaign to change it and in the end, vote if you can (if you can't, get naturalised and vote). Breaking laws is asking for trouble and deserving it.

I will, whenever I feel that it would benefit me to do so, break such laws whenever I can get away with it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, morally or otherwise.
Legally, there is. If it stays unprobable that you'd be caught, the law is impractical and should be democratically re-adjusted (except if it harms others of course, then the police force must be re-adjusted to make them able of capturing you). If it's probable that you're caught, but you still evade it, then it's your own fault if you trust your luck too much. You're responsible for your own deeds and if you're convicted of a crime (not simply an offence), nobody will care whether you think you acted right or wrong.

It's not my obligation to follow the laws the government makes, it's the governments obligations to make laws I should follow.
I don't know whether you're really as tough on law in real life as you are on internet ("Look I'm illegally downloading music! I'm a rebel!" doesn't count. "Look, I'm setting fire to this police car because it's a symbol of the evil system! I'm a freedom-fighter!" does), in practice nobody cares what you THINK. However, if you'd really act on all these anti-authority urges in Switzerland and get convicted, you better be in a left-wing-dominated community when you're applying for citizenship.

So if your father was a judge and had earned the right to decide in court cases by virtue of studying and proving himself a person worthy of that position, then you have the same right by virtue of having been born from his seed?
Right to citizenship is hereditary by law, occupation isn't.

My point is that the Albanian-ness of the people standing there has nothing to do with the problem at hand. Whether they're Albanian in Switzerland, or perhaps Black in the US, there is no causation between their origin and the fact that they may be criminals.
Nobody was talking about Albanian-ness. Foreigners do have however a higher statistical chance of committing crimes. Thus, being extra careful when it comes to handing out citizenship rights are advised.

Oddly enough, so are Australians, Germans and Chinese people. Pure coincidence probably.
How the majority of people in Australia, Germany and China generally acts is irrelevant. I was saying that the Swiss are generally peaceful and it takes a lot to piss them off.

Or, it might just be that people universally don't tend to start fights for no reason.
I'm sure reasons exist everytime. Some people however tend to find reasons more readily than others.

I feel myself addressed because the whole "oh, all the others but not you" is the oldest trick in the book. You know perfectly well that none of your chosen victims is likely to answer you, so I don't think "I'm not talking to you" really works as a diversion.
The oldest trick to do what? If you have a moral obligation of solidarity, feel free to exercise it, it's none of my concern. As for "my victims"... What would they be a victim of? Do you think I don't voice my opinions just as readily in real life? If so, why?
As for my statement, you don't correspond the image I made during my years in Switzerland of a criminal immigrant. That being said, you very well might be one of them (or someone who'd be one of them, were he in Switzerland). It was just an assumption that you're more civilised than a common criminal, but hey, you might not be.

If you want to treat Ahmed from Albania a certain way that is different to the one you would treat Josef from Switzerland because Ahmed is an immigrant, then I, as an immigrant, necessarily have to be concerned.
Oh, I treat you all the same. It's the law that will let one of you vote and the other one not. Plus, since citizens normally don't request citizenship (duh), and immigrants normally do, there WILL be a procedure which immigrants will undergo and citizens won't.

Either Ahmed and Josef are uncivilised and you treat them equally as deserving by their actions, or you ignore the details of their character or actions and simply go by their country of origin.
If both of them commit a crime that would justify removing both from society, I would gladly do so. However, there remains the problem of being able to deport a foreigner, but not a citizen. I will of course want the foreigner to be deported, as it will deal with a problem to society, even if I can't give the citizen a life sentence (which is a pity).

You're still begging the question. If the citizens don't give me the right, it's not inherent. That's an identity, one logically follows from the other.
Citizenship can be acquired, thus it's not an identity (unless you're trying to say that identities can be acquired), it's a set of rights. You can either acquire those rights or be born with them.

I am asking why this identity applies. Why isn't this right inherent, and therefore why are the citizens even in a position where they can choose to give or not to give this right?
Either:
1) their ancestors fought for their right to be citizens
2) their ancestors acquired the right to be citizens from 1)
3) they acquired the right to be citizens from 1) and 2)

According to universal standards of human existence. The ones that say Hitler was wrong for gassing the Jews even if he had a majority supporting him and even if the law said he could.
Hitler violated human rights, you can even cite which.
Now, please cite these so-called "universal standards of human existance", which say that there is a universal right of every person to vote in any country they happen to be currently staying in. I suspect these "universal rights of human existance" are written by none other than you.

Why? What if the majority wants to burn me on a stake for saying the sky is blue?
It would violate human rights, thus they wouldn't burn you on a stake, even if they wanted to.

Moving is more fundamental than voting, but as I indicated above, voting is also essential because without it any veneer of legitimacy of law starts to look quite thin.
...to look quite thin to you. That takes away most of its relevance in the big picture.

I don't necessarily want to live in a democracy. I want to live somewhere where the government leaves me alone.
Why don't you?

That may well be the case. But it doesn't mean that it is the wrong thing to do.
Not the wrong thing to do according to which standards?

If the government didn't take my money, I wouldn't insist on a right to decide what is being done with it.
I explained above, paying taxes is justified by using public services. Voting is a plus that has to be earned. And since nobody will ask you personally, whether you feel you've earned it or not, you'll have to go by the laws of the country to know whether you've earned it or not.

Turaan, I'm reading every single one of these. You do what I don't have the energy to do, and for that I really applaud you. Excellent work.

Uusgezeichnet. Huere guet. Schade ds du nid typisch (für uusländer) bisch.

D Schwiiz brüücht lüüt wie du.

Integration as the Swiss understand it, consists of learning the local language well enough to be able to get along in Swiss society, but more importantly, to understand what's going on in politics (since they want to vote, this is more than appropriate). It also consists of respecting the written laws of the country and the unwritten laws of decency (which might be new to some, depending on their country of origin).
So given that these are pretty clear-cut, quite objective criteria (bar one), why shouldn't a bureaucrat be able to judge them? There seems to be no secret about all this: "can X pass a language test", "can X answer a politics pop quiz", "does X have a criminal record".

It's the "unwritten laws of decency" that can throw people off, because they don't exist. Everyone's idea of decency is different, and only the boulevard press and the church claim to know them with any objectivity. If I hang out with skater kids all day, the rules of decency may state that burping and farting is fine, but that bringing my parents and introducing them is not. Try the same rules in a different (still Swiss) environment and the results will likely be entertaining though not beneficial in the long term.

Such ill-defined concepts have been bandied about here as well (politicians called them "Australian values"). Nobody can ever say what they mean, and nobody can say why it is so horrible if X doesn't share them. Either X is actually doing harm to someone, in which case it's likely to be covered by criminal law, or he isn't, and there really is no basis for making law one way or the other.

Granted, if they're so ill-defined, you might think that the community at the town hall is better qualified to make a judgement on them, but then you'd have to ask whether a certain type of person is overrepresented at the meeting. You're less likely to find my skater friends there, and my burping and farting self might find myself excluded from Swiss politics simply because of that. People vote on me who'd never spend time with me, to whom it really is of no concern what I do in my spare time.

So are these town hall meetings compulsory to attend, for example?

And since they're not foreigners, those problems aren't addressed by the law we were discussing. They will have to be solved separately.
From a moral perspective though, the action is the important thing, not the agent who is committing it. It doesn't matter whether I'm Hitler or Ghandi, if I murder someone it's the murder rather than my identity that must be judged.

That's the underlying argument I'm making here, and which I'm not sure you've been able to decipher.

It doesn't matter what the law says. It doesn't matter why the law says what it says and who decided. It doesn't matter whether X has citizenship or not.

Government exists because there is a moral reason for it, something that justifies it and the various negative consequences of its existence. Laws always hurt someone, and it is because there is a moral judgement that says there are benefits that surpass this one that we can say they are justified. That is why the law must treat everyone equally: not because a constitution says so, but because there is no such thing as an a priori moral agent; only a moral action.

And given that, any alternative characteristics associated with the agent, such as citizenship, don't really matter. If I steal a purse and it is moral for me to go to jail as a result, but as an immigrant I get deported afterwards while a citizen wouldn't be, then the deportation is no longer about stealing the purse. This additional, extra punishment is due to my being an immigrant, which means someone considers it a crime.

And we can continue this further: a Swiss person can move around in Switzerland all she wants. That is a right, derived not from Swiss law but from her nature as a human being that requires the ability to make decisions based on reason and to implement them without infringing upon others. The same derivation is also true for someone who isn't Swiss, but he will be stopped at the border. Again, there is a punishment being handed out here for something that someone must consider a crime.

That is why immigration restrictions are a problem.

There are laws which could be passed on a federal level, affecting NYC even if the congressmen and senators of NY oppose it. In that case, your microcosmos-scenario fails, as your entire state becomes subject to a law opposed by it.
But it would still be an NYC law, and we'd be able to establish that it exists and applies to me. It's much like I don't vote on the constitution either: there are certain constraints that shape my life but which I have no control over, in politics as well as a few other areas.

One mustn't worsen this situation by adding more languages.
Best option would be to make all languages "un-official". Let schools decide what they want to teach and let parents decide whether they like it and want to send their kids there. And the same goes for all other applications of language - the government's job is to mould itself so it can communicate effectively with people, not the other way around.

You do what you want to do. If you don't want to learn German, you won't understand what the politicians are talking about. If you don't care however, it's fine by me. Just don't be disappointed when you get turned down at the naturalisation office...I'll take "commitment" as "respecting the laws and customs". No, you're not, but you fail to qualify to vote. I think we agree that being able to understand what a law is about should be a requirement to vote.
There are more reasons not to understand what the politicians are talking about. And I'd dare say they apply to a lot of voters all over the world...

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=MaQJj1BQUiU

Why? If it's the rule of a democratic country and I'm respecting it, it's the only democratic position to take.
Not necessarily. Democracies have in the past voted themselves out of existence, for example. So if you think that Hugo Chávez in Venezuela isn't particularly committed to retaining the country's democracy for example, would you be undemocratic by opposing him and his laws, even though they enjoy widespread majority support?

No, that's justified enough. If you're paying taxes, you're already using what they provide you. You're simply paying for public service.
That's because someone decided that there should be a public service. We could have most, if not all, government spending abolished in favour of private systems that I pay for as I use them.

The Burmese Junta could decide tomorrow to create a special extra pension system for ex-generals that will cost every Burmese person 25% of their gross income. That's a public service, but nobody got to vote for it. And because nobody did, you'd be very hard-pressed indeed to conclude that the "public" part of public service is any more but a cover for what amounts to the theft of a quarter of the time and effort you spend working.

If the same program was decided in Switzerland, you can at least make some argument that this program is justified, since it was approved by the people who pay for it. If something is stolen with consent, it's not really stolen afterall.

So two points to make:
1) It doesn't matter whether the money someone steals from you is used to feed orphans or buy heroin, theft stays theft.
2) The justification for the theft can depend on a few things: either there was no theft because you agreed to the money being taken, we agreed to take part in a democratic process that resulted in it being taken or it is just to take the money in itself for moral reasons, in which case your original ownership of the money is conditional and therefore questionable.

Unless you're going to argue that all government spending is morally just in itself, or that it is such justification that determines whether taxation should exist or not (in which case democracy and majority will is completely unnecessary for all actions, government and otherwise) - you have to agree that without a democratic decision-making process I can actually be a part of, there is no justification for money being taken from me by the state.

Weird. What are your sources on Emmen rejecting people based on nothing but nationality? And what nationality might've that been?
http://diepresse.com/text/home/politik/aussenpolitik/388768
5. Sag uns, wer du bist, und wir bürgern dich ein

"Die Schweizermacher" von 1978 gilt bis heute als der erfolgreichste helvetische Film. Seine beißende Kritik an Hürden und Riten der Einbürgerung ist aktueller denn je. Die Eidgenossen sehen sich als auserwähltes Völkchen; wer dazugehören will, hat oft schweizerischer zu sein als sie selbst. 15 Jahre muss man im Land leben und sich "gut integriert" haben.
Was das bedeuten soll, bleibt Kanton und Gemeinde überlassen. Die Kriterien reichen von Bildungstests bis zur Mitgliedschaft in Vereinen. Früher wurde vielerorts an der Urne über das Schicksal von Migranten abgestimmt. Diesen Brauch hat das Bundesgericht 2003 nach offenkundig rassistisch motivierten Ablehnungen von Ex-Jugoslawen im Dorf Emmen als verfassungswidrig verboten. Der jüngste Versuch der SVP, das Verbot auszuhebeln, scheiterte. Heute entscheiden die Bürger der Gemeindeversammlung und müssen Ablehnungen begründen.
Für 700.000 Migranten aus Folge-Generationen sind Hausbesuche und intime Fragen zu entwürdigend, sie verzichten auf die Einbürgerung. Viele Schweizer jedoch halten die Beschäftigung mit dem Einzelnen für menschlicher als anonyme Verfahren und Quoten.

They are right.
Says who?

There IS the collective of all citizens.
Show it to me.

Neither Hans, nor Josef, nor Ahmed, nor Johanna can pass a law. But together, and only together, agreeing that the minority accepts the ruling of the majority, can they pass a law which will apply to all of them.
So if Hans doesn't agree that the minority accepts the ruling of the majority, what happens?

The vote goes ahead without him, and he will still be treated as though he had consented, when in fact he never did. And that gives you the hint on what majority rule actually is: it's a tool to make "might makes right" a little bit less obvious and less bloody. Usually the majority has more power to enforce its will, so it is easier for everyone to just accept that as a rule.

Wrong. Josef, assuming he isn't Swiss, has a chance (actually, several chances) of becoming one of the Swiss. The Swiss have a right to decide, inherently. If Josef doesn't take his chance, he won't acquire the right to decide in Switzerland. He will still retain his citizen's rights of his home country however.
I was assuming that he already was Swiss. I was asking you to describe the process in which Josef can make the jump from no right to decide to >0 right to decide.

The first who decided this might've been able to because they just won a civil war, but the subsequent generations did so without any pressure from the past. The fact that it's still in place today is because the present Swiss voters say so. "Might is right" might've partially be correct in 1848, but definately not today. It's "the law is right" or "the majority is right".
As I said, the law is important because someone will use violence to enforce it, and the majority only gets its will because in all likelihood they'll be able to use violence to enforce it. You mentioned human rights, and presumably you don't think they can be violated or overruled by laws or majority verdicts.

How do you bridge this contradiction?

Breaking laws is asking for trouble and deserving it.
So MDC supporters in Zimbabwe are asking for trouble and deserving it when they attend "illegal" opposition rallies?

I don't know whether you're really as tough on law in real life as you are on internet ("Look I'm illegally downloading music! I'm a rebel!" doesn't count. "Look, I'm setting fire to this police car because it's a symbol of the evil system! I'm a freedom-fighter!" does), in practice nobody cares what you THINK.
Have you ever driven faster than you were allowed?

I'm not being a rebel. I'm a naturally cautious person, so in case of doubt I generally don't break the law. But my reasons for this are very clear: because I fear that I will suffer consequences imposed by violence or the threat thereof. Not because the fact that it is a law confers any sort of moral obligation upon me a priori. Either I should do something or I shouldn't, and that is true it regardless of whether a law exists that says so. If there was no law against murder, I'd still be wrong to murder someone, and if there is a law that says "hand over your first-born for sacrifice to the gods", I'd be wrong to follow it. Government's job is to make laws that approximate the natural law, which follows from the biological and moral implications of being a human being, as well as possible. And as far as that goes, it's not clear that democracy is a particularly good tool for that.

Oh, and to the extent that a car is someone else's properly acquired property, I'd be wrong to set fire to it even if there was no law against it.

Nobody was talking about Albanian-ness. Foreigners do have however a higher statistical chance of committing crimes. Thus, being extra careful when it comes to handing out citizenship rights are advised.
More pedophiles are men than women too, but that doesn't mean we should be extra careful when men are around children.

Sometimes statistics is good (I know, I've done several econometrics courses at university). Often, it is not.

The oldest trick to do what? If you have a moral obligation of solidarity, feel free to exercise it, it's none of my concern. As for "my victims"... What would they be a victim of? Do you think I don't voice my opinions just as readily in real life? If so, why?
Because you think they'd stab you. ;)

Oh, I treat you all the same. It's the law that will let one of you vote and the other one not. Plus, since citizens normally don't request citizenship (duh), and immigrants normally do, there WILL be a procedure which immigrants will undergo and citizens won't.
And my question was and remains: why is that?

Citizenship can be acquired, thus it's not an identity (unless you're trying to say that identities can be acquired), it's a set of rights. You can either acquire those rights or be born with them.
I meant "identity" in the mathematical way, ie a statement that holds true by definition. So if you say "I give you this right", that logically means I don't have it before you give it to me, which means I don't have it full stop and it's not a real right.

Now, please cite these so-called "universal standards of human existance", which say that there is a universal right of every person to vote in any country they happen to be currently staying in. I suspect these "universal rights of human existance" are written by none other than you.
I think you've responded before I had any chance to write them. If they are universal, then it doesn't matter if I am the only one who wrote them. They will still be correct, and the rest of the world can disagree all they want.

Anyways, there are 3000 or so years of philosophical workings available of people who have been trying to figure them out. It's not exactly easy, and there are a lot of questions to be answered first and which are often clouded by things that shouldn't actually matter, but that doesn't take anything away from the concept itself.

Why don't you?
If you have a suggestion, I'd be all ears.

Not the wrong thing to do according to which standards?
You're the one who mentioned human rights. So I suppose you can answer that question, in principle, yourself, right?

People from former Yugoslavia and some Turks are white. I think that's interesting, given the title OP chose and considering the fact that he thinks he is so intelligent. LOL

Seriously, given the Swiss' record, this doesn't surprise me in the least.

I'm not being a rebel. I'm a naturally cautious person, so in case of doubt I generally don't break the law. But my reasons for this are very clear: because I fear that I will suffer consequences imposed by violence or the threat thereof. Not because the fact that it is a law confers any sort of moral obligation upon me a priori. Either I should do something or I shouldn't, and that is true it regardless of whether a law exists that says so. If there was no law against murder, I'd still be wrong to murder someone, and if there is a law that says "hand over your first-born for sacrifice to the gods", I'd be wrong to follow it. Government's job is to make laws that approximate the natural law, which follows from the biological and moral implications of being a human being, as well as possible. And as far as that goes, it's not clear that democracy is a particularly good tool for that.

What this would imply is very contentious. A social democrat would say that since everyone is dependent on care during their lives(during childhood, old age, sickness) because humans are social beings, because we're interdependent we owe each other mutual obligations. Obligations that should be enforced by the state.

What this would imply is very contentious. A social democrat would say that since everyone is dependent on care during their lives(during childhood, old age, sickness) because humans are social beings, because we're interdependent we owe each other mutual obligations. Obligations that should be enforced by the state.
If they think they can make that argument, they can try. It's a non sequitur, but I'm not one to stop them from having a go.

If they think they can make that argument, they can try. It's a non sequitur, but I'm not one to stop them from having a go.

So how does a government set the rules when its citizens differ on what the rules should be?

So how does a government set the rules when its citizens differ on what the rules should be?
The same way it does when they don't. People's opinion really isn't a reliable standard of whether a law should or shouldn't exist.

I'm not at the stage where I go and call democracy a bad thing and want to abolish it, not least because I have no evidence that governments make laws that are any better, but ultimately I can't get around the fact that if you think some things are right or wrong regardless of what people think, the whole "the majority is always right" sounds kinda hollow.

The same way it does when they don't. People's opinion really isn't a reliable standard of whether a law should or shouldn't exist.

I'm not at the stage where I go and call democracy a bad thing and want to abolish it, not least because I have no evidence that governments make laws that are any better, but ultimately I can't get around the fact that if you think some things are right or wrong regardless of what people think, the whole "the majority is always right" sounds kinda hollow.

No one I know of thinks whatever democratic governments do are always right. Also, many would say that a substantive democracy would need to protect the rights of minorities. Of course generally those rights are decided in a democratic manner, lol.

Indeed, a killing has happened, but was it a lawful killing?
Lawful killing? Are you serious? What, you're saying that those brawlers had the right to kill??? I'm sorry that I sound surprised, but all this time I somehow assumed you weren't the type that approves of murder. I'm starting to learn not to make positive assumptions so easily.

Was it in self defence?
A Swiss student attacking three immigrants, a gang that has already been involved in violent fights? I repeat my advice for the last time (after this, I'll have to simply give up on the last hope for your cognitive abilities): think! As I said, Kant would have a field day.

An accident?
How it could realistically have been an accident is beyond my imagination. Did the student accidentally run into the fists and boots of the immigrants? Or did the brawlers accidentally hit him too long? Bashing someone to death isn't suddenly pulling a gun and accidentally pulling the trigger, especially not if three are involved. There is a chance of all three magically having a seizure the same time which results in an involuntary continuous bashing and kicking of a passerby, but as I said, that's out of a realistical probability.

Provocation?
Provocation??? That's as irrelevant as it can be. No provocation can even remotely justify a killing.

We don't know, and the court hasn't concluded after looking at all the evidence. As such, I will refrain from frivilous speculation as you do, and I will stand by my claim that your example is worthless until it can be determined that the killing was unlawful.
Since the court apparently has a monopoly on thought, all attempts to think for yourself is merely "frivolous speculation". Kant's rolling in his grave.

Until that time, you cannot successfully claim that the accused has violated swiss law - because you would simply be wrong.
The accused have killed someone, that's a given (it's a given, because you can't change the past). Since they've killed someone, it's only a matter of time before they'll get convicted. If you wouldn't surrender your brain functions to the judges, you'd know for yourself. And perhaps you do know for yourself, this time-stalling of "but you can't say anything unless it's signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters" seems to be your last desperate measure to justify ignoring a case which is as inconvenient for your reasoning as it can be.

And considering reality further, it should be noted that if the government tries to expell anyone of them based on the mere presence of a dead body it would infringe on their human rights and it would be a violation of both the Swiss constitution, immigration law and obligations under international trearies.
Of course, a punishment can only be carried out after the official conviction, I've never said anything else. The point of the whole example was to show how foreign murderers, who could've been filtered out before handing them the citizenship, will fail to be removed from society as opposed to a foreign murderer who doesn't have the citizenship.

If I see a man shoot someone and in court, he's found to be innocent, the man did actually shoot the other man - however, the man hasn't violated any laws (as is evident by the fact that he's found innocent), he wouldn't have violated the rule of law, and he wouldn't be a threat to the society.
That depends on WHY he's been set free. If he's found innocent of murder, because his lawyer could talk him out of the responsibility using references to a tough childhood and whatnot, can even make it seem like an accident and is instead convicted of something like negligent killing instead of premeditated homicide, then a criminal got a much lesser sentence than he deserved for killing someone. Thus, the criminal justice system failed to do its job, which is protecting society from a killer. The only scenario in which the offender would be genuinely innocent is one where the victim has previously willfully endangered the offender's life. It depends on the details of the case. Since the student in my example didn't pull a gun or a knife on the brawlers, one can safely ignore the possibility of the brawlers being found innocent (assuming one uses his/her brain).

If the guys in your example are found to be innocent, they will not be punished nor can they be expelled - even if the unfortunate dead student remains dead.
And in this scenario, three killers would roam free. That would be a dark day for Switzerland indeed.

Of course I can think all the things I want and be convinced of their guilt, but the government doesn't have that luxury. And it's the government we're talking about, and they have no choice but to respect and adhere to the findings of the court, so anything they would suspect of think about this case would be irrelevant.
This case is free of suspicions. This is the case where the potential criminals (people with a history of violence) already striked. Here, you've already got the crime. The question is, how will you deal with them (THIS will be answered after the case is concluded), or more like how CAN you deal with them (this can be answered right now). The citizens can't be removed from society, the foreigner can. This leads us right back to the immigration policies.

I disagree and think it's both, including a preventative effect both on the individual and on the general populace.
We agree on the point that punishments must protect society.

but you don't make a case for the need for expulsion for these individuals.
Killers need to be removed from society for public safety. There are several ways of doing this. Capital punishment is illegal, a life sentence is very unlikely (the offender has to show a clear psychic instability and the futility of any kind of therapy), so the only thing that remains is deportation, which is restricted to non-citizens.

You would be incorrect, since the question of expulsion isn't dealt with by the criminal justice system.
Actually, it's the Federal Department of Police that orders deportations in Switzerland. Anyway, my point would stand that non-citizens can be adequately dealt with.

Ah, the old "You have no personal experience directly related to this, so you can't form an opinion" fallacy.
I've never said you can't form an opinion, but having a self-righteous attitude and going as far as throwing around random insults involving racism and xenophobia isn't justified, it's just primitive. Don't worry however, such a behaviour only gives a bad picture of oneself. I doubt the Swiss are moved even a slight bit by these rants about conjured-up racism, because they're already used to left-wing critics in their own country who actually KNOW what they're talking about and have a much more considerable credibility, than people such as the OP.

Welcome to NSG, a place where we debate politics, even politics that's the interior policies of any random country.
Debating is something completely different. To describe how this thread started out: a place where left-wing juveniles (and those who didn't grow out of their adolescent rebellious phase) and self-righteous holier-than-thou elitists discard sense, logic and any respect of democracy in order to show the world how trendy and rebellious their opinion is about the bulwark of racism and discrimination, about the very symbol of an angry white mob oppressing and violently evicting helpless, innocent, puppy-eyed, passive foreigners. That's how it started out and now it's more like: a foreigner from Switzerland trying to explain and justify democracy to someone simply unable to comprehend ius sanguinis and the reason behind it, and trying to show someone the gaping holes in the anti-criminal wall between Switzerland and the world, who argues with "there are no holes - okay, there are, but not in that wall - okay, some of them are in that wall, but they wouldn't be there if you'd pull down the wall altogether", all three talking in different directions.

There is no debate.

And no matter how "obvious" a case may or may not be, I would still wait until the conditions are met before I claimed to use the case as an example.
You don't have to use your brains to predict an exact outcome, the mere possibilities already prove my point.

But you still said you would base the examinations upon psychoanalytical tests, meaning you would place a great deal of weight on what they potentially could do.
Psychoanalytical tests among others and certainly not as the prime method I suggested. Furthermore, I already said that the exact method can be developed and debated about in another topic. The point is, that the current method is the worst I can think of. No wait, an even worse scenario would be corporations letting people in according to their purchasing potential, instead of politicians deciding.

I don't care what the parents might think. It's an act done by a minor, and even if he can be punished by it, it should only carry little weight when it comes to the questions of immigration/citizenship.
So, if a 14 year old foreigner raped a young girl, scarring her for life, it shouldn't be considered when it comes to asking oneself: "Hmm, will it be safe to give him the security of staying forever, given that he already started raping as soon as his bollocks started functioning? Or maybe it was just a childhood shenanigan."
No. A rapist must be dealt with accordingly, whether he was drugged, drunk, possessed by the pedo-bear or 14 year-old. Deeds always have someone that's responsible for them and the least one can do is to ensure that it won't happen again.

(As in Emre v. Switzerland, where the Court observed in particular that at least some of the offences committed by the applicant came under the heading of juvenile delinquency.)
A crime is a crime, regardless how old the offender. Of course, the punishment should be adjusted accordingly, but it should NOT be disregarded altogether.

Not at all. Schools aren't a part of the immigration authorities, nor law enforcement.
Schools ARE a government-run institution and when it comes to juvenile crime, schools already play an important part in aiding the police in their work.

You would force them into a role that they wouldn't be comfortable with or competent to do.
Teachers are already obliged to record every single case of unpleasant behaviour, not to mention offences or crime in school. They wouldn't have to do anything more they already did, they'd only have to show these records to the immigration authorities, who ARE competent enough in what THEY'RE doing.

And having the teachers be instrumental in deciding the futures of their pupils would place undue pressure on them as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if the teachers would be hesitant to report disturbances if they knew the long term consequences it would have.
It's not a question of whether teachers feel like it. They have their duties. If they don't record disturbances, they failed in their job.

It's not off topic, since you claimed that stricter citizenship rules would lead to a safer society - and we're talking about how to make society safer.
Citizenship laws can only influence how the government can deal with immigrants, so citizens already fall out of the influence of the laws we're talking about.

So you don't think that such measures should be used on citizens to make society safer, only on foreigners... Hmm...
I said that such measures can't be used on citizens. Once again you're putting words into my mouth. I wonder why you keep doing that.

Why should it be more costly? The immigration service surely has access to criminal records, and are notified of all convictions of foreigners? Such a warning system, if it's not in place today, should be easy to set up and to get to work efficiently.
No, there is no "warning system" outside of the police, and as you know that's separate from the immigration authorities. The immigration authorities only check the criminal record of a foreigner if they have to do so. So far, my criminal record has been checked when I came to Switzerland and got my first residence permit and when I applied for citizenship, in which case I had to request an extract from the registry myself and hand it in along with my application form. That would cover it. It would be much more costly, because the handful of people that do an extremely slow work in the office must be replaced or enhanced by many more people who have to look into something 7-10 times per immigrant, in which they used to look into only once and had let the immigrant himself/herself do the looking into the second time.

And I know that Switzerland (in the past at least) simply refuses to renew a permit if a foreigner is convicted of a crime that the government finds to be serious enough. Simpler than actually making an expulsion decision.
Which means, that it has to be a very serious crime to lose your residence permit. That makes sense of course, because losing your permit is almost like getting deported, with the simple difference of having to leave the country for yourself. But I never wanted petty criminals to get deported instantly, I would simply want to extend their waiting period or bar them from becoming citizens, which would be impossible if there would be no control at the citizenship application. The answer is either lowering the governmental standard of a crime being "serious enough" to the point that every criminal (even petty ones) must automatically lose his/her permit (which is already a bit harsh), or just live with a system where petty criminals are automatically let in.

Why should it cause such a backlash?
Because it targets foreigners and it's the local leftists' agenda to provide backlashes against everything of the like. It'd be devastating for the left-wing parties not to provide a backlash against a proposal of tightening regulations of foreigners that don't even want to become citizens (yet).

I would, when you don't base it on convictions but on suspicions and hearsay.
I don't. I'd base it on deeds recorded in official writing, only that this official writing doesn't have to be restricted to the criminal record.

Hmm, so you know better than the court and the jurists?
The police knows best, they're the ones that have concluded an investigation. They can't decide on the matter, but their conclusions have been made public. The jurists? They're not interested in the truth, they're paid to defend a certain point of view. The judges are paid to decide for themselves, which jurists did the more convincing job. As you've seen, two courts can give two entirely different sentences on the very same case with the same evidence and investigation. If this doesn't lack objectivity, I don't know what does.

Citizenship. He has earned the protection of the state, even if he violates the trust afterwards the state has agreed to an exchange of rights and responsibilities.
Citizenship protects him from being deported, not from being dealt with adequately. Sadly, being able to deal with him adequately is very unprobable.

And the criminal justice system should always be adequate to protect society, so there would be no need to expell him.
That's a problem I already explained above. If we take this example, THIS kind of criminal is one of the worst. Acting without thinking of the consequences, motivated by a primitive aggressivity which can be triggered in everyday life, planning a homicide patiently enough to wait for the victims to finish their drinks and drive up to the motorway in order to make it seem like an accident, and then committing a crime with an extremely high risk of collateral damage, as two cars out of control on a motorway can easily result in a mass traffic accident and many more deaths. If he was a citizen, I would consider the offender a viable candidate for life sentence and wouldn't give him less than 20 years, so he'll have passed his youth and forgot driving when he comes out, so that society could be preserved from such a homicidal maniac (I'd however leave the decision between 20 years and life to the court, as they should be paid to analyse details and optimise the sentence). Since he's a foreigner however, the most appropriate sentence would be x years of jail (again, I'd trust x to be set by the court) and deportation.

The non-citizen however, has violated the trust before the agreement between him and the state, and shown that he's lacking what's needed to take part in the society. Hence I would expell him.
That too, yes.

Yes, it was, and as you see, most of your arguments in favour of the now defeated law are misguided as the belong elsewhere.
My supportive argument for the now-defeated law is this: "It can't get worse than it is now. This law would've given a great chance to make it better."

It is. You see, again you fail to differentiate between the foreigners who are visiting, those foreigners living in Switzerland, and those foreigners seeking citizenship. For all we know none of the foreigners seeking citizenship are criminals, and thus making your point fail. If all the criminal foreigners are just visiting, your point also fails, as they would most likely go home afterwards and not be a further threat to the Swiss society.
...
As I've said before, it doesn't bring anything new to the table. It lumps all foreigners together, whether they're visiting, residing, or seeking citizenship. It does not show if those foreigners granted citizenship have a higher rate or convictions than the average Swiss citizen, and it doesn't show the recidivism rates of the naturalised citizen. As such, it is worthless in this debate - since they cannot be used to show that the rules on citizenship in any way have an impact on crime.
It isn't. Foreigners visiting don't have a residence permit at all, so they'll leave this society anyway. Foreigners living in Switzerland, but never seeking citizenship are no problem either, as they'd be deported as soon as they'd give a reason. The only problem lies with the foreigners who seek citizenship, as they are the ones that need to be examined more closely before handing the Swiss passport to them. Now, in order to disprove me, the amount of criminal foreigners seeking citizenship mustn't exceed the 1/5 of the total amout of all criminals. Currently, foreigners represent ca. 1/2 of all criminals. So, to be able to say that it's not the citizenship-seeking criminals that are over-proportionally represented in the statistics, only 2/5 of all foreigners must be seeking citizenship. And this number is much higher than that. Most foreigners I met in school for example already had the Swiss passport. It's also logical, since the Swiss citizenship doesn't come with any setbacks (unless you consider military service a setback, in which case you should just hand in your application after you became 25) and only grants you extra rights. There is no objective reason to be able to become a citizen and not handing in an application.

And if the criminals are the people seeking citizenship, you have yet to show a recidivism rate to back up the claim that the Swiss society needs protection from them after the first crime.
It's common sense. If you punched someone with no reason, I have all the rights in the world to consider you aggressive, as in "someone inclined to punch people with no reason". If you committed a crime, you can very well be labelled criminally inclined or even a criminal. Normal (not criminally inclined) people usually don't have the urge to commit crimes. They have no reason. Since everything has a reason, if you commit a crime, you obviously found a reason to do so, as opposed to everyone else who didn't commit a crime. If you already found a reason once in your life to commit a crime, it's much more probable that you'll do so again, as opposed to someone who never committed a crime before (it's still possible, but much less probable). So, considering probability, it's wrong to say that you'll certainly commit a crime again, but it's the intelligent way to be more careful with you than I'd normally be with someone without a criminal history. And if the crime is serious enough (such as murder), the probability of you NOT murdering again can be discarded, as it's the government's duty to protect its citizens from murderers.

We don't know, because you don't analyze the group, but rather generalise based on your "logic".
There I just analysed it. You'll need to ask the court to return your brain though before you'll be able to understand it.

Hardly a detail when talking about how to protect society.
Exactly when it comes to protect society, doing time is nothing but a detail. As far as society can be concerned, the offender is removed from it. Whether he's in jail or in a far-away land, it doesn't matter much. It is not a detail however when it comes to the deterrent effects of a prison sentence. That is clear, but I'm not a psychologist and can't describe the exact effects the prison sentence before deportation might have. Are you?

You make it seem like expulsion is the only way. It isn't.
There's life sentence, but that's rarely a given.

It's a secondary reaction to any punishment he may have.
In any case, it's the decisive point that ensures the complete removal of a criminal from society.

So it's primarily the criminal justice system that's tasked with dealing with criminals.
See above.

As I've shown you before, you're wrong there.
See above, again.

And how have I been "raising the standard"?
First you needed examples on criminals who have been granted citizenship, then went on committing crimes and I gave them to you. You only had to consider the range of possible outcomes of the trial to see my point, yet you simply refused to think about the case and recognise that there IS a limited range of possible outcomes. The range starts at negligent killing and ends at premeditated homicide, given that the victim is dead and the victim didn't carry a weapon with him with which he could threaten the offenders' lives (the only scenario in which the offenders may be released as innocents). Yet, you have raised your standards from "needing an example" to "needing an example where you don't have to think as much for yourself".

I've merely pointed out that your examples isn't, and that you fail to back up your claims since your statistics doesn't support your claims.
The statistics support my claims separately from the example, as I've explained above. As for my example, considering it void is simply ignorant.

What you wrote disregarded all context by defying any logical interpretation, and thus you failed completely. You have to create a bad faith in me, and yet again you try to do that by your creations. I shall explain this slowly to you:

What you showed me was not something I didn't like: It was something I already knew, as I showed in my last post.
As you claimed in your last post. See, whether you know it or not, nobody can tell. But you sure acted like you didn't know it.

What you showed me is not inconvenient for me, also because I already know and accept the facts that they are demonstrating - and I've known it since the beginning of this debate.
In which case you knew it and ignored your own knowledge. How does it make anything better?

I would like to see something which, unfortunately, does not exist because that would shed some light on this subject.
Thinking for yourself will also shed some light on this subject for you. You're simply trying to show that only this exact type of source may clear it all up (for you) and since it doesn't exist, it shall stay a mystery forever. Amen.

Hence I say that they don't show us what we would like to see, because we both would like the subject at hand to be illuminated.
I've already got it illuminated here.

It does not show me something I don't want to see, however.
Let's go through this slowly:
If you already know, why do you disregard it yourself? My theory would be, that it's because the very fact you claim to have known from the beginning is inconvenient for your arguments.

You bring a known fact to the debate and you try to twist the statistics to show something it doesn't.
The "known" fact (from now on, I'll assume you said the truth and really have known all this previously, thus I won't regard you as not-knowing, but as an ignorant) has been relevant. You just had to see what the statistics were showing. Nobody would get far using statistics if the only thing you could read from them is "gee, there have been 1627 more citizens convicted in the year 2006 than non-citizens, who would've thought". The statistics have shown that the criminal/non-criminal ratio is higher for non-citizens than for citizens, thus it would be a good idea to be extra careful when deciding who should get the "no deportation" card for life.

When I call you on that, and ask for statistics that would prove or disprove your claim, since the statistics you have presented doesn't do either, you have a fit and falsely accuse me dismissing inconvenient truths, "truths" I might add which you have repeatedly failed to provide evidence for.
It's interesting how you'd define a "fit". Interesting, but irrelevant. As for accusing you of dismissing inconvenient truths, you still didn't prove me wrong and have only shown that you're "not convinced". The fact that I failed to convince you lies within your deliberate refusal to use your brain.

So give it a rest with your faux outrage. You don't have statistics backing you up but you want to make guesses based on the statistis you do have? Fine. But there's no point in getting pissy when I point out that the Emperor has no clothes.
Pointing out that you're shutting your eyes, putting your hands on your ears and singing "I caaaan't heeaar youuu" is hardly an outrage. Statistics I have back me up, you just have to go one level upwards from Captain Obvious' office. The Emperor has clothes however. That naked photo of him you're holding in front of your eyes only serves to block the truth, not to alter it.

Giving Fox the benefit of the doubt for a moment: the story is still not inconvenient; it is, however, simply irrelevant.
It was relevant, as it pointed out that the Swedish system you've shown didn't really work in practice. The entire argument about Sweden was off-topic.

Ah, now you're simply refusing to use or accept the use of logic.
Sorry to disappoint you, but using logic or accepting the use of logic doesn't constitute of saying "I use logic. Sorry."

http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/sad021.gif
Quit sobbing, Dorothy, you're making a scene.

Turaan, keep it up!

Do stand corrected. I don't know what Atlantian's sources are, but he happens to be as correct as he can be.
Thank you. :)
It's not just the Albanians, hell it's not just people from the Balkans (and definately not all of the Muslims, see Serbs for example), but it's an immigrant group referred to as "Schipis", whether they're Albanian or not. Yes, the Albanians provided the name to a whole group of social nuisances. And trust me, they ARE like that. I live in a part of the city where number of immigrants just stepped over the 50% boundary. I went to school here. There were a LOT of Swiss who were either avoiding me at first or downright hating me because of their previous experience with immigrants, but the biggest problems I had was with the immigrants themselves. Bad times.

The only problem with prejudices, as justified as they may be (they're pretty up-to-date), is that there's a minority of immigrants (the minority inside the minority), that isn't like that and takes collateral damage. I'm part of this minority and let me tell you, we're the ones who are REALLY "pwned" as you put it.
Well put indeed.

Of course, a punishment can only be carried out after the official conviction, I've never said anything else. The point of the whole example was to show how foreign murderers, who could've been filtered out before handing them the citizenship, will fail to be removed from society as opposed to a foreign murderer who doesn't have the citizenship.

The point was - of course - to assume that immigrants are murderers, and to exclude them on the basis of what your assumption tells you. This is just the same tired old pre-judgemental BS that underscores your viewpoint.

Killers need to be removed from society for public safety. There are several ways of doing this. Capital punishment is illegal, a life sentence is very unlikely (the offender has to show a clear psychic instability and the futility of any kind of therapy), so the only thing that remains is deportation, which is restricted to non-citizens.

Oh really? So, when you have a citizen who kills someone, what do you do? You don't deport them. You don't kill them. And you say a life sentence is unlikely. I guess that means that Switzerland is HELPLESS when one of its citizens kills someone?

Sounds like what you're really saying is that the criminal justice system in Switzerland is as impotent as your refutations of racism.

Debating is something completely different. To describe how this thread started out: a place where left-wing juveniles (and those who didn't grow out of their adolescent rebellious phase) and self-righteous holier-than-thou elitists discard sense, logic and any respect of democracy in order to show the world how trendy and rebellious their opinion is about the bulwark of racism and discrimination, about the very symbol of an angry white mob oppressing and violently evicting helpless, innocent, puppy-eyed, passive foreigners.

There is no debate.


My, but you seem to LOVE burning strawmen.

You're right on one thing though - the debate was lost a long time ago.

Lawful killing? Are you serious? What, you're saying that those brawlers had the right to kill??? I'm sorry that I sound surprised, but all this time I somehow assumed you weren't the type that approves of murder. I'm starting to learn not to make positive assumptions so easily.
:rolleyes: You should learn something about the law instead.

I'm not saying that they had a right to kill - I'm saying it might have been lawful but that's up to the courts to decide. Your "they are guilty no matter what happens in court" attitude betrays a level of ignorance and unsupported predetermination on your part that surprises me.

I do not approve of murder. These people have not yet been found guilty of murder. And so I won't assume that they are guilty before the trial has ended.

A Swiss student attacking three immigrants, a gang that has already been involved in violent fights? I repeat my advice for the last time (after this, I'll have to simply give up on the last hope for your cognitive abilities): think! As I said, Kant would have a field day.
Kant is irrelevant here. What does the court say?

How it could realistically have been an accident is beyond my imagination. Did the student accidentally run into the fists and boots of the immigrants? Or did the brawlers accidentally hit him too long? Bashing someone to death isn't suddenly pulling a gun and accidentally pulling the trigger, especially not if three are involved. There is a chance of all three magically having a seizure the same time which results in an involuntary continuous bashing and kicking of a passerby, but as I said, that's out of a realistical probability.
That's up to the court to decide.

Provocation??? That's as irrelevant as it can be. No provocation can even remotely justify a killing.
Oh dear, you really don't know anything about the law do you. Simply put: You're wrong. It's not all black-and-white.

Since the court apparently has a monopoly on thought, all attempts to think for yourself is merely "frivolous speculation". Kant's rolling in his grave.
You should stop insulting Kant. He would agree with me on this topic - since we're talking about being found guilty or innocent of a crime in a court of law. When you get an education you might understand that.

The accused have killed someone, that's a given (it's a given, because you can't change the past). Since they've killed someone, it's only a matter of time before they'll get convicted. If you wouldn't surrender your brain functions to the judges, you'd know for yourself. And perhaps you do know for yourself, this time-stalling of "but you can't say anything unless it's signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters" seems to be your last desperate measure to justify ignoring a case which is as inconvenient for your reasoning as it can be.
Again, since you don't understand the way the justice system works: You are wrong. Since they have killed someone, it's not just a matter of time before they're convicted. There are several conditions that needs to be met before a conviction can be handed down. For example, if it was self-defence, or an accident that he died, they won't be convicted of murder. They won't be convicted of murder if they lacked the necessary intent, if the killing is determined to be lawful, if they lack the required mental capabilities (i.e. are not guilty by reason of insanity or the likes) etc.

The killing needs to be determined to be unlawful - in a court of law - and your idle speculations doesn't change that fact.

Of course, a punishment can only be carried out after the official conviction, I've never said anything else. The point of the whole example was to show how foreign murderers, who could've been filtered out before handing them the citizenship, will fail to be removed from society as opposed to a foreign murderer who doesn't have the citizenship.
And since they are yet to be determined to be "foreign murderers" your example fails.

That depends on WHY he's been set free. If he's found innocent of murder, because his lawyer could talk him out of the responsibility using references to a tough childhood and whatnot, can even make it seem like an accident and is instead convicted of something like negligent killing instead of premeditated homicide, then a criminal got a much lesser sentence than he deserved for killing someone. Thus, the criminal justice system failed to do its job, which is protecting society from a killer.
Yet it would do its job, which would be to dispense justice. Your view on what is "deserved" luckily doesn't come into play.

The only scenario in which the offender would be genuinely innocent is one where the victim has previously willfully endangered the offender's life. It depends on the details of the case. Since the student in my example didn't pull a gun or a knife on the brawlers, one can safely ignore the possibility of the brawlers being found innocent (assuming one uses his/her brain).
You're wrong yet again. There are several scenarios where the offender would be genuinely innocent under the law.

And again, you're speculating. It's getting tedious.

And in this scenario, three killers would roam free. That would be a dark day for Switzerland indeed.
Not at all - why would it be a dark day when innocent people are set free?

I forget, your opinion trumps that of the courts, and you would really like, deep down, to just lock people up regardless of what a court finds. Actually, why use courts at all? Lets get rid of the rule of law! We should just lock people up without a trial as long as you can "use your brain" after reading a news article. It would save a lot of time and money if you would volunteer to be our oracle!

This case is free of suspicions. This is the case where the potential criminals (people with a history of violence) already striked. Here, you've already got the crime. The question is, how will you deal with them (THIS will be answered after the case is concluded), or more like how CAN you deal with them (this can be answered right now). The citizens can't be removed from society, the foreigner can. This leads us right back to the immigration policies.
And again you choose to disregard that murder has yet to be proven; the severity of the killing is in question, the guilt of the people are yet to be determined. Then you go on to disregard the effect of prisons.


Killers need to be removed from society for public safety. There are several ways of doing this. Capital punishment is illegal, a life sentence is very unlikely (the offender has to show a clear psychic instability and the futility of any kind of therapy), so the only thing that remains is deportation, which is restricted to non-citizens.
You haven't shown the clear and continous threat to "public safety" though.

Actually, it's the Federal Department of Police that orders deportations in Switzerland.
As a part of administrative law, not criminal law.

I've never said you can't form an opinion, but having a self-righteous attitude and going as far as throwing around random insults involving racism and xenophobia isn't justified, it's just primitive. Don't worry however, such a behaviour only gives a bad picture of oneself.
Good thing I've never done that, then...

I doubt the Swiss are moved even a slight bit by these rants about conjured-up racism, because they're already used to left-wing critics in their own country who actually KNOW what they're talking about and have a much more considerable credibility, than people such as the OP.
Yes. Damn the Swiss Supreme Court for ranting about conjured-up racism, the ignorant fops. They surely don't know what they're talking about...


Debating is something completely different. To describe how this thread started out: a place where left-wing juveniles (and those who didn't grow out of their adolescent rebellious phase) and self-righteous holier-than-thou elitists discard sense, logic and any respect of democracy in order to show the world how trendy and rebellious their opinion is about the bulwark of racism and discrimination, about the very symbol of an angry white mob oppressing and violently evicting helpless, innocent, puppy-eyed, passive foreigners. That's how it started out and now it's more like: a foreigner from Switzerland trying to explain and justify democracy to someone simply unable to comprehend ius sanguinis and the reason behind it, and trying to show someone the gaping holes in the anti-criminal wall between Switzerland and the world, who argues with "there are no holes - okay, there are, but not in that wall - okay, some of them are in that wall, but they wouldn't be there if you'd pull down the wall altogether", all three talking in different directions.
*Yawns*

There is no debate.
That would only be because you refuse to engage in it.


You don't have to use your brains to predict an exact outcome, the mere possibilities already prove my point.
*Sigh*

No, only in your fantasies.


Psychoanalytical tests among others and certainly not as the prime method I suggested. Furthermore, I already said that the exact method can be developed and debated about in another topic. The point is, that the current method is the worst I can think of. No wait, an even worse scenario would be corporations letting people in according to their purchasing potential, instead of politicians deciding.
So now you don't offer up a proper alternative anymore?

So, if a 14 year old foreigner raped a young girl, scarring her for life, it shouldn't be considered when it comes to asking oneself: "Hmm, will it be safe to give him the security of staying forever, given that he already started raping as soon as his bollocks started functioning? Or maybe it was just a childhood shenanigan."
Going from breaking windows to rape now? That's quite a leap, and you're abandoning your earlier position by going there, since rape is a serious crime and wouldn't be something that's only recorded in the "school records for disciplinary entries".

No. A rapist must be dealt with accordingly, whether he was drugged, drunk, possessed by the pedo-bear or 14 year-old. Deeds always have someone that's responsible for them and the least one can do is to ensure that it won't happen again.
There's a big difference between a 14 year-old and a 20 year-old. And I doubt Switzerland deports minors anyway, since that would be in violation of the ECHR.

A crime is a crime, regardless how old the offender. Of course, the punishment should be adjusted accordingly, but it should NOT be disregarded altogether.
Not disregarded - hardly carry any weight in the decision on whether or not an expulsion is a proportional response. See the judgement.

Schools ARE a government-run institution and when it comes to juvenile crime, schools already play an important part in aiding the police in their work.
Aiding as in reporting crime (as every institution does), not being elevated to decision makers through your suggestion. Even if they are government run, they aren't a part of the immigration authorities, nor law enforcement.


Teachers are already obliged to record every single case of unpleasant behaviour, not to mention offences or crime in school. They wouldn't have to do anything more they already did, they'd only have to show these records to the immigration authorities, who ARE competent enough in what THEY'RE doing.
And you don't see that it would place undue burdens on the teachers when they know that every single case of "unpleasant behaviour" could cost a child citizenship many years down the road?


It's not a question of whether teachers feel like it. They have their duties. If they don't record disturbances, they failed in their job.
And I'm sure many would choose to fail just a little, without losing any sleep.

I said that such measures can't be used on citizens. Once again you're putting words into my mouth. I wonder why you keep doing that.
So they should be used on both foreigners and citizens? Ignoring for a moment that they can't?


No, there is no "warning system" outside of the police, and as you know that's separate from the immigration authorities. The immigration authorities only check the criminal record of a foreigner if they have to do so. So far, my criminal record has been checked when I came to Switzerland and got my first residence permit and when I applied for citizenship, in which case I had to request an extract from the registry myself and hand it in along with my application form. That would cover it. It would be much more costly, because the handful of people that do an extremely slow work in the office must be replaced or enhanced by many more people who have to look into something 7-10 times per immigrant, in which they used to look into only once and had let the immigrant himself/herself do the looking into the second time.
Create a joint database, and voilá. It shouldn't be costly, nor would you need to hire any more people. Damn, it would be enough to simply make it routine to call the police when you get an application, and ask a question. Takes 10 minutes.

Because it targets foreigners and it's the local leftists' agenda to provide backlashes against everything of the like. It'd be devastating for the left-wing parties not to provide a backlash against a proposal of tightening regulations of foreigners that don't even want to become citizens (yet).
I don't believe that.

The police knows best, they're the ones that have concluded an investigation. They can't decide on the matter, but their conclusions have been made public. The jurists? They're not interested in the truth, they're paid to defend a certain point of view. The judges are paid to decide for themselves, which jurists did the more convincing job. As you've seen, two courts can give two entirely different sentences on the very same case with the same evidence and investigation. If this doesn't lack objectivity, I don't know what does.
As court cases often show: The police don't know best.


Citizenship protects him from being deported, not from being dealt with adequately. Sadly, being able to deal with him adequately is very unprobable.
Fix your broken justice system.


That's a problem I already explained above. If we take this example, THIS kind of criminal is one of the worst. Acting without thinking of the consequences, motivated by a primitive aggressivity which can be triggered in everyday life, planning a homicide patiently enough to wait for the victims to finish their drinks and drive up to the motorway in order to make it seem like an accident, and then committing a crime with an extremely high risk of collateral damage, as two cars out of control on a motorway can easily result in a mass traffic accident and many more deaths. If he was a citizen, I would consider the offender a viable candidate for life sentence and wouldn't give him less than 20 years, so he'll have passed his youth and forgot driving when he comes out, so that society could be preserved from such a homicidal maniac (I'd however leave the decision between 20 years and life to the court, as they should be paid to analyse details and optimise the sentence). Since he's a foreigner however, the most appropriate sentence would be x years of jail (again, I'd trust x to be set by the court) and deportation.
Fix the justice system. Stop your speculations.

My supportive argument for the now-defeated law is this: "It can't get worse than it is now. This law would've given a great chance to make it better."
On the cost of equality and at the risk at institutional racism.


It's common sense.
I.e. you cannot back it up. OK.


There's life sentence, but that's rarely a given.
Ah, so the justice system can adequately protect society. Again, you should fix the justice system. Concentrating on the citizenship laws for this reason is a mix of distraction, cop-outs, and xenophobia.

In any case, it's the decisive point that ensures the complete removal of a criminal from society.
See above.

First you needed examples on criminals who have been granted citizenship, then went on committing crimes and I gave them to you. You only had to consider the range of possible outcomes of the trial to see my point, yet you simply refused to think about the case and recognise that there IS a limited range of possible outcomes. The range starts at negligent killing and ends at premeditated homicide, given that the victim is dead and the victim didn't carry a weapon with him with which he could threaten the offenders' lives (the only scenario in which the offenders may be released as innocents). Yet, you have raised your standards from "needing an example" to "needing an example where you don't have to think as much for yourself".
One possible outcomes are still "not guilty". As long as that possiblity exists, you have failed.

The statistics support my claims separately from the example, as I've explained above. As for my example, considering it void is simply ignorant.
Not at all. You have failed to provide statistics to back up your claim, and you have failed to provide the statistics I've asked for. In short, you continue to fail.

What you wrote disregarded all context by defying any logical interpretation, and thus you failed completely. You have to create a bad faith in me, and yet again you try to do that by your creations. I shall explain this slowly to you:
The conslusion of which is: Your reading comprehension has failed you, and you are unable to follow my argument.


Let's go through this slowly:
If you already know, why do you disregard it yourself? My theory would be, that it's because the very fact you claim to have known from the beginning is inconvenient for your arguments.
Foreigners are overrepresented in the criminal statistics.

We have no statistics showing that foreigners seeking or having been granted citizenship are overrepresented.

Seriously, it's not that hard to understand.


It's interesting how you'd define a "fit". Interesting, but irrelevant. As for accusing you of dismissing inconvenient truths, you still didn't prove me wrong and have only shown that you're "not convinced". The fact that I failed to convince you lies within your deliberate refusal to use your brain.
Actually, it lies in your failure to provide proof, facts and evidence. But whatever makes you sleep at night.

Pointing out that you're shutting your eyes, putting your hands on your ears and singing "I caaaan't heeaar youuu" is hardly an outrage. Statistics I have back me up, you just have to go one level upwards from Captain Obvious' office. The Emperor has clothes however. That naked photo of him you're holding in front of your eyes only serves to block the truth, not to alter it.
Your statistics still doesn't back you up, no matter how rudely you insist on it. And if demanding evidence is "shutting my eyes" then yes, I have my eyes closed to your irrelevant blather.

It was relevant, as it pointed out that the Swedish system you've shown didn't really work in practice. The entire argument about Sweden was off-topic.
It did no such thing. It did not show anything about the swedish rules of citizenship. It may show that integration in one area has failed, but you're still way off the mark. Sorry.

Sorry to disappoint you, but using logic or accepting the use of logic doesn't constitute of saying "I use logic. Sorry."
Heh. You should tell that to the other guy in this thread, who has a history of doing just that.


...to avoid confusion, that's you. Seeing as how I copied your response from earlier. So that makes you fail again.

Quit sobbing, Dorothy, you're making a scene.
I shall weep for the poor, defenceless Swiss democracy, being ruthlessly attacked by the devious weapon of debate on a message board!

*Sobs*

Turaan, I'm reading every single one of these. You do what I don't have the energy to do, and for that I really applaud you. Excellent work.
It's not that you don't have the energy, it's that you lack the capability.

It's not that you don't have the energy, it's that you lack the capability.To which the only appropriate response would be:
[Gravlen], keep it up!
and
Thank you. :)

Well put indeed.

It's not that you don't have the energy, it's that you lack the capability.

Wouldn't you say that's rather quite a petty, vindictive post to make? Honestly, bad form. Betrays a lack of class I feel.

Wouldn't you say that's rather quite a petty, vindictive post to make? Honestly, bad form. Betrays a lack of class I feel.

I don't think he'd say that, and I wouldn't say that, and in fact most here would disagree strongly with you/TAI, but your tedious commentary is extremely valued by everyone all the same. Do keep it up.

I don't think he'd say that, and I wouldn't say that, and in fact most here would disagree strongly with you/TAI, but your tedious commentary is extremely valued by everyone all the same. Do keep it up.

But, ultimately, since you also lack any semblance of manners or class yourself, expecting you to have any grasp of this would be futile.

But, ultimately, since you also lack any semblance of manners or class yourself, expecting you to have any grasp of this would be futile.Well, now, there's that wannabe-elitist in you trying to make himself heard again. Tell us, Chris, why is being humble not considered good manners or classy in your book?

I think a good therapist could really get to the heart of your obsession with class TBC.

But, ultimately, since you also lack any semblance of manners or class yourself, expecting you to have any grasp of this would be futile.

Manners? Come on, mister insults-at-every turn, who do you think you're fooling?

And are you really saying that anyone who disagrees with your inane assessment has neither manner nor class? Cuz that's what it seems like you're doing. Not that behaving like a troll is so out of character for you or anything.

Wouldn't you say that's rather quite a petty, vindictive post to make? Honestly, bad form. Betrays a lack of class I feel.

Not that your outrage carries any weight with me, nor that any accusation of "lack of class" comming from you does anything but make me snicker, but:

No. I don't see it as a petty nor vindictive post to make. TAI has a nasty tendency to run away from arguments and not respond to critical questions - and yet here he tries to play it off as a "lack of energy".

His actions and posting history betrays him. The post he made quoted above is simply not true.

To which the only appropriate response would be:

:p

Again, I've never written anything even close to this. This, associated in any way with either me or my reasoning, is a product of your imagination.

It follows from your same use of logic. There is no difference other than the specific subject - the victim, as it were - of your delightfully charming reasoning.

My logic is different however from what you believe it to be, seeing that you're adding completely new ideas of your own to it (see above).

Nope. No new ideas, other than a different victim.

You prove the contrary.

Oh, well, if YOU say I can't read, then I guess I would agree. Except I can't read what you're writing, so I can't agree, and in fact this response is the result of randomly slamming the keys and it just APPEARS to be reaming your silly argument.


But you're calling my reasoning racist, etc.

No, your reasoning is simply the same as that used to justify racism.

It's the exact same argument racists in the US make against $random minority.

No, you were doing much more than that. You were saying that I, using statistics, would cause innocent individuals that fall into that group unwarranted grief, randomly to that.

That's not what I said.

First of all, I'd like all foreigners to have their previous lives thoroughly examined for criminal behaviour, if they apply for a Swiss citizenship. This isn't even causing grief, because those who are innocent have nothing to fear of. You're trying to put words into my mouth and call those words racist.

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

Yeah except for a loss of privacy and human respect, and being assumed to be a criminal based on little more than the frightened assumptions of people like you.