Part of it is by economic necessity. For example finding nursing staff is very challenging and you have to compete with the US and Australia and other rich countries.
But part of it doesn't make much sense. We really don't need to import any kind of engineers from outside of Europe when we have about 2,500 EU universities pumping out graduates each year.
I was involved in a startup in the Netherlands. We tried to recruit Dutch people, all wanted safe 9-5 jobs where they would know what they would do in 1-2 years. A startup can not guarantee that.
We ended up with most engineers foreigners, many (but not all) that have studied there.
So I would say that it is also risk and opportunity related. Someone "from outside" will be willing to do more, will have to prove himself, will take more risk. A "local" will have family support, wealth, a network, might want and value stability.
I don't have an opinion about how things "should be", I am just sharing how I saw them (myself an immigrant, multiple times)
To society a startup with a 99%% chance of failing to IPO is no different from a sweatshop which also wants skilled but cheap labor.
So an engineer joining a country that already has engineers still creates a ton of value in the destination country
Therefore it isn't really a good metric at the scale required to alleviate the problems people are facing.
"Eventually it will work out." Isn't proffering a solution.
No. Finding staff that'll work for very low wages is very challenging. It's not really about bringing in essential skills, it's about driving down wages.
Sort of. You’re simply not going to have an agricultural sector with at Canadian and American wages without significantly higher food prices and protectionism. One day we may automate that. But that will still be more expensive for the foreseeable future.
Voters seem to be picking domestic production and low prices, with low wages being a side effect. (Business interests of course love those.)
You do realize German nationals (followed by French) are the top contingent in term of immigration to Swizerland.
(Only EU citizens benefit from freedom of movement to settle in Switzerland)
Yes. I’m also conceding to the SVP the observation that a good fraction of said nationals are recently naturalized.
Don’t know, don’t care. Mine are conversations in Zürich.
> Berlin can basically dictate EU immigration single handedly
That's what I was responding to.
Note the UK left the EU and accepted more immigrants than before. We didn't force them. Hungary and Poland never accepted Syrian immigrants either and they weren't forced to accept them iirc.
He is banned from public speaking in Germany and only Germany. Which the Germans can do to anyone on their own territory, including German citizens.
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Hopefully we can all take inspiration from the living memories of balkanization – smaller groups, hopefully with shared interests and common backgrounds, ought to be in charge of themselves; and themselves, only.
Massive internal trade barriers and security so fragmented you’re at the whim of your larger neighbors?
Every jurisdiction needs to limit immigration more (which EU's dispersed jurisdictions make impossible, by statute) before any one country can tackle any of their other lacks/disputes. The current EU setup is the inverse of USA's, where the feds technically regulate most immigration issues (instead of EU's individual memberstates having most power), but not all.
Balkanisation refers to fences within one’s borders. It’s fragmentation that leads to less wealth, less security and eventually a loss of sovereignty to a powerful neighbor who notices.
Looking at it from the Slovene POV (which ultimately benefited from the dissolution of Yogoslavia, occurring within my/most lifetime), local industries/GDP benefitted greatly.
Currently, the rest of ex-Yugoslavia countries don't seem to do as well as Slovenia, and the main difference is date of joining the EU...
Western Europe has been a powder keg for at least three millennia. The only thing keeping a cap on it recently was American hegemony. (EDIT: to be clear, American hegemony is waning. The powder keg is uncapped, and we’re one of the parties throwing in matches.)
Oh, to be clear, yes.
I know this is tongue in cheek. But one of the hallmarks of a nation of immigrants is the enforced tolerance of speaking multiple national languages. Lots of people who only speak on throws off that balance.
What's this Swiss language you speak of? I never heard of it. You must mean Romansh but that's only 0.5% of the population or so. You'd have to kick out 95.5% of the Swiss population too then?
I despise such openly xenophobic posts.
And Indian immigration tends to be the most educated and wealthy. It's also the wealthiest ethnic group in the US. By far.
In any case, leaving Schengen for Switzerland would be de facto equivalent to Brexit, an economic disaster.
Switzerland thrives by attracting highly qualified professionals for it's service and manufacturing industries and yes, also at the lower end where Swiss nationals aren't lining up to be plumbers, couriers or cleaning staff.
I visited few times and I like the country but I don't expect them to accept or cater to me.
> If these guys are such GDP rocket fuel and a solution, they can make their own country the best in the world.
Not every country in the world gives the same opportunities, it's only natural many motivated individuals may try their chances elsewhere, I see nothing wrong with it.
I'm an European and I have many grandparents and their relatives who emigrated to Argentina, US, Canada a century or so ago.
My parents left communist Poland for Italy in the 70s.
Many of my friends left Italy and now reside in the UK, Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia and some in the US too.
Overly xenophobic anti immigration stances don't resonate with me at all.
Immigration is a net benefit for humanity, it has had a huge impact on distributing human capital where it could best express it's talents.
Like everything it has its cons and regulations are needed. But none of those should be rooted on open racism.
Unless you live under a rock it's not Crazy Horse or Geronimo sitting in the white house, but a descendant of immigrants.
You are confusing immigration with naturalization. Only if Berlin starts handing out German passports do they dictate EU immigration single-handedly.
Fair enough and great point.
It’s incredibly hard to naturalize in Switzerland. Less so in Germany. (Though still much harder than in America, at least based on my American friends who naturalized there and this Swiss of Indian and Germanic origin who naturalized in America.) It’s fair for those countries to want to maintain those differences.
Is it? Asking out of curiosity, from a cursory look both countries require self-sufficiency, language (in fact Switzerland looks a little easier on this), no criminal background, an integration test to be taken (and both seem easy) and time in the country.
Only major difference seems to me is Germany takes 5 years in paper (more like 6-7 in reality with bureaucracy) and Switzerland takes 10 years in paper.
You can still be voted on by the city council though, but they are required to provide a reason and „wrong hair color“ will not pass legal challenge.
Tbh I cannot see anything else but Swiss people at some point voting themselves out of this somehow.