The following report from Blick.ch describes an eminently sensible welfare plan proposed for immigrants to Switzerland. It’s hard to imagine anything as rational and commonsensical being implemented in the United States, Canada, Australia, or the EU.
JLH, who translated the article, includes this brief note:
This parallels our debate on immigration and welfare, and the obviously jaundiced view taken of EU immigrants. The attitude to the EU is emphasized by a recent invocation of an “escape clause” in a treaty with the EU which will restrict the number of EU citizens applying for entry. It was received with protests and indignation in the EU, who do not like being treated like the rest of the asylum seekers.
The translated article:
No More Welfare for Immigrants!
May 5, 2013
by Jürg Auf der Maur and Marcel Odermatt
Economics Professor Reiner Eichenberger’s Provocative and Controversial Suggestion — the FDP* Counters with its own Plan
Will Eichenberger’s Model Mitigate the Welfare Problem?
The welfare debate is heating up. First, groups like Rorschach, St. Gallen [canton] exited the Swiss Welfare Conference (Skos), because they feel they have been left in the lurch (Sunday’s Blick reported). Meanwhile, the discussion is no longer centered just on abuses and recalcitrant subscribers. Now the whole welfare system is being questioned.
Economics professor Reiner Eichenberger of the University of Fribourg is laying an explosive proposal on the table. Immigrants are to get virtually no more welfare. “If everyone who immigrates to Switzerland receives benefits, it will become unpayable,” says Eichenberger. The result: “Everyone’s benefits would have to be cut.”
The fact is that unemployment in Europe is increasingly immigrating into Switzerland. In recent weeks, the first EU immigrants — especially from Spain and Portugal — have been setting up in camping areas. From the tent or trailer, then, it is off on the search for a job. In addition, there is the immigration from third countries.
Approximately 140,000 persons immigrate annually. The resident Swiss population grows by a least 80,000. This is a burden on welfare. If they can show employment, nothing impedes immigration, but if the job is lost, then it becomes expensive for the Swiss. Many people benefit, even if they have paid in not at all or for a very short time.
Over 45% of social welfare recipients are foreigners. Almost a third of those are from third countries, that is, countries outside of the EU. That includes, above all, immigrants who have come to Switzerland by the right of asylum. According to Weltwoche, almost a quarter of all Africans have applied through the social welfare department.
Professor Eichenberger is proposing a radical systemic change. “Our social system should be a form of insurance for the immigrant. But for that, he should first pay in for some time,” says Eichenberger. Because “If we continue as naïvely generous as we have until now, then those who work and pay for the recipients of welfare will become second-class citizens.”
This is Eichenberger’s model in concrete terms:
- Municipalities will no longer pay welfare. It will be taken over by local citizens’ groups which would be established for that purpose.
- Every Swiss would automatically be a member of a citizens’ group. These groups would be financed by payments from the national bank or cantonal bank.
- Immigrants can also belong to citizen groups, but would have to buy their way in or have already paid in a sufficient amount.
- Local groups will pay foreign welfare recipients a one-time only premium, if and when they emigrate. This “return money” would be cash on the barrelhead and would benefit all parties: the returnees, their homelands and above all, the Swiss taxpayer.
This is how Eichenberger hopes to avert the collapse of Swiss social services. Otherwise, the bill for Switzerland will not add up. “The main winners in immigration are the immigrants themselves.”
The FDP, too, is considering how Switzerland can extricate itself from this trap. Party leader Philipp Müller does not want to go as far as Eichenberger. “We have our own, different and better plan for our social services.”
At any rate, Müller is calling up businesses and cantons to see whether an immigrant really needs a permanent residence permit or a limited permission would suffice.
Instead of long-term B-class residence permits, Switzerland should rely more on short-term L-class permits. “Only when the work situation is really permanently assured should a B permit be given,” says Müller. L permits can form endless chains, so an exit trip becomes unnecessary if someone has a job. Müller says: “If a job really lasts longer than a year, the L permit can be extended — or a B permit given.”
The crucial advantage: There would be less of a burden on social services, because an L-pass holder only receives unemployment compensation if he has reached the end of his employment permit. And, if he should lose his job, he has no claim on welfare. Müller now intends an information offensive. “I constantly point out in conversations that employers do not really understand this possibility.”
Simonetta Sommaruga, a Social Democrat, has also recognized the problem social services have with immigrants. Her Justice Department is considering the introduction of a registration requirement for unemployed EU citizens. This would simplify the revocation of residence permits.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* Freisinnig-Demokratische Partei (Liberals)
Professor Eichenberger is correct.
I would take the outline of his proposed reforms and travel much much further and in that distance would be mileposts of criminal convictions, stripping of citizenship, long periods of hard labour, expedited deportations (funded by the liquidation of assets of those who are convicted of serious crimes including treason).
As a result of our suicidal, lunatic, leftist, liberal, self-loathing, politically correct social policies we have become a laughing stock of the Third World, viewed as little more than dull-witted schmucks with deep pockets……..this must stop.
Regards, Don Laird
Dogtown, Crankville County
Alberta, Canada
“Somewhere between here and there…….”
Something must be wrong with the site tonight…..I posted three comments, all of them disappeared..
Don
Australia has been able to restrict welfare benefits to our largest immigrant group the ‘New Zealanders’. It is now less enticing for Polynesians(Tongan, Samoan, Maori ..continue)and their very large families to island hop and live off the Australian tax payer. This also restricts exploitation from back door immigrants who stay in NZ long enough to become citizens and therefore eligible to move much richer Australia(with its benefits). As most Kiwis are European, the Australian Government has a degree of plausible deniability about the intention of the restrictions.
http://www.nzembassy.com/australia/nzers-overseas/living-in-australia/social-security-entitlements-for-nzers
http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/stream/live/
This is wonderful to read. Yes, it’s a long way from proposal to law, but the fact that three different but similar proposals are being advanced is a tremendous encouragement. If one looks back over the last few years in Europe, walls of repression are being chipped at, attitudes are changing, ideas that were not admitted publicly are being whispered or even shouted by a growing minority.
But perhaps more important, I think I see people finding ways to begin to describe and affirm that which is being destroyed– namely European peoples and cultures. One of the most insidious achievements of the left in recent decades has been the reduction of ethnic European moral thought and discourse mostly to the level of economics and “universal” political rights, rights that have no connection to one’s ethnic or cultural belonging.
The idea that maintaining oneself as a people and a culture is a legitimate right for Europeans, just as the U.N. affirms it to be for all humans, and just as we all seem to affirm it to be for non-Europeans, has been exchanged for the idea that any such assertion by ethnic Europeans is racist. If Europe is going to survive in more than political and economic terms, this must change.
The good news is that I think it is changing. Some of that change is being accomplished surreptitiously, using economic arguments to achieve ethnic and cultural results, and that is what these Swiss measures seem at least in part to be doing.
Even though such surreptitious action does not directly change anything, it does at least two things. First, it buys time. Second, I am quite sure many ethnic Europeans sense what they are working to accomplish even if they don’t admit it publicly or even to themselves. It reminds me of when a man and woman are attracted to each other but supposedly are just friends or colleagues. They talk and do things together, supposedly as friends or colleagues, taking tiny steps toward sexual openness, both sensing with increasing certainty what is going on but not yet being open about it.
I hope I am correct and I hope the process will proceed quickly enough to save Europe.
The math is stark: open borders and the welfare state can’t co-exist.
Period.
There is no permutation that can’t be gamed against.
At present, it doesn’t take fluency, genius or evil intent:
Once aware — the ENTIRE globe wants in on the sugar.
“If we continue as naïvely generous as we have until now, then those who work and pay for the recipients of welfare will become second-class citizens.”
It’s already happening in the UK. A friend of mine (who is not in good health himself) calculated that the income is of the family of 7 muslims who live next to him is almost twice his monthly income (and he is a highly qualified profesional). They run a car, and he can’t. They have a 60″ plasma TV (his TV is half that size).
No-one from that family has ever worked a day in the last 10 years. The 4 adults can barely speak more than a few words of English.
It takes the taxes of about 10 people like my friend to support that family of workshy immigrants. These immigrants have not paid a penny in income tax or welfare tax in 10 years, yet they have been given the equivalent of at least $800,000 (tax free). Most of them are not even polite enough to reply when spoken to.
Every few weeks my friend tells me he sees another family appear on the street with their suitcases. An hour or two later some car comes by and picks them up, and they are off on the benefits train, sucking the life out the country.
One of the last socialist ministers in the UK has admitted that 10 years ago they actually went out across the world inviting immigrants to the UK. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324112/Lord-Mandelson-Immigrants-We-sent-search-parties-hard-Britons-work.html
My friend used to vote for the socialists, but not any more.
The result of reducing welfare to immigrants might be an increase in crime which, in the long term, would probably be more expensive as well as detrimental to the country’s social cohesion.
The only solution is for the nation states of the EU to re-assert national sovereignty. As James has mentioned, we Australians realised that we were effectively being scammed by the Trans Tasman Treaty—the free movement of labor is an economic fantasy that ignores the resulting political and social costs.