Damn

[gothikmaus]

Just the other day I was looking at job offers in Switzerland because a) I live only an hour away from the Swiss border and b) getting a Swiss work permit is relatively easy for EU citizens. And then Switzerland goes and "blocks" work permits for EU citizens. Just my luck.

I'll just cheer myself up staring at these pics of my latest TV crush.

Lino Guanciale, Italian actor

Comments

[polarforscherin]

They seem to be afraid awfully of all those foreigners. :(

[gothikmaus]

I get that they want to protect their job market, they are not event part of the EU, so they can do whatever they want. But the timing made me laugh: I mean, one day I check a few job offers, the next week they block work permits. They hate me. :(

[polarforscherin]

I don't really see the need for it. I think that it's more about populism. Switzerland is in many areas of their job market dependent on foreigners. They don't have a choice. But the conservative parties managed to create a public opinion that fears too many people coming into the country and slowly changing it. SVP for example is highly critical of Germans who work in the German speaking parts of Switzerland but don't speak the local Swiss dialect. Switzerland is a quite old-fashioned country (some of their cantons didn't give the right to vote to women until they were forced by federal law to do so in the 1990s) and so it's easy to make sure that enough people are scared of an alleged danger.

But the timing is awful for you, that's true. Sometimes it feels like the world is a massive conspiracy that works against you when you already feel down. What about working in Austria or in South Tyrol? Or back to Germany?

[gothikmaus]

In many areas they only want foreign workers who live abroad near the Swiss border, because they are way cheaper. And the workers are happy too: a lot of people who live around Como work in Switzerland and earn much more than the average Italian pay. Still, that pay wouldn't be enough for someone living in Switzerland. So Italian workers are happy and Swiss employers are happy.

Apparently border-workers aren't affected by the new rules, only foreigners who live in Switzerland.

PS I didn't know about women's suffrage! :O

[polarforscherin]

It's the same with Germany and Luxembourg. Friends of mine are both teachers. He works in Germany and she works across the border in Luxembourg and gets a much higher salary than he. But it doesn't upset the people in Luxembourg because they don't have enough teachers themselves. I think at the moment some politicians and a large group of people don't notice that their companies need these employees from abroad. Either because they are cheap or because you don't get enough of the people you need in Switzerland. I don't think that this new rule has a chance of getting re-newed in a few years. People will find new things to be angry/scared/worried about. And parties will notice that you won't get voters by selling the same old news over and over again.

I wrote a paper about Switzerland's political system some years ago. Legislation is awfully complicated there and it takes a very long time. Lots of referendums on local, canton and federal level and they use a proportional system to make sure that all of the different language groups in their country are engaged in parliament fairly. It's incredibly complicated and slow and as good as everybody can initiate a bill and can enforce a referendum. After studying their system I'm not surprised that Switzerland stays quite old-fashioned.