Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

FabCH

In case people were wondering about the result of that thread which made the front page a few days ago…

alephnerd

> Swiss citizens have rejected by a 55% majority... This is still very close for comfort, and SVP will re-propose it again and again and again as it and it's predecessors have done for decades.

jeffbee

Cities once again save rural voters from civic suicide.

abc03

Maybe a personal analysis: It's a trend that is growing all over Europe. It's the equivalent of overtourism and a problem for the ruling parties (except the SVP that proposed it). Expect it to continue quite soon in Switzerland and other European countries (France, Germany etc.). Of course it doesn't make sense to curb immigration at 10 Mio and many know it. It was also for many a vote against the ruling parties. Although Switzerland is an immigration country, Swiss don't think this way. It's more farmer/alpine style: Welcome guests but expect them to leave again. Many Swiss also don't interact with foreigners a lot, including myself (besides at work). Many of my friends don't want to give up their prosperity. They are fairly advanced in their career and it's more about enjoying life. So for many of them it's more a rational decision than really a belief we should have more immigration. As long as I can benefit, it's good. For younger people it may be different. My wife, who is not native Swiss, was in favor. And compared to other countries, I think Xenophobia is low.

ourmandave

Never heard of a hard limit on population. What happens if you go over? It was terrible for girls born in China when they had their one child limit.

fsh

The SVP campaign in favor of the initiative was something else. Half the country is plastered with their posters, and social media is full of astroturfing. It didn't pay off this times, but the propaganda dominance of this party is concerning.

phendrenad2

I don't get why they would want to do this, when runaway depopulation is the biggest issue facing the world. We're at a point where (I think, controversially) we need to sanction (or more) nations that aren't increasing their population annually. This is an existential threat facing the human race.

poisonborz

Misleading to call this "cap population", no one can cap population. The vote was about capping immigrant benefits, mostly aiming germans (reaching 9.5m) and then Swiss EU isolation/"Swexit" (at 10m). Basically the right wing SVP's long term goals packaged in a format that was more palatable to the masses.

brightbeige

Recent, related New Yorker article that goes into the background leading up to the vote https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/15/could-switzerl... Despite the prosperity, many Swiss had mixed emotions about the guest workers, who came largely from Southern Europe. As the Swiss novelist Max Frisch observed, “We wanted workers, but we got people.”

mfuzzey

Interesting that those supporting the motion claimed it was because there was no space left for new arrivals and that it put too much pressure on infrastructure like trains and yet the largest support came from the countryside which proably has less overcrowding and the cities were greatly against it. Makes me think that "overcrowding" wasn't thre real reason...

hintymad

Just curious, how can a state cap the country's population (I assume not like the Chinese government)? This appears that they assume their birth rate will be so low that they will need to absorb immigrates?

clcaev

This is interesting — it put immigration limits directly up for a popular vote. For those voting to strictly limit citizenship, I wonder if they are supporting: a permanent underclass without full rights? or that basic needs to be more expensive? or that widespread automation will soon meet basic labor needs? addendum: thank you kgwgk

comrade1234

Things were fine during Covid. Now that the tourists are back the trains and trams are packed. The marketing for this campaign specifically talked about trains being packed but it should have focused more on how Swiss natives have to move out of Zurich to find an affordable place to jive, but the SVP would never focus on Zurich because theyre unpopular here.

sharts

Why cultures that depend on immigrant labor complain about the immigrants but never do the work themselves?

maverick451

Duh-muh, that evil, evil right-wing proposals. R.I.P. Switzerland

huntoa

Is it good to have an immigration policy roughly half the country detests? Who benefits from immigration the most? The capitalist gains cheap and weak labor, consumers to sell products and services to, and rent apartments to. It doesn't matter to him if the money comes from benefits. The negative effects are externalized to ordinary citizens. The capitalists own the media, which they use to shape public opinion on immigration in their favor or divert attention elsewhere. It also gives them a target to deflect from themselves and their obscene enrichment at the expense of the taxpayer. The problem with a population cap is that it conflates immigration that is net negative (people from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, and Turkey and their children) and net positive immigration (Western immigrants) [1]. Here's a transcript of Studs Terkel in 1980 interviewing a couple of German publishers (from 03m22s to 06m10s) highlighting the citizens aversion to incompatible people, economic asylum-seekers, and who put those rules in place [2]: Terkel: Is there a German attitude towards the Turkish minority here? There are quite a few Turks here. Publishers: Yes. There is an attitude, especially against immigrants who are not coming from Europe, because now the Italians and so on, they are accepted. They are Christians. But those Turkish people build a kind of reserve army of the labor market and are very often detested, viscerally, by Germans. [...] I think the big problem that you have in Germany is the "Asylantenproblem" [asylum seeker problem] [...] This is part of the normalizing of German national consciousness, this question of the asylum possibilities. As you know, as a result of the liberation of Germany by the allies, in our constitution there is a fundamental right because many founding fathers of the Western republic had been immigrants, [...] so they stated that every man or woman, persecuted for political reasons, or racial reasons, and so on, had to have asylum in Germany. Now, when the economic crisis in Germany and the technological changes have brought about also more than 2 million unemployed people, there are tendencies within the right parties to restrict, to amend the right of asylum, with the argument that those "Asylanten", those asylum seekers, are not really politically persecuted; they are so-called economic asylants. [1] https://archive.is/mx1ni [2] https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/interview-ursula-bende...