Yes, they do. It is one of the most common slogans of the SVP that the Germans coming here are dumping the salaries (I promise you that I am not guilty ). A well educated Indian will not earn less here than EU immigrants and IT outsourcing is not always done to India. I know it is popular in the UK because of the common language, but the rest of Europe also outsources to the cheaper "new EU countries".

It doesnt matter whether you work for an outsourcer or not. I am not working for an outsourcer and would not have been able to come here if the permits were not available. And now that I am here, i would not say that more people should not come here, even though it is good for me

Also when the OP came here he would have taken the job from someone who was already here or a swiss.

The OP came here 15 years ago, before the bilateral agreement, when it was difficult to get a permit whatever your nationality on.

Good to see there is a lively discussion on this topic.

I too face restrictions on employment; there a dozens of jobs in the US I could do; but they wont grant me a permit. Would like to work in Australia too; but they won't grant my a permit.

Somebody has already commented on the fact that Switzerland is a small country and needs to protect itself; something the UK for example has not done, and look at the mess their in.

I dont know what sort of future my kids have in a world controlled by the likes of UBS, HSBC and Citigroup. Treverus you in particular seemed to have very strong views on this; are you seriously suggesting that the previous company I worked could not source anybody locally; they just had to go to Asia for all their resources.... wake up; perhaps it is not economic, perhaps it is simply racism.

I believe I am quite awake... and therefore find it highly unlikely that a Western company would discriminate you for your race and prefer to move jobs to Asia because they prefer the looks of the people there more.

I agree, I do have a strong view on the topic: I do not like many aspects of the globalization we are in, but I am not naive enough to believe a country like Switzerland can stop it: There is a deadly combination of two seperate developments going on:
- Jobs tend to move more and more to countries with lower salary levels.
- People tend to try more and more to move to the countries where the salary level is high.
The combination of both will make it increasingly difficult to compete as an employee in the job market. My dad worked his entire life for two companies: one before college and one afterwards. I am in my early 30s and I am at my third employer. And not because I wanted to change...

So yes, I fully agree that the development is not really good from an European/Swiss perspective. Many here lose a piece of the wealth we had in the last generation and many Chinese win a piece. But will quotas on permits work? No, because the companies are not at all "national" anymore. Especially not here in Switzerland. The largest employers here in Zurich have plenty of offices around the world. So they do have very little barriers to build up the next IT team wherever it makes sense... aka costs less. Switzerland is one of the most expensive places and in order to stay competitive here, it does take some effort.

So what is my solution?
- Do not blame the "cheap" immigrants. They are not coming here to be cheap, they come here to get a good salary. They do not dump salaries, employers try to cheat them. That makes a big difference to me and if you look at the statistical data, you will see that immigrants get very close to local salaries within very few years in Switzerland. In short: As soon as somebody recognizes he gets cheated, he changes his job.
- For your kids: Get them an as high educaton as possible. No matter what the world will be like, it is a global fact that education pays off. Statistically proven in pretty much any country around the world.

I simply do not blame anyone for those developments. They are logical and will happen, no matter what some governments will do. So I am trying for myself to adapt to the world I am in instead of blaming politicians or the globalization. Blaming immigrants is a very slippery slope that is factually simply wrong. And I believe your expectations to get job offers just because some people do not get a permit is just as wrong, sorry.

It not just about looks; it is about culture; beliefs etc. I am married to a Chinese lady and I have first hand experience with level of racism in the part of the world she comes from. Another Asian country India the caste system is widely acknowledged to be very prominent, that is racism. We had one guy in my previous company who was from Pakistan; You can guess who they made redundant first in the group when the cuts started; was that a decision based on skills.

What is wrong is that a company such as the one I worked for previously is able to replace all the local employees with onshore resources they have imported from overseas to increase their profit margin. We can wax philosophy about this until the sun goes down, but you have not given me any reasons as to why the company was choose to employ 80 overseas sourced consultants and source none locally. Suggesting they get paid the same is simply daft; they import them because they are cheaper; no other reason beyond as I suggest simply racism; both rational uncomfortable to swallow I sure; stop pretending to yourself that it is because they could only find these skills overseas; it is simply not the case.

Which is ...? I suppose a country full of ill and retired people with little taxable income would be fantastic. Shame it's full of immigrants who work, earn and spend money in the UK ruining the eldery people's poverty.

To the OP

I hope you find a job soon. This will help you in calming down and getting things back into perspective.

I wish you all the best

Widely acknoledged to be prominent? Have you been there to acknowledge this?
I dont deny that this social evil is still present in this country but to state that is prominent would be quite an exaggeration. I say that in spite of being at the recieving end of some castist situations.

I have been working for a swiss firm for the last 6 years.
We have people from many countries working here in the office.
The one thing which I have noticed is that if you are good at your job they are happy to keep you.

I empathize the situation you are in, but your posts give me an impression that you are blaming Indians / other Non EU people for your Job loss.
Would you do the same if that was being done by the EU's?
Wait, I sem to already have heard a lot of simmerings where the Hungarians or the Germans are taking away the Swiss jobs(no offence to all three nations )

In todays age, even if you look at the example of 80 people being replaced by overseased consultants there must be people who are present in that department. Could be a moo point but why were they retained?

Many of us are resistant to change, to adapt and upgrade our skills to keep us ahead of the curve, or sometimes (I apologize for putting this bluntly) too proud to take a compromise(either in position or in salary)

Inspite of your agression towards us, I still wish you the best for your job search.

I wish you good luck to find
a good job.

just one question to the OP:

if CH has no enough restriction on expat, could you be so kind to offer me an example which country has?

Is that not exactly what you're doing? Switzerland can do whatever it wants with it's permit quotas, that's never going to stop a company outsourcing it's IT contracts to a different country and Switzerland cannot control employment outside it's own borders.

I fail to see how Switzerland's permit policy would have made any difference to your job market being outsourced to other countries - adapt or die, it's a brave new world, etc.

I am sorry I think my post has got lost. Reducing the number of permits in Switzerland is a good thing because it will encourage companies to seek people more locally;

In the last company I worked for they almost the entire department was staffed by L permit registered short term (1 year, consultants). No attempt was being made to source local skills at all.

Reducing the permit quota available will make more jobs available to more locals.

Indeed, in fact London in particular would have to be ranked as one of the top if not the top location for multiskilled, multinational IT staff, there are so many financial institutions, businesses and organizations that for a well rounded, experienced IT professional the UK is the place to be.

I have to say I sit somewhere between the camps on this. Reducing permits I agree would have little effect and would result in the business losing its competitive edge, which would be fatal, however it is also slightly naive to think onshoring is purely about skill replacement and that financial remuneration is the same across the board. I seem to find that there are immigrant workers who are there because you really can't find that skill or a rounded engineer and so look overseas, and there is also an element of cost-reduction based onshoring (or offshoring) which can be seen as unfair but the blunt truth is without them being able to perform this, they cost more and so they lose their competitive edge, which as mentioned is possibly fatal.

The fact of the matter is you just have to get on with it and as was mentioned earlier on, you have to re-skill, accept a lower rate or whatever you need to get back into the in-demand list. There's really no other way around it.

Lowering permits doesn't cut it, because your competitor who works in another country (lets say the UK, because of the mess its in of course), will hire their employees at that lower rate, can undercut you on costs so will be more competitive. therefore lowering permit quotas is short sighted unless you are 100% confident you have the skills locally at the same cost, which you dont normally.

IT's a funny old game and it's all about to change again with clouds coming into it, so I would say the prospects for the industry are worse in the coming 15 years than in the past 15 years in terms of number of opportunities but for the skilled adaptable person, there will always be work.

Your solution would require a company to hire a, perhaps, underqualified candidate who didn't have up-to-date skills. However, their proximity would make them competitive even if their skills didn't. Just doesn't make sense.

And what is a local? When does it stop? Wouldn't the enivitable happen and when your permit came to it's renewal date, you would be sent packing since you are no longer a "local."

Such protectionism only serves to reduce competitiveness and eventually dilute the quality of the workforce - cause "locals" don't have to stay competitive - they just need to be here.

Given the number of permits has been reduced; the job will not be outsourced over night; it may be put on hold for a while; but companies cannot run without staff indefinitely.

'L' permits by their very nature are short term. Is there anybody here who `?has held an L permit for 15 years? 10 years? 5 years? No....

But hey lets think about that outsourcing suggestion what would happen...

The number of IT jobs in Switzerland will dramatically fall, and everybody you, me and our families will be worse off, EUROPE would be worse off. They won't have worry about the number of L permits available; because there will be no work here; it will all be outsourced as you suggest. You, the poor Indian/Chinese/Australian/US you name soles who want the chance to come and work here wont get that chance cause there will be no jobs at all for them.

The majority of overseas consultants I see are in their early 20's, not so experienced or super qualified. EPFL produce a good number of highly capable individuals every year; as do a large number of other universities across Europe; indeed the large number of the qualified individuals you mention have gained their qualifications in European Universities.

There is an element of truth in the up-to-date skills comment, although how much of your time working do you really spend updating your skills? I got this comment talking to high commission in Australia when talking to them about possible immigration; funny thing is I am still using a computer typing this message. I still programming creating my own web sites. I have written hundreds of application letters literally. Reworked my CV more times than it as snowed this winter....

And "local" could also mean a company in Basel not hiring those strange-language-speaking foreigners from ... Geneva

Also, multinationals such as Syngenta, Roche, Novartis etc (I'm in Basel so that's my focus) can set up their IT centres anywhere globally. If it isn't cost effective for them to run this from Switzerland then they'll run it from their office in China, or India, or Germany or wherever.

Ah, if only that were true.

I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of people I personally know who have been made redundant or lost contracts due to offshoring.

It's not black and white. A company may decide, in order to stay profitable and reduce its IT costs (which is rarely their core business), to outsouce its development abroad losing many from their development team.

If they didn't do that, any of the following could have happened:
- They stayed as they were before with a large dev team
- They stopped development and didn't upgrade their systems
- They bought a third party product and tweaked it to their needs
- They went bankrupt
- They relocated their head office to a cheaper country
- They bought a s/w development tool to speed up development with less people

All apart from the first option would similarly result in people losing their jobs. It's just IT - people sitting in front of a computer. I'm always amazed how well IT pays. Still. After all these years when (a) the world is full of "IT professionals" so supply should swamp demand and (b) IT's been around for so long that w should all have robots running our lives and IT should sit there upgrading itself

Anyway, what happens if a company in China starts up doing the same or very similar business to you? Ah, you say, you simply charge tarrifs and duties for importing their products into Europe. Except ... Europe's population is falling without immigration so all the customers are the new middle class in ... China. And they have just put import duties on you!

I'll be OK. Once the middle classes become comfortable (very soon) I'll be working in Beijing

Fair enough, but I personally know lots of people that have been employed after off-shoring did not go as smoothly as expected and core design was bought back local.

Recession aside of course, because everyone beens mugged during the recession to an extent.

Its about changing skills, not just about waiting till you get bumped out.