On Sunday 5.3.11 at 8PM on DRS3 will be a reportage about Expats in Switzerland...
Cliché vs Reality... Will be interesting...
Someone going to listen to it? (But be prepared, it will be in Swissgerman )

I take it you meant Sun 05.06.11

Ha! Yes of course... It's not easy to get dates right, that early in the morning...

Many including yours truly do not quite understand Swiss German, and in the event you do, we would appreciate a brief write up here following the program. TIA.

WOW methinks sarel will have some work cutout Sunday night!!

will see what I can do...
but could do with some help...
how about saint7uk types while I translate???

Good idea, and Samstagern and Richti are not too far from each other

I hope they say nice things like:

1) we put a lot of money back into the Swiss economy
2) we're well-educated
3) we're unlikely to use public resources
4) and we're all-together just fabulous fun at parties.

Something along the lines of this perhaps ?

Basel: We rely on the expats - they make our economy competitive

...and ironically, we're behind the success of SVP!!!
Without us, they are nothing, the other way around not...

Yes!

And I'm actually watching quite by accident a film called "Welcome to Shelbyville." It's focused on a small, southern, US town during and immediately after the election of Barack Obama, and the demographic changes taking place, primarily due to immigration and the failing economy.

here's the wright up as desired:
(excuse my crap english, didn't have any help with typing... )

2/3 of the rent of the expats are payed by the companies... I WANT TO BE AN EXPAT!!! please pay my rent!

a lot of expats (Chinese) have clichés bout switzerland, like it has a lot of cows, mountains, snow... a lot of nature in general... hahahaha I like that, it's true!

also people (American) think that they can get the same amount of stuff for the same money and that just doesn't work.

language is the biggest problem because people (Australian) don't have the time to learn it. working in an english company and not staying too long in the country... why should they? I never saw it from that point of view... I just always thought, they're bloody lazy and ignorant... cause when you can speak the language, you don't have to integrate... you can talk your way out of it...
swiss also nearly always swap in to english, so it's much harder to learn the language...
swiss german seems to be easier than german... don't know about that...

then the big discussion, the bad expats are taking away our jobs... of course it is true at one point. but if we had the same qualified people in our own country, we wouldn't employ expats, would we?

50% of the expats stay between 1 - 5 Years, the others stay longer.
Helpful for moving here are the relocation companies, showing the newcomers everything they have to know.

Making contact to swiss people seems to be a big problem. swiss don't even like to mix with them selves, so why should they mix with foreigners? and also sending the kids to international schools instead of the local schools tends to exclude people from the swiss society...

so it seems, expats don't have it as easy as it looks like (apart from the rent being paid). but I still think language is everything, even if one doesn't stay forever.
was an interesting reportage... but at the end of the day... we already knew that stuff, didn't we?

Thanks! The MP3 podcast from DRS3 is here. [24.3MB]

Could the English speakers be members from here ??

Well, I just heard a bit of it and I was seriously disappointed... I don't know on what basis the "example expats" were chosen, but all they did was continuously agree on whatever the interviewer asked.
- Do you agree that foreigners take Swiss jobs away? "Yes, sometimes. But it is much more expensive to hire foreigners and bring them here." So why don't you say "no" then?
- Do you agree that foreigners raise the rents in Swiss cities? "Yes, especially if the companies pay the rent. We pay our rent ourselves, so we don't". The reporter than mentions that there is no statistic on how many percent of all foreigners get their rent paid by the employer... but it sounded as the most normal thing which I think its not.
- What do you think about the new initiative of a right winged populist movement to limit the number of foreigners coming here? "In some sense thats a good idea! So Switzerland can protect its own identity..." WTF? Bloody hell, no, it isn't. It's an initiative to get CH out of Schengen! If you don't understand it, don't comment on it!

I hope this were no EF members, but if you are reading this: I would be genuinely interested if these answers are your honest opinion or if the reporter asked you in a suggestive way...

That's actually disappointing indeed!!! I would hope media in a country like Switzerland could be more objective in their reporting. This just sounds like the interview was nothing more than a propaganda tool.

Asking questions "do you agree" (yes or no) is not good interviewing.

You don't actually hear the question. Only a speaker saying something like "when asked on the raise in rental prices"... and then the answer is played from a recording often starting with "Yes", which makes typically only sense if the question was "closed" as in "yes/no". A good interview would have open questions and actually listen to the answers. I would really like to know how the questions were asked.

the reportage was cleary NOT propaganda and very objective in my opinion
maybe you should listen to it first before you judge it

the whole thing sounded very swiss to me,. very neutral...