Hi everyone.

I was looking through the little booklet considering the 28th November votes and was quite surprised to see that the SVP/UDC is the only main party that recommends voting in favour of the 28th november initiative that calls for foreigners who commit certain serious crimes to have their resident permit cancelled.

I'll hopefully be able to catch most of the arguments on Infrarouge next Wednesday, but was wondering if any of you were aware of the main reasons why the rest of the parties wont be voting in favour of what appears to be quite a logical initiative.

Perhaps because the other parties are keen to maintain the principle of cantonal independence on such matters, as opposed to the increasingly federalist, centralised approach of the SVP?

I think you will find the centre right parties support the alternative proposal and the left oppose on principle.

The way it works here, the original referendum is accompanied by a counter-proposal from the legislature - aimed at addressing the same thing but in a different, usually more moderate way.

You can vote on three questions:
- Yes or No on the original proposal (the one from the SVP)
- Yes or No on the Bundesrat's counter-proposal
- and: in the event that both of them pass, which would you prefer?

You can vote on the third question no matter how you voted on the first two.

This leads to a lot of politicking - for example right now the SVP is urging people to vote "yes" on their proposal, "no" on the Bundesrat's. Now you might expect that they would find even the Bundesrat's proposal better than nothing... but what they don't want is for both proposals to pass, and the Bundesrat's proposal to edge theirs out because of support on the third question (i.e. people who supported both but preferred the Bundesrat one, or people who didn't support either, but found the Bundesrat one the least worst option.)

As Craig says, some of the other parties are advocating "no" to the SVP proposal but "yes" to the Bundesrat alternative, and still others are advocating "no" to both.

There was a most interesting article in the Beobachter which showed five real cases, what happens under the present law, what would happen under the new law and what would happen if the 'Gegenvorschlag' came into force. This is one of them.

A guy, born in Switzerland, does his apprenticeship, completes it with very high marks. He is once caught with 4 grams of cannabis. Pays the Fr.50.-fine. No other brushes with the law. He works for a while at the job he has learned. Later he goes abroad for three months, come back, does various jobs short-term. When the last firm he is working for hits bad times, he loses his job. He applies for and receives unemployment pay for three months. He finds another job where he is still working.
During the time he was out of work, he helped a friend on Saturdays in the garden. He earned 2 x 150 francs. He didn't tell the Unemployment folk. When it came out, he was reprimanded by them and had to pay the money back to the Unemployment Insurance. The Immigration Office heard about it.

Under the present law, he gets a warning.
Under the Gegenvorschlag he may stay here.
Under the new law, he will be deported.

The idea of the new law may well be to prevent people misusing the social funding here, but one can only say 'it seemed like a good idea at the time' to use this ruling without taking into consideration the severity of the crime.
There are other examples given. The idea of deporting criminal aliens is great, but somehow it isn't that simple to find a fair solution.

Exactly for the reasons and example Longbyt has given, I'm more and more convinced that this vote is going to take an in depth analysis.

If all of the parties are against it except for one, there's a very good reason.

The common swiss can impossible be so retarded that he/she will vote for this...