peri1224 has left the cartel/forum last December. I say give this thread some rest until June.

With regard to the 1st June initiative, it amazes me that a supposedly modern country can allow advertising which is clearly intended to stir up racial hatred.

The initiative - if passed - will allow jumped up racists in every gemeinde to keep moving the goalposts for citizenship applicants they happen not to like.

Cheers,
Nick

Not offensive! Haven't you seen that a white hand snatched a passport, too?

Irony aside. I agree with the legalistic approach and this campaign, like the other one, flies oh so close under that radar. I hope and think that the initiative will tank at the ballot box.

By the way, may I ask if the sheep campaign has been thematized at the last Fasnacht in Basel?

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As a real asylum seeker living with other refugees, can I add some information? (I pay my living cost and everything from my capital by the way)
The problem is that the refugees get money in weekly or similar basis, and it is up to them how to spend the money. I have seen some refugees having drinking and smoking problem. Due to the cultural issue, I am not saying that drinking beer is a bad habit. But packs of cigarettes and bottles of beer cost pretty much for the folks receiving money about 10CHF per day.

If you think spending too much for not necessary thing like a pack of cigarette as an abuse, I would agree to that.

Maybe we can work without permit but, natives and foreigners have priority than refugees. Moreover, refugees have some restrictions on categories of jobs they can work inside of Switzerland.

Today I saw a new, somewhat disturbing poster from the SVP. Not the white and black sheep, but a box of red and white "Swiss Flag" chocolates and several hands (of different colours- black, tan, white) reaching for these chocolates.. and the word 'STOP!'
Then down the bottom, 'JA zur Einbuergerungsinitiativ'.

Anyone have any clues what this initiative is about?

..from what I guess, it's some initiative regarding naturalisation of foreigners.. probably some new measures to prevent those nasty little foreign hands from grabbing their piece of Switzerland.

Again, I don't know what it's about, but it's very disappointing to see such blatantly racist images (this particular billboard is also in a part of town where many foreigners live)..

(later on I had a long chat about the undercurrent of 'anti-foreigner' sentiment in Switzerland with my neighbours, who are also foreigners. Then we learned about the recent high-school shooting in the US..and decided that Switzerland wasn't so bad after all..)

Yes I saw that too and was quite shocked! Most of the Swiss I know are open-minded and world travellers. I guess every country has racists but to be able to do it so blatantly and publicly is quite amazing.

I don't they are chocolates, I think they are passports.

Striking images, no? Very effective.

This poster is not new. It was used a few years ago. This time, there are a couple of white fingers. I’m not sure it was there last time.

I was very disturbed by this poster. What’s even more disturbing is that it worked back then. They must be trying to recapture "the spirit".

I think this hurt Switzerland more than they know. They earned millions of groans and lots of bad reputation marks. But I guess some haven’t figured that out yet.

I better get off this thread before I get carried away.

Did a quick search, this is the poster that's out there:

The party behind these posters (which were already used before) is SVP - the largest party in Switzerland (almost 30% of the votes): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politic..._and_elections

from reading their site, I gather that it's basically aimed against Yugos (people from the Balkans, mostly from what used to be Yugoslavia), so no need to worry if your skin is pale and English, rather then Serbo-Croat is your mother tongue.

I admire many things in Switzerland, but the politics here didn't seem to evolve since the 1920s

I think you may be even more shocked if you understood the nuances of the rhetoric.

I admire many things in Switzerland, but the politics here didn't seem to evolve since the 1920s[/quote]

No, no.. the politics have evolved since the 1920s!.. women were given the vote in the early 1970s.
(50 years after most of the countries I know..)

oh dear, looks like I had better learn how to use the Quote function..

or the Edit button.

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I understood (or misunderstood) from a headline that E. Widmer-Schlumpf has come out against this initiative. No?

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My impression is that an applicant must have lived in the gemeinde for 10 years(?) before applying for citizenship. During the application, the applicant is brought in front of members of the gemeinde. The members then vote if the applicant can be allowed to be a citizen.

Doesn't this mean the applicant has to spend the 10 years pleasing ALL the members of the gemeinde? That means he should smile when insulted, and just express a LOT of humility? How nice.

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