Fate of foreign criminals hangs in voters’ hands

Will Swiss voters agree with the Swiss People’s Party that people without a Swiss passport who commit certain crimes should be deported, no questions asked? A bitter campaign that has split the country and featured swastika posters will be decided on Sunday.

In effect, voters will be choosing between the People’s Party’s original version of their deportation initiative that was approved by almost 53% of voters in 2010 and parliament’s version, which the People’s Party says is “watered down”.

The main complaint of the conservative right party is a “hardship clause”, which would enable the courts to intervene if they thought deportation would result in serious hardship for the person involved. It wants deportation to be automatic: commit a serious crime (or two lesser crimes within ten years) and you’re out.

“If the people and cantons want a rigorous deportation practice, they must approve the enforcement initiative,” said Adrian Amstutz, a senior member of the People’s Party and of the initiative committee.

People who obey the rules have nothing to fear, say supporters.

‘Two-class legal system’

“We’re not saying otherwise,” countered Leyla Gül, co-general secretary of the leftwing Social Democratic Party and co-founder of SecondosPlus Be, part of a national group that fights for citizenship and equal opportunities.

“People who commit a crime should be punished – fined or sent to prison. But with the enforcement initiative people could be deported for a minor offence, which is completely disproportionate,” she told swissinfo.ch.

“Deportation is simply the wrong way of going about things. It would be the begiing of a two-class legal system.”

In addition to the lack of proportionality – two convictions for speeding could see someone deported, for example – many critics point to the situation facing people bo and raised in Switzerland to immigrant parents but who do not have Swiss citizenship.

They say that if these second-generation Swiss commit a crime, they face being deported to a country where they might not know anyone and might not even speak the language. Tough, says the People’s Party: if you don’t have a Swiss passport, you’re foreign.

Heated campaign

Both sides have pulled no punches in trying to convince voters that the initiative is common sense/racist.

The People’s Party re-used its infamous black sheep from the original 2010 vote, which featured white sheep booting a black sheep out of the country and eat Switzerland a rebuke from the United Nations’ special rapporteur on racism.

Opponents of the initiative used an eye-catching image of a Swiss cross which had been tued into a swastika with the caption “1933: Germany, 1948: South Africa, 2016: Switzerland”. Newspaper columnists had also referred to Switzerland’s “Nazi moment”.

The swastika was too much for the Swiss Federal Railways, which on February 24 aounced it would no longer run the poster in its stations as it offended some of the public. Members of the public who were offended by the black sheep posters were out of luck – the federal railways didn’t have a problem with them.

The result is too close to call: a first poll by the leading GfS Be research institute on January 22 saw 51% of respondents in favour of the initiative and 7% undecided. By February 17, a second poll found support had dwindled and only 46% were in favour, with opponents on 49% and 5% undecided.

swissinfo.ch

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