And many of those laws were developed for relatively racist reasons, of course.
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That’s the joke.
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It’s not really bonkers, It’s just subjective. Even if I would prefer something more official, it is perfectly sensible to have your neighbors vote on whether you are Swiss enough. Also, they are merely denying her citizenship, not deporting her, as far as I can tell she will continue her life in Switzerland as she has for the last 25 years.
I used to live in Buchs. People there were welcoming enough, actually quite open and friendly.
I went to a Schwingen match once, the first price was a cow. They also had yodeling.
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In my experience, they had slightly better jobs than the general population. The immigrants are mostly high skilled Europeans looking for better paying jobs.
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Sorry to ruin it with it flying over my head!
“During the Fifth National Population Census (2000), only 941 naturalized citizens not belonging to any of China’s recognized 56 indigenous ethnic groups (which includes Koreans, Vietnamese, and Russians) were counted in China’s mainland. As of 2010, the total number of naturalized Chinese was only 1,448 (that is to say, 507 people were naturalized between 2000 and 2010) in Mainland China, out of the population of over 1.33 billion.”
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Not to make light of a bad situation, but someone has to…
Am I the only one who came to this article hoping that the wrestling was part of the citizenship test based entirely upon the picture Boing Boing used?
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If I may be more specific: where people from up the mountain mistrust those from down at the lake on the same community. And where the villagers who have lived there for 50 years mistrust the newcomers who recently arrived, i.e. 35 years ago.
By the way, that’s not a Swiss specialty
Voting on citizenship of your neighbour, that is decidedly swiss.
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The liberal ideal seems to be that the law is universally applied-- if a person murders a person, he should be treated as any other murderer, regardless of who he is as a person (king, noble, commoner, vagabond…) And if such a law, rigorously applied to all produces an unjust result, the law must be rewritten so that it once again produces justice in 100% of cases.
In such cases, sovereignty is abdicated to a machine, sans pity and coldly logical. If the results are desirable, so be it. If the results are undesirable, people start grumbling.
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That would only apply if laws could not be changed. I’d call what we have a feedback loop, things can be adjusted and corrected, which happens a lot. Juries can refuse to convict even if the law says they should.
As far as I know, it is no longer illegal to teach black people to read, no longer legal to own slaves or execute women found not to be virgins when wed or beat your “servant” to death (Although the latter is still acceptable according to the Bible of course.) so we do seem to be making some progress. 
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Excuse me? Deport her? Why would you even choose this as a comparison? She applied for citizenship, and didn’t engage in some illegal activity of great severity.
BTW: She filed an appeal, and the Regoetungsrat will quite probably grant her Swiss citizenship.
Also, she will receive a symbolic prize, the Arosa-Humorschaufel, on the 9th of December. The prize is given to people for their ‘community engagement with a sense of humour’.
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As to that Swiss arrogance, thank you for presenting a free demonstration.
Sounds like someone has an axe to grind.
On the having foreigners without Swiss passports, therefore we are not racist.
It’s funny how one can read something into a statement that’s simply not there. My point was that Switzerland is by and large a harmonious society functioning at a high level. That’s something you don’t find in a country that supposedly ostracizes a full third of its population. Your Saudi Arabia analogy is quite the stretch, really.
I am done here,
Cute.
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True, but since at least the current iteration of our immigration laws, the US has absorbed several waves of refugees, with a measure of success unseen in much of the world. Granted there was consternation from the general public concerning them. But within a generation of their arrival, Americans pat themselves on the back and pretend everything went smoothly.
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Yep, you manage to prove my point.
the point is that once you say something is bad you must also list all the other bad things in the world or you’re a big old hypocrite and also the thing that was bad you pointed out was bad somehow turns out to be good now!
It cuts across the spectrum.
A good part is highly qualified and hence holds commensurate positions. Others have a modest educational background and work in positions requiring few qualifications. All in all, most everybody that comes to Switzerland does reasonably well. Minimum wage is a livable wage here and wholesale exploitation of workers with low qualifications does not happen - as of yet, at least.
True. But then nobody ever said democracy was a nice system of government.
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Also, possibly only the Swiss say that direct democracy is just and right and fair and sound and rock-solid.
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.Erm… I get about 14 CHF an hour. That’s only livable for a while, and only because I am importing my groceries and most other stuff from Germany.
However, it’s better than not working. Even if I am coming to my physical and mental limits: everything is better than Hartz IV.
FTR, my Job is classified as an “internship”. Tell me about minimum wages, again?
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