Swiss xenophobia is now raging following the popular referendum banning minarets. Now the Swiss fear and loathing against Muslim immigrants s spilling over into fear and loathing against the neighbor to the north – namely Germany. Germans are no longer welcome in Switzerland and the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) is openly calling for expulsion of the hated Teutonic element that is infecting Swiss culture and stealing employment from the native workers:
There are now over 250,000 Germans living in Switzerland, a country
of 7.6 million, and 28,000 have settled in Zurich alone. In particular
the health services and academia have attracted many German jobseekers.
The number of those heading south has increased steadily. Switzerland,
not a member of the European Union, waived any visa requirements for EU
citizens in 2002.While the SVP campaign against the Germans has until now focused on
Zurich, which holds municipal elections on March 7, the party can be
expected to up the rhetoric to the national level if they see that the
issue goes over well with voters.
There have even been death threats against Germans who have been living and working in Zurich for 30 years. This report from German television investigates the growing hostility towards Germans in Switzerland (with thanks to Politblogger) :
Despite the growing resentment against German workers in Switzerland, many employers value thier "results-orient" work ethic and flexibility:
Deutsche arbeiten ergebnisorientiert, reden weniger und legen ein
anderes Tempo vor. Wenn ein Unternehmen umstrukturiert werden muss,
sind Deutsche diejenigen, die anpacken und verändern. (Germans are results-oriented, talk less, and work at a faster pace. If a company needs restructuring, the Germans are the ones that pitch in and make the changes.)
So after they succeed in marginalizing Muslims and Germans, who's next on the hate list? Will the Swiss repeal the voting rights for women?
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jetzt werden die auch noch rasistisch gegenüber uns… gefällt mir gar nicht…
“werden”? Die Schweizer hatten schon immer ein Napoleon Komplex uns gegenüber. Davon mal abgesehen sind Deutsche Arbeiter in der Schweiz nicht erst seit gestern unbeliebt, man konnte schon vor 10 Jahren die selben Artikel in den Zeitungen lesen.
Wow. I just learned to live with the hostility toward me and my family when I lived in Switzerland. And even though the Swiss treated us and almost every other foreigner we knew as contaminated, we were reluctant to be critical, because it was after all their country.
They made millions off inventions that my husband and his German boss developed, but they never accepted us.
I don’t like them, and that’s a fact.
I note that foreigners there have stopped making nice, the way we always did.
You can only take so much, after all.