SWITZERLAND: A Bout of Xenophobia

Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung put it down to geography. “Mountains tend to restrict the horizons of the mind,” he once told TIME’S Robert Kroon. Others chalk it up to the insular effects of a longtime policy of political neutrality. Still others say it is simply a matter of overexposure to throngs of Fremdarbeiter (foreign workers) and businessmen pouring into the country in search of jobs and tax breaks.

Whatever the cause, Switzerland was once again suffering from one of its periodic bouts of xenophobia last week. “We just don’t feel at home in our country any more,” declared Valentin Oehen, 43, a parliamentary deputy from the conservative canton of Lucerne. Oehen and his National Action Party, an ultraconservative splinter group, proposed a constitutional amendment that would limit the number of foreigners in Switzerland’s 6.3 million population to 500,000. Under the measure, more than half of the 1,052,000 foreign residents in the country would have to be deported. Even foreigners who have lived there for 20 years and more would not be exempt.

Oehen’s proposal was not exactly new; a similar but less sweeping measure was narrowly defeated in 1970. But by playing on the deep resentment many Swiss feel toward migrant workers, who are blamed for everything from the housing shortage to overcrowded nurseries and schools, Oehen’s “over-foreignization” campaign struck a surprisingly responsive chord. “They take our jobs, and they work too damn hard,” declared a middle-aged lathe operator in Bern who vowed to vote for the constitutional amendment. “All they care about is putting in overtime to make more money. If you’d let them, they’d be working Sundays as well.”

Aliens make up a far higher percentage of Switzerland’s population (18%) than they do in other West European countries (West Germany has 5%, and France only 7%). But foreign labor has also been a key factor in Swiss prosperity. Many of the country’s biggest companies, including the Swiss banking industry, were founded by immigrants. Some factories currently employ up to 90% foreign workers, and most undesirable jobs like garbage collection and street cleaning are done by foreigners.

When polls showed 45% of Swiss voters in favor of the amendment, government and business leaders went into a near panic. Some multinational companies promptly drew up contingency plans to move their operations elsewhere. Economists predicted that mass expulsion would cause many businesses to go bankrupt. Georges-Henri Martin, managing editor of the Tribune de Geneve, likened the amendment to “the nightmare of the deportees of World War II,” and warned that it meant expulsion of 62,500 foreigners from Geneva (pop. 339,000) alone. In France and Italy, there were rumblings of retaliation in kind against Swiss residents there.

Last weekend voters went to the polls and defeated the amendment. But such a reprieve could be only temporary. James Schwarzenbach, a parliamentary deputy and Zurich publisher who criticized Oehen’s amendment as “too many too soon,” announced that he was already drawing up another, less severe proposal against Uherfrem-dung (foreign saturation).