Why Switzerland has Few Immigration Problems

In my first book on Localism one of the real-world examples of how localism works in practice was the Swiss Canton system of government. Switzerland has been one of the best-governed nations in human history, though they too are increasingly suffering from centralization. This is because they have failed to keep shut all thirteen of the doorways through which power is taken farther from the individual and gathered up into distant capitals. Still, the process by which local self-determination is lost has not progressed nearly as far there as it has in other western nations. A perfect example of how their system works better (because it is more localist) than that of their neighbors and the United States is the subject of immigration.

I was very amused to read this article about a Dutch busy-body who went to Switzerland apparently on something like our green card, and attempted to make the situation permanent. Apparently the citizens of the town where the immigrants live can vote on whether or not an applicant can become a citizen! The citizens voted "no" because they did not like the way this person came to town and tried to get them to change their customs of putting large cow-bells on the necks of their cattle! That is what passes for "immigration problems" in Switzerland!

How much better would it be (for both citizens and immigrants who wish to attain citizenship) if we used this bottom-up system of deciding who would become a citizen? Instead of Washington D.C. telling communities who they had to take, communities could tell Washington D.C. who had to be taken! Immigrants who came here and became good neighbors would be valued by the community and taken. Those who came here and started trouble would have to go back when their visa expired and their slot could be given to another applicant who would make better use of it.

Right now, central-staters are flooding some communities with immigrants at a higher level than can be integrated without serious tensions. These immigrants often come from such different cultures that problems are almost assured. Meanwhile, other communities have declared themselves "sanctuary cities" which will not cooperate with any central-state attempts to capture and expel illegal immigrants. In fact there is talk of federal agents arresting elected leaders of such cities. And of course there is already an effort to cut federal funds to such cities (not that any cities should get them).

So the central-state, in its usual ham-fisted manner, is both imposing immigrants on communities that the communities do not want, and sanctioning communities for trying to keep immigrants that they do want. It is madness. The central state is madness. We should decentralize this and every other function of government to the maximum extent feasible.

Instead of collective decision made in D.C. to take X number from this nation and Y number from that one, we should evaluate immigrants on a case-by-case basis. If they express a willingness to give something back to our nation and attempt to mesh with our culture and demonstrate some aptitude for doing so then they get a chance to earn the right to stay. The decision on whether to give the an opportunity should be based on those factors. This may result in a larger proportion of immigrants being taken from nations with a western heritage, but there are people in every nation who can adopt a western heritage because our culture is based on universal, not ethnic, values. If the local communities decide they have done well, they can stay. If not, when their visa is up, they are deported.

Don't expect those who run things now to decide to adopt a Swiss-style immigration system. It doesn't matter if they are Republicans or Democrats, central-planners run both parties now and such people cannot fathom voluntarily sending power back down closer to the people. They will continue to try and define the problem as being whether the quotas are too high or too low, or too much from this place and not enough from that.

They can't bear the thought of letting go to a Swiss-style system even though it works fantastically well while their own central planning is a disaster that leaves all sides unhappy. Their confidence in their own ability to run your community from afar better than the people living in it borders on narcissism. The moral course is simple, its just hard. Immigrants with the appropriate desires and aptitudes should be free to go where they are wanted and kept out of places where they are not wanted. That's the fairest thing for both the immigrant and the communities.