Border control is not equivalent to racism. The people pushing for it loudly just tend to be doing it for blatantly racist reasons. Unsurprisingly, those people tend to abuse any ounce of power given to them. When they're granted extraordinary government powers, they make up official sounding reason to achieve their racist agenda. Hence the general consensus that any talk of border control is racism. The non-racist-driven border control agenda just controls the border, and shut the fuck up about it. They don't boast about arrests, they don't make up stories about crime or eating cats and dogs, they don't send in the military to schools to grab kids out of class, they don't shoot people in the face when they look at them wrong.

If Swiss population growth were entirely attributable to the children of existing Swiss residents, then this initiative would be pointless because it wouldn't change anything, and we would not be having this conversation.

So yes, it absolutely is about immigration, regardless of the wording.

It's a migration cap. There's no provision on sterilizing Swiss women should the threshold be reached through birthrate…

No, it's an immigration restriction. There's no way it applies if the Swiss start having 5 kids each.

Apparently you are unable to understand that if people who have been crying about immigration for 20 years that now push this things does not mean they have changed their mind. They just try to hide what's obvious to confuse uniformed voters (like old people who just see big number and remember the 1970s).

The Netherlands is completely tiny compared to many of the countries people are coming from, and the land is allocated. You can't replace the farms with suburbs throughout the country, and even if you did, then what? Is it allowed to be full then? Or should people still leave their much more land-rich origins to come anyway?

Are the people supposed to eat rocks? Agriculture takes a lot of land but people need to eat.

If anything agriculture is going to require more land in order to be sustainable.

Does EU have the USA problem where most farmers are basically sharecroppers where they are mandated where they can buy their seed, buy their fertilizers, where they buy their chicks/sows/calfs, what equipment they can buy, how they can repair their equipment, where they can sell their crops, and at what specific prices all from a single undemocratic corporation?

In the USA it's basically corporations that run everything and drive the farmers into poverty where said corporations can then buy their land and rely on undocumented workers to keep the abuse going.

From the outside EU farmers seem to have better labor relations, but don't know.

I think at least in Germany it's not true - among people coming to Germany there are more refugees of various kinds than professionals

They definitely aren't, but whomever they are they still requires houses, power and water.

France is mostly empty by Europe's population density standard though, so even though it was likely not the intent of GP, it kind of works in that context.

Can you back up your claims? I don't have a dog in this fight, but do notice people ridiculing migrants as "doctors and engineers".

That’s to the US. I believe in Europe it’s Arab hoipolloi

citation needed

> In Germany extra-EU immigrants are on average net contributors to welfare state too.

Interesting. By what cost does this measure loss of freedom due to increased surveillance, decreased freedom of movement especially for women. Also increased cost and decreasing quality of police, law, education, or even street cleaning…

> Global freedom of movement was an inalienable right until European colonial powers noticed some of their colonies' peoples wanted to move to Europe.

What an absurd assertion. Where did you learn that? Read up about Roman border control and immigration policy, and what they required of immigrants into Roman territory.

There was no global freedom of movement. Ever.

Especially after we saw how happy the EU was to negotiate (they didn't budge) when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Swiss_immigration_initiat... passed.

The new initiative is basically the same, but with no leeway to ignore it.

(that said I suspect if it passes, there will be something tied to the bilateral referendum in 2027/28 to try to supersede it)

It's the opposite of what you think, if some countries get privileges without following the basic principles, then the EU would be unpopular.

> sure you're also staunchly against Scotland and any referendum to join the EU, and against Catalonia becoming independent as well?

Why? I think the first is a good idea and the second fine if that’s what they want.

Those "guillotine clauses" mostly exist because member states didn't want to cede their sovereignty to the EU. If a treaty covers areas where member states have shared or full responsibility, it must be ratified unanimously by every member state. (Which in some case requires ratification by regional parliaments.) Any changes to such treaties must also be ratified, which means there will be 30+ parties negotiating and trying to win new concessions.

>These kinds of morally-superior, we'll show them, type of attitudes

This is a strange framing that itself usually comes from a standpoint of moral superiority. When you sign agreements with a governing body, like the EU on freedom of movement, and you break that agreement then there's consequences. And I don't mean that in an underhanded agressive way, but just literally you've broken the terms you had negotiated.

The superiority complex really often seems to come from countries like Switzerland or the UK in the Brexit situation. Countries that already have often privileged deals and then decide to forfeit them, which they are allowed to do, it's not an attack on their sovereignty, the EU is not mainland China and Switzerland or the UK were not Taiwan, they're free to do what they want, they just can't have their cake and eat it too.

You are mistaken. I am pro-Scotland independence and EU admission but anti Catalonia independence. Simply because the former will expand and strengthen the EU and the latter will divide and weaken it, especially since it's supported by Russia.

But what did Romania experience?