Reflections on Lecturing on Immigration Policy in Switzerland

Ove the last few days, I gave two talks on immigration in Switzerland. Here are some reflections on that experience.

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I spent this week in Switzerland, where I gave two talks on immigration policy: one at Avenir Suisse, a classical liberal/libertarian-leaning think tank, and one at NZZ Real Estate Days (annual convention of the Swiss real estate industry). The experience engendered some reflections, which I cover in this post. But it's important to note some caveats right off the bat: I am not an expert on Swiss politics and society, though I do have some knowledge by virtue of being a federalism and immigration scholar (Switzerland is an important case study for both fields). I only speak one of Switzerland's two main languages (French; the other is German, and German-speaking Swiss outnumber the French-speakers). As described below, my knowledge of French was of little use on this trip. In addition, I should stress that I did not speak to a statistically representative sample of Swiss people. Among other things, because of the nature of the two events, those I met were overwhelmingly highly educated and relatively affluent.

These reflections won't resolve either Swiss or US debates about immigration. But I hope they might be of some small interest, nonetheless.

J.D. Vance recently said that if immigration was the path to prosperity, then "America would be the most prosperous country in the world." Well, we very nearly are! Depending on which data set you look, at the US ranks somewhere between 6th and 10th in per capita GDP. Ahead of us are various small oil-rich states (e.g. the UAE, Qatar, and Norway), Luxembourg (tiny city state that specializes in banking), Ireland …. and Switzerland! Thus, Vance can still argue that if immigration were economically beneficial, we would be ahead of Switzerland, not behind it. But here's the problem: Switzerland actually has way more immigration relative to population than we do. Over 30% of the Swiss population is foreign-born, compared to about 14% for the US. Ireland also has a higher per capita GDP than the US in most rankings. Their percentage of immigrants in the population is almost 20%, lower than Switzerland, but considerably higher than the US.

Correlation doesn't prove causation. Switzerland and the US could be rich despite immigration, rather than because of it. And much of what's going on is that richer nations attract more immigrants. However, extensive evidence indicates that immigration is a major driver of economic growth and innovation.

The current debate over immigration in Switzerland has many similarities to that in the US and other countries. There is a strong anti-immigrant political movement, spearheaded by the People's Party (which has done relatively well in recent Swiss elections). At both speaking events (particularly the more politically diverse NZZ event), some people were relatively sympathetic to my pro-immigration position, and others much less so. That is to be expected for such a controversial issue.

Most of the objections I heard were very similar to those I encounter in the US and elsewhere. I address these standard objections here and in greater detail in my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. But one argument was much more prevalent in Switzerland than elsewhere: concerns about what I call "swamping" - the possibility that the native population will swiftly be overwhelmed by large numbers of immigrants from widely different cultures.

This is understandable, given the small size of Switzerland. Swamping is a more plausible scenario there than for larger nations. I answered the objection with a number of points adapted from Chapter 6 of Free to Move. But there is a Swiss-specific response that didn't occur to me until afterwards: A large fraction of migrants to Switzerland are actually from countries with very similar languages and cultures. The largest immigrant groups in Switzerland are Italians (14% of the foreign-born population), Germans (13.4%), Portuguese (10.6%), and French (6.8%). Germans, French, and Italians are of course among the traditional native populations of Switzerland.

Switzerland gets a lot of immigration from other European nations because, while not a member of the European Union, it has an agreement with the EU permitting freedom of movement, under which EU citizens are allowed to live and work in Switzerland. As the richest nation in Europe (with the exception of small city-states like Luxembourg and oil-rich Norway), and one with relatively open labor markets (especially by European standards) Switzerland attracts many EU migrants. I in fact met many German immigrants to Switzerland during my stay. They come because Switzerland has better job opportunities than Germany's overregulated labor market.

Given this state of affairs, even with a complete "open borders" policy, immigration to Switzerland from culturally and distant nations is always likely to be in large part  balanced by migration from nearby culturally and linguistically similar ones. This in turn helps increase the incentive for more culturally distant immigrants to assimilate.

At the NZZ event, I made a point of including a section on the impact of immigration on housing, in my talk. Among other things, I noted that immigrants disproportionately work in the construction sector, thus making it easier to build new housing. This effect - along with other aspects of migration - also increases the profitability of the real estate industry (which I pointed out). I thought that might be of special interest to an audience of real estate professionals. Indeed, when I first got the NZZ invitation, I thought they would want me to do a presentation primarily focused on housing issues, a subject I also write about (the organizers made clear they wanted me to speak about immigration more generally).

Interestingly,  none of the many questions I got at NZZ conference were about housing or real estate. This is another example of how, contrary to popular belief, self-interest is not the major determinant of people's views on most political issues.

Almost everyone I met at the two events were either native-born Swiss or immigrants from Germany. But, while in Zurich, I ran into immigrants from a variety of other countries, including Turkey, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Bulgaria, and Ukrainian war refugees (whom I spoke to in Russian). Even more than in the US, most Uber drivers are recent immigrants from relatively poor nations.

These immigrants speak highly of Switzerland, and most seem to work hard to learn German (and in many cases, also English). One Turkish immigrant (an Uber driver) told me he moved to Switzerland because the pay is better, and Switzerland is a "peaceful" and orderly country. Much better - he said - than Germany, where "there is too much disorder" (I stress this is his view, not mine).

While Switzerland seems to be doing a good job of absorbing immigrants, the country's policy of promoting multilingualism seems less successful. Switzerland has four official languages (French, German, Italian, and Romansch), with German (the majority language) and French being by far the most prevalent.

Both of my talks were in German Switzerland (Zurich for the Avenir Suisse event and Davos for NZZ). But I naively thought that my knowledge of French would be useful, because German-speaking Swiss are supposed to learn that language in school, and could use it when traveling to the French-speaking part of the country.

What I actually found is that most of the German Swiss I met either don't speak much French at all (one told me he had studied French in school for six years, but forgotten nearly everything), speak it worse than I do (I am only moderately fluent), or are much more comfortable speaking English. English is, to be fair, easier for German speakers to learn than French, and there is a strong incentive to learn it because it is the language of international business.

As already noted, I did not speak to a representative sample of Swiss. Perhaps those I met were just unusually averse to French. But, as a general rule, I would expect highly educated professionals to be more likely to learn another language than working class people. A 2022 study finds that 38% of Swiss use more than one language at work, but most of that seems to be people using Standard German in addition to the Swiss dialect, or using English. Only a small fraction of German Swiss use French.

While immigrants have strong incentives to learn the dominant language in their new home, learning two languages is a much tougher challenge.  For most adults, learning a foreign language is hard, painful work, and they will only do it if there is a strong incentive. I expect, therefore, that high immigration levels make the multilingualism policy even harder to implement than is already the case. If even many native-born Swiss Germans don't learn much French (or don't remember what they do learn), immigrants to majority-German parts of the country probably learn even less. Given the enormous benefits of migration (including for receiving-country natives), I think this tradeoff is worth it. But it should be acknowledged.