This picture is the “Foreigner ID Card” I was required to have to live and work in Switzerland back in the early 1990s. I had to update this on three occasions (for three different seasons) on entering Switzerland and had to stop initially at the border and attend a clinic for a chest X-ray, as did every other foreigner who was looking to reside and work there.
On arrival at the places I resided, I had to report to the police station, where my passport details were taken. There were also rules in place at the time about jobs being prioritised for Swiss nationals, where they could reasonably be filled by Swiss nationals. I had to prove that I had a job to go to and a place to live before I was given leave to remain.
I was very clear that I was there as a privilege and not as a right, and I was grateful for the chance to work there on all three separate occasions.
At no point did I feel that I was living in a nascent Third Reich. I wouldn’t have even considered to have such a self-entitled, arsey attitude. I was a foreigner and a guest in a foreign country, paying local, cantonal, and federal taxes in return for the privilege of working there.
My time spent living and studying in Germany and France required similar registration with local authorities. My entry into Germany to live and study there came at the end of 1992, just prior to the introduction of freedom of movement around the then EU of 12 states through the Maastricht Treaty, and, while my passport was retained by German police for some weeks, I was effectively unable to leave the country. Again, I was aware that I was lucky to be a guest in both Germany and then France and I was grateful for the opportunity to live and study in both countries.
So, the furore over the mere proposal that companies should disclose how many foreign workers they employ is stupefying and has me doubting the sanity of my compatriots.
Seriously, which part of a company disclosing these figures, which, apart from anything else will allow us to identify in real terms where we are lacking as a nation in providing training for youngsters, suggests the imminent creation of a new Auschwitz?
Which part of merely reporting statistics betrays a xenophobic agenda? Perhaps we should scrap the census, which clearly requires by law a declaration of nationality.
The primary duty of a government is to protect and act in the best interests of its citizens and not, despite the incessant whines of a section of self-entitled idealists to the contrary, to the world’s population at large.
We don’t live in a world of global government. If that’s your ultimate goal, we need to agree on the rules to be followed across the world and on which cultural values, economic system and legal system will apply. Do we follow western norms, those of the Islamic world, or perhaps those of North Korea? Then we need to establish parity of wealth across the world to ensure that certain areas aren’t instantly impoverished by brain drain and others aren’t overwhelmed by immigration. Yes, we know that’s how you think it should be, but we’re not there; we’re far from there, even within Europe.
To those protesting about the proposals for the mere reporting of foreign workers within a company, get a grip! It may well be that certain businesses do actively have to seek out foreign workers for specific skills, as they claim (e.g. the agricultural sector in Lincolnshire and East Anglia). Such a report may even allow us to identify this need and prioritise residency rights for these people.
Your tedious portrayal of anything which seems to hint at any deviation away from your naïve and utopian “no borders” vision of the world as racist or as an indicator of the onset of Nazism is an insult to your own alleged intelligence, and belittles the memory of those who really did suffer at the hands of the Third Reich.
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