Swiss reject expulsion of foreigners in vote: Projections

People in Switzerland have rejected in a referendum a proposed bill aimed at toughening laws against foreigners found guilty of low-level offenses, vote projections indicate.

Public broadcaster SRF said that vote projections showed that the majority of the population said ‘no’ to the proposed bill in the Sunday vote, which would allow the automatic expulsion of foreigners convicted of misdemeanors.

The Gfs.bern polling institute said earlier in the day that 59 percent of the voters had voted against the proposal.

Six years ago, more than half of Swiss voters had voted for foreigners to be automatically expelled from the country if they committed high-level violent or sexual crimes such as murder or rape. The 2010 referendum saw 52.9 percent of those voting saying yes to such expulsions.

In 2012, however, the right-wing People’s Party launched a new initiative named “the implementation of the expulsion of criminal foreigners (the enforcement initiative).”

The new initiative had proposed to dramatically increase the number of offenses that could get foreign nationals automatically kicked out of Switzerland to include misdemeanors usually punishable with short prison sentences or fines.

SS