Swiss referendum on immigration. By Tom Fairless in the WSJ.

With its valleys filling up, some here are pushing to replace natural barriers with something even more unyielding: a population cap.

Disgruntled by rising living costs and disillusioned by unfulfilled economic and social promises, the Swiss are at the vanguard of industrialized countries questioning the benefits of immigration, even the high-skilled workers many vie to attract. On Sunday, they will vote in a referendum to put a hard ceiling on the country’s population.

Since 2000, the number of foreign-born residents has jumped from around one in five to one in three — the second-highest level among rich countries next to tiny Luxembourg [and about the same as Australia], and compared with one in six in the U.S. That represents an enormous demographic shift …

The “No to a 10 million Switzerland!” proposal from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, or SVP, aims to limit the permanent-resident population, which includes both foreign nationals and Swiss citizens, to below 10 million until 2050, from a current 9.1 million.

The vote, open to citizens 18 and older, is expected to be close. …

If passed, the initiative would force the federal government to restrict family reunifications for resident immigrants and new asylum claims the moment the population hits 9.5 million. If it touches the 10 million ceiling, Bern would be constitutionally required to tear up its free-movement agreement with the European Union, risking access to a market that absorbs over half of Swiss exports….

The economic reasons for mass immigration have turned out to be false throughout the West:

For years, Western politicians pitched immigration as a cure-all — or at least a necessary evil — for the ills of aging societies. It would fix labor shortages, underfunded pension systems and lackluster productivity growth, they said.

But a historic influx of foreigners across the West, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, doesn’t appear to have solved those economic problems. In some cases, it might even have made them worse: raising demand, and therefore prices, for things like housing and adding pressure on social services like healthcare. …

Governments like Canada’s “pushed the idea of immigration to solve problems, and it just didn’t do anything,” said Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Immigration can provide an economic boost if migrants are more highly skilled than the general population, Skuterud said. But if their skills broadly match the population, it will likely have little impact on productivity or labor shortages.

Economic output per hour worked, a measure of productivity, has broadly stagnated since 2017 across countries that received the largest inflows, including Australia, Canada, Germany and the U.K., according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Social-welfare systems remain under pressure and labor shortages largely persist….

Mass immigration is a Ponzi scheme, [Thomas Matter, a wealthy banker and SVP lawmaker who helped initiate the referendum] said, because newcomers also need goods and services, including, eventually, caregivers.

He argued that immigration was like a sugar high for an economy: It lifts top-line growth, but has struggled to lift GDP per capita, the more important metric. …

The ruling class has ignored earlier explicit instructions from the voters:

Switzerland has been here before. Sunday’s referendum comes more than a decade after a 2014 vote to curb immigration narrowly passed, requiring the government to reintroduce quotas for foreigners moving to the country.

The initiative was never truly implemented, however. Parliament found a loophole as it sought to preserve economic ties with the EU. The SVP initiative is designed to ensure the government can’t slip out again. …

Cheap labor has sapped Europe’s productivity, and thus its economy and well-being:

The large number of EU immigrants has likely held down Swiss salaries and weighed on productivity growth, said Bertschi Group Executive Chairman Hans-Jörg Bertschi, whose logistics company has around 3,000 employees.

“The pressure to improve productivity in industries and the service sectors has disappeared,” he said.

So if the ruling class are so determined to persist with mass immigration, even after then economic reasons have proven false, what is their real reason? Perhaps it’s simply votes, so the left team can keep paying itself big salaries from taxpayer money. Also, some corporations love it for the cheap labor (isn’t that like union busting with scab labor?). Obviously there is next to no benefits for most of us, only costs.