In the Federal Council, Albert Rösti dreams of widening the motorways and building new nuclear power plants. Guy Parmelin dreams of a new free trade agreement with China, Viola Amherd dreams of greater cooperation with NATO, Ignazio Cassis dreams of making peace in Ukraine and Karine Keller-Sutter dreams of cleaning up federal finances.
The only one who doesn’t have time to dream is Beat Jans, who has been in charge of immigration and asylum since the beginning of the year. As in all governments in Europe, he has the thankless task of managing all this human misery and the aggression that goes with it. For months, the UDC has been attacking him non-stop on the “asylum chaos”. The PLR has started copying and pasting his press releases and the Centre is kindly getting on board.
In an ideal world, there would be no excessive immigration, but the international situation is such that poverty and suffering are pushing people from the south to the north and this will probably not stop throughout this century. However, the right wing has refused in the Council of States for Switzerland to ratify the UN pact on migration. A strange way of burying one’s head in the sand.
In the National Council, while a good majority defended the European Convention on Human Rights, two votes later, the bourgeois camp voted to abolish family reunification for refugees admitted on a provisional basis. Which is contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights.
These changes are occurring in a particular context. Germany, which was so generous during the Angela Merkel era, has changed course. The crime in Solingen on August 23 — a knife attack by a Syrian that left three dead and eight injured — has precipitated things. Our big neighbor has reintroduced border controls in an attempt to calm the anger that is growing among the far right. Since then, the Netherlands has requested an exemption from European asylum rules, to also eliminate family reunification for adult children.
In this context, systematically attacking the socialist Beat Jans to reproach him for doing nothing in Switzerland is far too convenient. The best solution would be for one of the UDC ministers to take up the asylum file in the Federal Council, which has a right-wing majority. Albert Rösti would do very well. He who was so quick to deal with the wolves, would immediately put an end to the “asylum chaos”.
The UDC will see that this problem does not depend on the will of a single man, but it already knows that…
