Fed-Up European Country Says No Thanks to Immigrants on Welfare Seeking Citizenship
While much has been said in regard to the flood of Muslim migrants and refugees who entered into Europe over the past few years, far less has been reported about the growing pushback among some European nations to stem that tide.
However, fed-up European countries are indeed pushing back through changes to their laws, and Breitbart just reported that Switzerland is one of those countries.
A new civil rights law went into effect Jan. 1 which states that no legal resident who has received any form of government assistance or welfare within the past three years can successfully obtain Swiss citizenship unless they pay those funds back, regardless of how long they have lived in the country.
Previously, applicants for citizenship merely had to stop receiving benefits prior to submitting their application.
The news was announced in the German-language Swiss media outlet Kronen Zeitung, which noted nearly twice as many people applied for Swiss citizenship in 2017 as the year before, most likely in an effort to obtain it before the new law took effect.
Aside from the new no-welfare requirement for citizenship, the new law also included other requirements aimed to ensure that potential new citizens had lived in Switzerland for at least five to 10 years and were properly integrated into the broader Swiss society instead of remaining isolated within enclaves.
The U.K. Daily Mail reported that applicants for citizenship must now prove that they have “cultivated contacts” with actual Swiss people.
The law also added language requirements, which vary among the different cantons — similar to American states — in Switzerland, though they mostly required an intermediate level of understanding and proficiency.
Furthermore, Kronen reported that the new law excludes the privilege of naturalization for anyone who has been imprisoned within Switzerland for more than three months.
The Daily Mail noted that even though Switzerland was not part of the European Union, they nevertheless had agreed to take part in the effort at resettling migrants and refugees fleeing their war-torn home countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
Though Switzerland is typically used as a route for migrants headed from Italy to Germany, many choose to pause their journey in the Swiss Alps and set down roots there.
Unfortunately, as Breitbart noted, the surge in migrants has become a drain on the Swiss system, so much so that the city of Zurich recently voted to drastically reduce benefits for certain migrants who would not be granted asylum but also couldn’t immediately be deported.
On top of that, it was also recently revealed that the Swiss government doesn’t even really know who the vast majority of the migrants and refugees in their country really are, as more than 90 percent of those who enter have either false identification documents or no documents at all.
Though bleeding-heart liberals will likely be outraged by this new law in Switzerland, it is actually a pretty smart idea, one the Trump administration should look at implementing here in America.
Removing any path to citizenship for new arrivals to the country who live off of government assistance would go a long way toward lowering both the number of new arrivals as well as the number of those enrolled in welfare programs — a win all the way around.
Please share this on Facebook and Twitter so everyone can see how Switzerland just made it more difficult for migrants and refugees who receive government assistance to gain citizenship.
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