Word: svp
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...staunch proponent of tighter immigration policies, the SVP says Switzerland naturalizes more foreigners than any other European nation, and official figures seem to support that claim. The party charges on its website that more than half of all citizenship requests - in 2006, approximately 50,000 were granted in this country of 7.5 million - go to immigrants from the Balkans and Turkey. The SVP claims those immigrants commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes and abuse Swiss social and welfare benefits. Some official statistics do attribute the rise in serious infractions to resident foreigners, but the numbers are not clear...
...controversial initiative was forced by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), which put up the poster that unsettled Nesim and has collected the obligatory 100,000 signatures required under Swiss law to put a constitutional amendment to a national vote. It seeks to overturn a 2003 Federal Court ruling that deemed ballot box votes on naturalization an infringement on the rights of would-be citizens. The decision was handed down after residents of the town of Emmen in central Switzerland repeatedly voted to reject citizenship applications from non-Western European nationals living in their midst...
...SVP argues that in a country based on grassroots democracy where voters can challenge any legislative decision by launching a referendum, the people, not what the party considers to be lenient government authorities, must approve each citizenship request. Each community must pick a competent panel to decide who among the local applicants is eligible for naturalizations, with the final decision left to the voters, the SVP says. While this system may be more difficult to implement in large cities, in small towns and villages, says Francis Matthey, a former socialist parliamentarian and currently President of the Federal Commission on Migration...
...Fleiner says that even though it has nearly one-third of seats in the parliament, the SVP would not be able to sustain itself outside of the coalition government. "No opposition party will win wide popular support as long as only 30 percent of the electorate are behind...
...terms of Switzerland's image abroad, where Blocher's antics have been generating headlines, no major changes are expected either. "We are not known around the world for the SVP or Blocher," Lutz says. "We are known for Roger Federer and chocolate...