[LINK] "Italian ‘Invasion’ Has Swiss Fuming as Foreigner Vote Looms"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg's Corinne Gretler reports on the labour migration of Italians to Switzerland--including to Italian-speaking areas like Ticino canton--and the political controversies it has awoken.

When Franco Agustoni stepped out on his balcony for a morning smoke in the Swiss border town of Bissone, he used to enjoy the view of Lake Lugano. All he sees now are rows of cars, motors humming as Italians cross into Switzerland for a day of work.

Just 10 months after voting to introduce immigration quotas, a Nov. 30 Ecopop ballot will decide whether to cap the annual net influx from abroad to 0.2 percent of Switzerland’s population. The daily inflow from Italy into the Helvetian nation’s Italian-speaking Ticino canton, which is not captured by the immigration debate, is only exacerbating the situation.

“There’s an invasion of the service sector here,” said Agustoni, 66, smoking Dunhill cigarettes with his espresso in front of Maru cafe on Corso San Gottardo in Switzerland’s Chiasso, just a few meters from the Italian border. “People, especially young people who have university degrees, rarely find jobs anymore because employers prefer to hire Italians who don’t cost as much.”

Ticino counts about 60,000 commuters, or “frontalieri,” who cross from Italy, making up roughly a third of its workforce. While 21 percent of Swiss citizens living in Ticino have foreign roots, the February vote to introduce unspecified quotas to “stop mass immigration” had the highest backing in the canton with 68.2 percent “yes” votes compared with just 50.3 percent for the country.

“The immigration problem is conceived very differently here in Ticino than in the rest of Switzerland,” said Ignazio Cassis, a member of parliament in Ticino. “The main worry here is the job market -- being substituted for cheaper frontalieri, not the loss of Swiss identity that Swiss-Germans are worried about, that doesn’t count for much here. For us, the situation is life-threatening.”

In Ticino, where one in four residents doesn’t have a Swiss passport, foreign workers and frontalieri primarily mean lower wages. The annual average gross wage in Switzerland was 71,600 euros ($89,650) last year, compared with just 29,700 euros in Italy, according to Eurostat data.