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Switzerland voted to ease the citizenship process for third-generation immigrants on Sunday, going against the anti-immigration sentiment that has swept Western Europe in recent years.

Over 60% of votes were in favor of the nationwide referendum, which eases,via constitutional amendment, the stringent citizenship requirements for third-generation Swiss immigrants.

Swiss law previously required immigrants to live within Switzerland for at least twelve years before having the ability to apply for citizenship, after passing a series of tests and suitability measures. The referendum doesnt alter these existing laws; rather, the referendum speeds up the process by creating a set of uniform criteria that would apply to third-generation immigrants.

Applicants are still required to prove they are 25 years of age or older, were born in Switzerland, attended school within the country for a minimum of five years, share Swiss cultural values, speak a national language (either French, Romansh, German, or Italian) and do not depend on state aid.

These restrictions are still fairly tight, which wasnt apparent in the public debate. The contentious debate centered around a poster of a woman in a niqab with the caption uncontrolled citizenship, when, in fact, the referendum still leaves a lot of strictrequirements in place for citizenship to be attained, which still restrict and/or prevent freedom of movement.

Research by Geneva University, done specifically for the government, suggests that around 25,000 people will benefit from these adjustments.

Prior to the vote, the right-wing Peoples Party came out in impassioned opposition of this bill.

In one or two generations, who will these third-generation foreigners be? cautioned Jean-Luc Addor, a lawmaker for the party.They will be born of the Arab Spring, they will be from sub-Saharan Africa, the Horn of Africa, Syria or Afghanistan.

We dont see any reason whatsoever to make [immigration] easier, said Luzi Stamm, a legislator also from the Peoples Party. The movement of people in the world has increased considerablyYou have an increased probability of problem-makers coming here.

The only fast-track route to citizenship that has existed in Switzerland applies to foreigners who had been married to Swiss citizens for more than six years, including those who have never lived in the country.

Photo Credit:Komitee Gegen Erleichterte Einbuergerung (Committee Against Facilitated Naturalization)

This post was written by Nicholas Amato.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Nicholas Amato is the News Editor at Being Libertarian. Hes an undergraduate student at San Jose State University, majoring in political science and minoring in journalism.

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Switzerland Votes In Favor of Easier Citizenship Process - Being Libertarian

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Penn Jillette: The Ideal Libertarian Candidate Being Libertarian An eternal problem for Libertarian candidates is that they are not taken seriously. This is in part the product of the psychological and institutional duopoly created by the Democratic and Republican parties across the United States. Yet, it is also ...

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Penn Jillette: The Ideal Libertarian Candidate - Being Libertarian

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I have had to undergo a great deal of rethinking on all of this this year [now] I want to shut down low-skill immigration for a while, Charles Murray told a D.C. event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies.

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The thing that has gotten to me over this year has been the very simple idea that the citizens of a nation owe something to each other that is over and above our general obligation to other human beings outside the United States, Murray said Sept. 26.

A temporary end to low-skill immigration will allow a national test of various proposals to help the many Americans at the bottom end of the economic scale, Murray said. For example, amid high immigration, several million Americans prime age employable men are not even trying to work, at great long-term cost to themselves and society.

Once low-skilled immigration is ended, society may react in favorable directions to help lower-end Americans workers, he said. For example, the girlfriends of young men will be better able to prod their boyfriends into taking low-skill, low-paid jobs if their employers cant hire illegals, Murray said.

But Murray says he only wants a temporary moratorium on low-skill immigration in case the new policy proves counterproductive. I want to shut if down for a while because it may not work [currently] we will have no good way of knowing how employers will respond until the spigot is cut off, he said.

Murray is one of the most influential libertarian and conservative intellectuals in Washington D.C. His work helped create momentum for welfare reform in the 1990s, and hes now focusing attention on the widening gap between poor and wealthy Americans His 2012 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, has publicized the declining situation of low-skilled white workers.

American has been exceptional because Americans dont want to see their society divided by social and economic classes, Murray said Monday. The term American Exceptionalism came from Europeans visiting in 1800s [who saw that Americans] all wanting to see themselves as part of the same class, he said.

We need to reconstruct an American society in which people are part of one brotherhood, sisterhood, he said. In the recent past, the U.S. did have a sense of egalitarian equality, he said. It was never perfect, but but God, we did get a lot closer than any other society, he said, adding I want in to live in [that] America.

Murrays call for a halt to low-skill immigration comes as a prestigious think-tank in D.C. admitted that each low-skill migrant costs taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Immigrants alsoshift roughly $500 billion wages from white-collar and blue-collar Americans to employers and investors, according to the Sept. 22 report issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Each year, four million Americans turn 18 and begin looking for jobs. But the federal government also imports roughly 2 million foreign workers, including legal and illegal immigrants, refugees, temporary guest-workers and asylum seekers. More than 50 percent of the annual inflow of workers are lower-skilled.

Restrictions on low-skill immigration is an idea whose time has come, and will be recognized by ambitious Democratic and Republican politicians, he said. There is a sea-change in the [nations] mood, he said.

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Libertarian Author Charles Murray Calls for Pause in Low ...

Forty years ago, four Brits in a band called the Sex Pistols outraged and angered the British political establishment. Now in 2017 another Brit has done the same thing to the U.S. establishment.

1977 was the year that punk exploded onto the cultural landscape and shook up the status quo of hippy music biz complacency and smug liberal assumptions. Were not into music, were into chaos, sneered the Sex Pistols as they shocked and awed the British public and challenged the old order.

The Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones and all those three-chord wonders with ripped jeans and spiked hair galvanized a generation. Not only rebelling against the stadium rock perpetuated by the likes of Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and Pink Floyd, but also by criticizing their self-satisfied, Lear Jet lifestyles and their conventional viewpoints.

Led by their manager Malcolm McLaren, the Pistols used outrage and a Situationist agenda to confront the establishment, attack sacred idols and provoke all the right people. As McLaren once said, If it doesnt threaten the status quo, its not worth doing. The punk class of 77 angrily sang about the stupefying dullness of life in mid-70s Britain, the absurdity of pop stars and the conceits of the eras prevailing culture.

For many kids who felt disconnected from the mainstream, punk was a welcome reaction against the post-hippie and cultural malaise that had seeped into all aspects of 1970s society. But the punks also faced a backlash that was both widespread and violent, consisting of demonization from the media, gigs canceled or banned, assaults on punks by reactionary Teddy Boys, and low-key police harassment.

As a former punk myself, I remember being yelled at, spat on and punched in the face just for wearing a Sex Pistols God Save the Queen T-shirt.

Now, nearly four decades later, another establishment is being shaken up, but this time around its the cultural gatekeepers of liberal America who are finding their cosmopolitan we-know-best pieties challenged.

Another crucial difference from 77, of course, is that todays rebellion is more an overtly political one than a musical revolution. But the anti-authoritarian instincts of the original punks also fuel this current generation of free-thinkers.

Somewhat lazily dubbed by critics and some friends alike as the alt-right, this broad movement against liberal orthodoxy has as its unlikely figurehead the flamboyant British export Milo Yiannopoulos, a controversial punk provocateur par excellence.

Yiannopoulos, with his calculated outrageousness and refusal to back down, seems well aware of the similarities between todays culture wars and the spirit of 77. During the 2016 presidential election he proclaimed, to cheers from his supporters, that we should vote for Donald Trump because he was the new punk.

In hindsight, it looks like he may have beenright in that comparison. After all, in a mainstream media world where it was assumed that no right-thinking person in America could ever vote for Trump, the actions of Yiannopoulos and his growing band of followers in backing such a controversial Republican candidate could only be seen as a Sid Vicious-style F**k You to political correctness and the established order.

Using social media instead of three-minute songs, Yiannopoulos has revolutionized the fight against political orthodoxy by using the same shock tactics that the punks used to take on the entertainment industry.

It should be noted that the American genesis of this new breed of conservative provocateurs that Milo seems to have galvanized actually has its roots in the South Park Conservatives generation, which moved from left to right after 9/11 as the left became increasingly politically correct and authoritarian.

Like the punks of 77, Milo and his merry band are also demonized by the media and also face assault from reactionary elementsas the recent riot that led to a cancelation of a Yiannopoulos event at the University of California-Berkeley goes to show.

In much the same way as the punk-bashing British Teddy Boys of 40years ago sided with the status quo, so the antifa have allied themselves with the American status quo against the new rebels on the block.

In fact, by being on the same side of the anti-Milo debate as the establishment liberal bastions of the New York Times, California hi-tech billionairesand pampered Hollywood one percenters, the antifa have only confirmed Yiannopoulos and the new anti-authoritarians as underdogs and the real inheritors of the rebellious punk mantle.

And just as the British media lambasted Johnny Rotten for his supposed attacks against the Queen and all common decency, so the American media has run endless critical stories on how Milo is slaughtering the sacred cows of open borders, feminism and the Black Lives Matter movement.

What happens next is anybodys guess. Will Milo and this new movement implode as the Sex Pistols did? Will the opposition to them prove too strong to overcome? Will they be absorbed into a new political mainstream?

Anything is possible but right now, just as in the halcyon days of punk, and whether one agrees with him or not, theres no denying that Milo, like the Sex Pistols before him, is riding the wave of the new zeitgeist.

God Save the Queen!

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How Milo and the Free Speech Libertarian Movement Resemble the Sex Pistols - Heat Street

The only difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, according to a local political activist, is that each promotes a different brand of diet soda.

Some of us want to drink ice water, said Bryan Jack Holder of Council Bluffs.

Thats why he joined the Iowa Libertarian Party, which is expected to earn political party status in the state in a few weeks.

Ive been following politics most of my adult life, and there are many like myself that dont fit in with either of the major political parties, said Holder, who ran for the U.S. House last year as a Libertarian. Some of us dont like to be put in a box.

More and more people seem to be in agreement as membership in the party has skyrocketed in just five years, according to Council Bluffs resident Jake Porter, the partys newly named executive director.

Currently, the number of Libertarian registered voters in Iowa is approaching 10,000, compared to less than 2,000 in 2012, Porter said. According to the Iowa Secretary of States office, 9,035 active voters are registered as Libertarians.

These people are seeking maximum freedom, which is what the party stands for, Porter said.

Its the ability to live your life as you choose as long as you are not harming anyone else, he said. We support fewer taxes, fewer regulations on smaller businesses and more personal freedom. The nature of government is to take away freedom. The Libertarian Party is trying to get some of those freedoms back.

Holder, who said hes not surprised by the partys growth, had similar views.

I dont think government should be in our bedrooms, bank accounts, our gun safes or in our communications, he said.

Last year, more Libertarians ran for political office than ever before, according to Porter.

One of those who ran was Gary Johnson, the partys presidential candidate. Johnson received 3.8 percent of the total presidential vote in Iowa, slightly more than the 3.3 percent he received nationally.

Because of this performance, the Libertarian Party earned political party status, which occurs when a partys presidential candidate receives more than 2 percent of the vote in Iowa. The necessary paperwork to obtain this status has been filed with the Iowa Secretary of States office and should become official around March 1, Porter said.

I dont see any issues with it, he said of the paperwork.

Political party status is a legal definition established by Iowa Code that allows the party certain privileges, including the ability to participate in primary elections. With party status, Iowa Libertarians will be able to vote for Libertarian candidates in the 2018 primaries.

Holding primary elections has its advantages, said Keith Laube, chairman of the Iowa Libertarian Party.

Having our candidates be part of the primary election will allow voters to become familiar with our candidates earlier in the election season, Laube said through his office. Our candidates will know they are on the November ballot in early June rather than late August.

This will help organize stronger campaigns and provide voters more opportunity to understand Libertarian views. Having more candidates share their ideas by being involved in the entire election cycle is good for Iowa.

Holder said he plans to run again for Congress next year. Porter also didnt rule out party candidates running in this years Council Bluffs City Council election, which is a nonpartisan race.

Having political party status also adds more credibility when these candidates seek a place in political debates, Porter said, adding there should be no shortage of party candidates in the 2018 election.

We think we will have at least 50 candidates for county, the state Legislature, the governors race and for Congress, he said.

Group plans for expanded candidate slate in 2018 after seeing growth in registration numbers

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Libertarians set to become official political party in Iowa - The Daily Nonpareil