If tomorrow immigrants disappeared in Switzerland... and in the rest of Europe... A reflection that I have been trying to write objectively for some time.
This debate is often presented as if it were something "typical of Switzerland". It is not. Switzerland is just a very visible example of something that happens in almost all of Europe.
Here the impact would be immediate: lack of personnel in health, construction, hospitality, industry... and direct pressure on the AVS because an important part of the contributors disappears. But if you look at Germany, they have been openly saying for years that they need hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to sustain their economy. In Italy, the problem is even more evident: aging population and emptying regions. And in Spain, Social Security increasingly depends on the contribution of foreign workers to balance the system.
The difference is not in substance, it is in form. Switzerland notices this quickly because its labor market is small and very specialized, and it also depends a lot on border workers. Other countries have more margin due to size, but the problem is exactly the same: fewer births, more retirees and fewer people of working age.
To put it clearly: if you remove immigration today in Europe, you are not "ordering" anything. You are removing a piece that is already part of the balance.
And now the part that is almost never said in these debates: each Spaniard who works in Switzerland is one less contribution in Spain. That is, Spain loses one contributor and Switzerland gains one. It's that simple.
If you look at it as a whole, it is the same phenomenon but seen from the other side. Countries like Spain, Italy or Portugal have been losing active population for years who end up working in Switzerland, Germany or France. And they are not marginal profiles, they are in many cases young people of contributing age, just those that any pension system needs most.
This is not about "they take from us" or "they give to us." It's about flows. Europe functions as a connected system where some countries export labor and others absorb it. And within that system, many of those who criticize immigration in Switzerland... are part of exactly the same mechanism.