Foreigners leave the country

Considerably more foreigners left the country in the first six months of this year, meaning that the rate of increase in the number of foreigners here was less than that of the same period in the previous year.
 
According to the latest statistics, 33,646 foreigners left the country between January and June this year, an increase of 8.3% on the rate for the first six months of 2014.
 
Most of those who left, some 7,000, were German nationals returning to their own country.
 
According to Jan-Egbert Sturm of the KOF Economic Climate Research Centre (KOF) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, lots more jobs are being created there, which will help as they return.
 
Another reason is that a number of sectors of the economy here are suffering under the high value of the Swiss franc, after the Swiss National Bank (SNB) announced in January that it was no longer prepared to hold the currency at a fixed rate exchange with the euro. However Sturm does not believe this is why large numbers of foreigners are leaving as it is too soon after the SNB’s announcement for such an effect to take place. Furthermore, the expert, himself a Dutch national, said that people do not make such major decisions to return home overnight; it was much more of a gradual process, which the situation with the Swiss franc had accelerated, but not directly caused. He felt one reason behind their decision to leave was that, since the Swiss had voted to restrict immigration, there was the feeling that they were less welcome.
 
Among other foreigners leaving were French, Italians and Portuguese, some 3,000 in each case. Others such as the British, Spaniards, Americans, Austrians and Chinese were also leaving.
 
Nevertheless statistics also showed that some 8,500 Germans moved here in the first six months of this year, followed by 7000 Italians in addition to Portuguese and French.
 
In fact, in all, some 52,000 foreigners moved here in the first six months of this year. If births and asylum-seekers permitted to stay are included in the statistics, then the foreign population grew by as many as 72,000, an increase 2.2% higher than in 2014.
 
At the same time, 34,000 left the country, though 15,000 became Swiss nationals, too. In all, the foreign population decreased by some 62,000, when deaths were also taken in to account.
 
Despite all this it remained a fact that, as of the end of June, 1,975,000 foreigners lived in Switzerland, 35,000 more than six months ago.