Current Immigration Situation in Switzerland Case Study

Current Immigration Situation in Switzerland - Case Study Example As a result there has been increased migration of people especially to the developed nations where there are economic fortunes. The problem of immigration is not new to the world and has been a constant cause of conflict between nations. For example there has been along standing border conflict between Mexico and the United States due to the problem of immigration. Switzer land has not been spared either and there have been increased migration of people to the nation. Some of the regions in the country have been hosting a large number of immigrants than others. For example St. Gallan is one of the regions in the country that has a high population of immigrants. (Clive, 2004) Due to the economic development that has been taking place in the country, there was increased immigration of people in an out of the country sine the early 1800s. The outflow of Swiss from their country had been well compensated by the inflow of foreigners especial German, Italians and Australia. The issue of immigration from Switzerland is not new and it dates back to many centuries ago. Most of this immigration who replaced the outflow of Swiss was political refugees and many of there were well educated. The first big wave of immigration in the country came after the collapse of the revolution movement in the country neighbour which happened around 1830. The second wave came immediately after the defeat of the revolution in 1848. Many on of the new immigration how came to the country took up professional jobs. For example many of the German immigrants became teachers and when Zurich University was founded in 1833, man of the teaching position went to Germans. (Fahrin, 2003) There was a major contribution that was made by other immigration especially in the are of industrial and entrepreneurial skills. For example a police born Antoine November de Patek was a joint founded of the Patek Philippine company which has been one of the leading watch makes in Geneva since it was started in 1845. Several other immigrants especially the Italians made a great contribution to the labour force and were employed in Switzerland engineering project like Gotthard and Simplon rail tunnel. In general we can say that immigrants are not new to the country and they have been making a greater contribution to the development of the country. The current situation of immigrant in Switzerland Since 1950, the government signed a convention that has confirmed to grant asylum to many people in the world. There has been increased number of application for asylum in the country and currently there are more people under asylum in Switzerland than in any other nation in the world. The population of the foreigners in the country has continued to rise since 1950 when it was recorded that 5.9 percent of the people in the country did not have Swiss nationality. The number has continued to increase since then and by 1970, it had risen to 15.9 percent. By 2002, the percentage had swelled to 21.6 percent. This makes it one of the countries in Europe together with Luxembourg which has a percentage of 37 percent, to have the highest number of foreigners in the soil. There have been factors that have been contributing