JUTZI Philipp

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No immigration levy

No immigration levy

Anyone who calls for free movement, open borders and a united Europe cannot at the same time demand an entry fee on human beings.

No immigration levy of any amount.

No entry price on human beings.

No legalised trade in people.

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Who is demanding it

Andrea Caroni, FDP member of the Council of States for Appenzell Ausserrhoden, has brought the idea to parliament repeatedly since 2023 and in August 2026 successfully inserted it into the Council of States committee handling the EU treaty package.

His own career: FDP member at 19 and elected to his first municipal office almost immediately. Law studies in Zurich and Geneva, a doctorate, a postgraduate degree at the Harvard Kennedy School. Personal aide to Federal Councillor Hans-Rudolf Merz – his springboard to Bern. National Council at 31, Council of States at 35, and since then the only and practically uncontested seat of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. President of the Council of States in 2024, the highest office of the upper chamber.

A man whose entire career consisted of one door after another opening by itself explains to people who want to move to Switzerland that they would be settling into "a ready-made nest" – and would have to pay for it.

That is the pattern: as long as the elite is inside and profiting, everything is fine. Then you shut the door. Whoever is already seated sets the entry price for everyone who comes after. Free movement was good enough to arrive oneself – for the next ones it is supposed to cost something.

And his own origins? His grandfather came to eastern Switzerland from Ticino as an entrepreneur. The family followed, built up, integrated – different language, different culture, different part of the country. Exactly the process he now wants to put a price tag on.

Anyone who comes from an immigrant family himself and today tells others they are sitting in a ready-made nest has forgotten how he got in.

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Quote

“Immigrants settle into a ready-made nest in Switzerland. One can ask them to pay something for that.”

— Andrea Caroni (FDP), original in German

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Illustration: a ready-made nest is being fenced in while immigrants outside are asked to pay

A liberal party?

The word "liberal" is in the name of the party demanding this. Free-minded. The party of open markets, personal responsibility, the free movement of goods, capital and labour.

And then comes a proposal in which the state sets a price a human being must pay in order to be allowed to work at all. Where an authority decides who can afford the country and who cannot. Where the wife or the husband gets a tariff of their own. That is not liberal. That is a state-administered entry barrier for people.

Capital may flow freely. Goods may flow freely. Services may flow freely. Only the human being who wants to work is sent to the till at the border. Anyone who proposes such a thing has applied liberalism to everything except people.

Freedom that stops at human beings is not freedom. It is only a market advantage for those who are already inside.

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Timeline

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No immigration levy

I reject the immigration levy completely. Not in a watered-down form, not as a "temporary steering levy", not under the cover of the safeguard clause.

Anyone who takes the economic challenges of immigration seriously solves them with infrastructure, housing and integration – not with a price tag on people. An entry price on labour is the opposite of free movement, the opposite of a united Europe, and according to the Federal Council's own report probably simply unlawful.

When an idea is classified by one's own experts as legally questionable and economically useless and is pursued anyway, that is not a detail, that is the message.

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Sources

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TS120

Fact check6/10

Timeline sourced. 'Human trafficking' and 'slavery' are legally wrong terms for a levy. The origin of Caroni's grandfather is unsourced.

As of 21.09.2026