Rise of xenophobia in Switzerland

[Asmodian]

Missing the point, earth you are swiss and I assume you were not wearing clothes that have never been washed, most of the time they wont even stop cars with swiss license plates or french for that matter. I got stoped myself once by french guards before I had swiss citizenship and before schengen, I did not have a french visa i said i was going for a rock concert and they let me through. Again that is not the point, the people that are currently polluting Geneva are easy to spot and they are just the kind that would have been stoped and detained back in 2004.

Obviously you can not stop them all, just like police does not catch every local criminal or prevent every crime it does not mean it does not improve the situation overall.

[Flixy]

Loki, i get mistaken for moroccan or turkish frequently

I was, of course, only 15, so I think that was more the point.

[earthJoker]

Missing the point, earth you are swiss and I assume you were not wearing clothes that have never been washed, most of the time they wont even stop cars with swiss license plates or french for that matter.

Romanians living in France can easily get a French license plate, actually I think they must have one (it is like that in most countries). And EU passports look all the same from distance.
They key difference between now and 2004 is not that Switzerland is in Schengen now, but that Romania and Bulgaria are part of the EU now. And even with Switzerland leaving Schengen, Romanians can still easily move to France.

Let's be honest: it's because both of you are white and non-Muslim.

Balkan people don't look Muslim, they look slavish

[Hazir]

It seems to have functioned prior to Switzerland joining Schengen in 2004 I do not see any reason why it can not function again. Hotel reservation is great, hotels take credit cards during reservations and will charge a night for cancellations and no shows, that's a great deterrent right there. I was wrong about the visa, but boarder guards still stopped cars with certain license plates and could ask for things such as where they would be staying and/or to demonstrate how they would be financing their stay, same for trains coming from outside Switzerland.
Funny thing is the border guards are still there, they just are not checking documents so I am not convinced as to the cost.

Such a coincidence, 2004 ten new members joined the EU, and Bulgaria and Romania didn't do so untill 2007.

Stopping cars is only make-belief border control, because 'they' can't be turned down but for the reasons cited above. Which are impossible to use against people about whom you know nothing more than that they are of the same ethnicity of a small group of criminals. The hotel reservation thing I refered to as how they not only have the right to travel and look for work in Switzerland, but that even if they merely claim to want to use services in Switzerland, you can also not keep them from entering the country. You would get a border control like between The Netherlands and the UK, there is such a thing, but it is by and large meaningless if you carry a EU passport. It takes them less than 5 seconds to process a EU citizen, that is about the time they need for the machine to read the chip in the passport.

[Timbuk2]

It sometimes amuses me, the British (for example) attitude to immigrants. Most Brits don't really like immigrants,

A wildly sweeping statement, and one I find largely untrue.

[GGT]

Balkan people don't look Muslim, they look slavish

Hope you mean Slavic.

[earthJoker]

Yes, whatever

[GGT]

Yes, whatever

There is a big difference between slavish (slave-like) and Slavic (slavonic language groups).

Gee, I sure hope UN translators do a better job at translating than babblefish!

[Aimless]

There is a big difference between slavish (slave-like) and Slavic (slavonic language groups).

Gee, I sure hope UN translators do a better job at translating than babblefish!

This is not relevant or important to the discussion. There is a forum not far from here where it's appropriate to start a thread about English grammar and European takes on it.

[earthJoker]

There is a big difference between slavish (slave-like) and Slavic (slavonic language groups).

Gee, I sure hope UN translators do a better job at translating than babblefish!

Of course, that was just a "false friend"
English - German
Slavic - Slawisch (pronounced slavish)
Slavish - Sklavisch (pronounced sclavish)

This is not relevant or important to the discussion. There is a forum not far from here where it's appropriate to start a thread about English grammar and European takes on it.

I actually once started a language thread in GC

[LittleFuzzy]

This is not relevant or important to the discussion.

Plus she's not even really right, since the distinction she's trying to draw is actually the historical correlation that served as a the root of the word slave in the first place.

[Hazir]

Plus she's not even really right, since the distinction she's trying to draw is actually the historical correlation that served as a the root of the word slave in the first place.

In Dutch, which no doubt has similar roots you can only know the difference between the two from the context. They are homonyms, as such relatively new homonyms as they used to be the same word, refering to the ethnicity of people and to their position which happened to be that of servitude.