Migrants at a Swiss border checkpoint on the border with Italy
According to Swissinfo.ch, citing data from the Swiss newspaper "Sonntagszeitung", the number of court decisions on deportation of "criminal foreigners" from the country currently remains at the same level as before the adoption of the initiative. For example, the newspaper cites data according to which in 2017, courts of all instances in the country, relying on the new legislation, made decisions on deportation regarding 832 individuals. Before the adoption of the "people's" initiative, Switzerland on average made 500 to 800 such decisions per year.
The number of people actually deported from the country has not increased either. In Geneva, for example, during the reporting period, the most (238) sentences were handed down against foreign nationals who violated the law, but only every second one was actually deported. Reason: refusal of the countries from which the criminals originate to take their citizens back.
According to the chairman of the Swiss Permanent Conference of Prosecutors (SSK), Fabien Gasser, the new rules for deporting "criminal foreigners," which came into force on October 1, 2016, turned out to be "not very useful." Moreover, they led to an increase in the cost of the legal readmission procedure: whereas before a prosecutor's order was sufficient for deportation, today all such cases must be considered in courts, leading to additional expenses, for example, on lawyers.
On the eve of the referendum, and especially after it, representatives of the SVP specifically protested against the intention to introduce into future legislation the concept of a "special case" ("Härtefall"), according to which convicted foreigners, for example, those from among third-generation descendants of migrants who do not have passports but are well integrated, speak one of the country's languages, and consider the local culture as their own, would not be subject to deportation. The "people's party" feared that a broad interpretation of the "special case" would become a loophole for those who want to "escape just retribution."
Practice has shown that courts resorted to this concept during the reporting period more than rarely. In the cantons of Bern and Schwyz, only two such cases were registered, in the canton of Neuchâtel – one. According to the Minister of Security of the canton of Geneva, Pierre Maudet (Liberal Party, FDP), "given the insignificant number of convicted persons with foreign citizenship actually deported from Switzerland, it should be concluded that the initiative 'against criminal foreigners' was not thought through to the end. Therefore, I fear that the SVP may come out with a new legislative initiative of a similar nature in the near future."