27th April - Immigration controversy & Swiss banks too big to fail

There's increasing criticism of a top Swiss immmigration official about his remarks that Nigerian asylum seekers have criminal intentions when they come to Switzerland. Yesterday the Platform for Reflection on Anti-Black Racism called for Alard du Bois-Reymond, director of the Federal Migration Office, to resign. He had said that Nigerian asylum seekers “were not coming to seek asylum but to do illegal business”. He added that many ended up as petty criminals or drug dealers. Amnesty International said the comments were “unacceptable".

Du Bois-Reymond defended his position, saying that 99.5 % of Nigerian asylum requests last year had failed. Only one Nigerian was granted Swiss asylum, out of about 1,800 applications.

Switzerland needs new laws to be able to break up Credit Suisse and UBS in an emergency, because the size of the banks is a threat to the rest of the economy, a Swiss government panel has said. The Bloomberg news agency reports that the government may bring in laws to create so-called “bridge banks” to run the parts of the banks which are most important to Switzerland’s financial system.

The measures are needed because taken together, the two Zürich-based banks are more than four times the size of the whole Swiss economy. The government wants to set up a system so that if there's another crisis like the one last year, the important parts of the business can carry on without having to pay billions to rescue the whole bank.

Switzerland is in a special situation because the economy is dominated by big firms, the collapse of any one of which would have a huge impact on the country.

Swiss President Doris Leuthard is going to meet the pope at the Vatican to mark the swearing in of 30 new recruits to the Swiss Guard. During the visit on 6^th May she will have a private audience with Pope Benedict. New guardsmen are sworn in every year in May in St Peter’s Square at a ceremony which also commemorates 147 Swiss Guards who died in 1527 defending Pope Clement VII during the Sack of Rome.

The Swiss Vatican Guard was founded more than 500 years ago and is known as the smallest army in the world with only 110 men. It reports to the pope and is financed by the Vatican.