Tom Friedman flattens Switzerland

It sometimes happens with journalists, even with those that we admire the most: when they address a subject about which we are knowledgeable, it is not uncommon to find in their articles mistakes, inaccuracies or ill-informed statements - and that makes the reader question the reliability of what they write on other topics. (I'm not calling myself out: this most certainly applies to my journalistic work, too).

So when Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist of the New York Times and author of last-year's bestseller "The World is Flat", wrote a column on immigration on April 5 (UPDATE: Matthias in a comment provided a link to a freely accessible version), I could not help noticing this paragraph:

Anybody out there try to become a Swiss citizen lately? It's not so easy - and it's also not an accident that Switzerland's most famous product is the cuckoo clock.

Friedman's rip of Switzerland comes right after he has made the point that in the Age of Talent (which, in his taxonomy, comes after the Iron, Industrial and Information ages) the countries that make it easy to attract the best talent - to "cream off the most first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world" - will have a significant advantage in the global competition. What Friedman suggests is that the Swiss are not innovative because they are closed to immigrants. Maybe he should read his own book, because the second of the ten "flatteners" around which his argument is built (the World Wide Web) was invented in Switzerland by an immigrant Brit, Tim Berners-Lee, who was working at the CERN in Geneva.

I don't want to come across as a Swiss hurt in his national ego, which I'm most definitely not (there is much to be perfected here, and the country has its share of problems and abuses) but Friedman's statement deserves a little debunking. I'm one of those that were born with another passport - Italian - and became a Swiss citizen (so now I have two, because contrary to the US, the Swiss that Friedman believes to be so hostile to new citizens don't ask them to trash their past). I'm not alone. Out of a total population of 7'415'102 (2004 figures) there are in Switzerland some 1'524'663 residents carrying a foreign passport (20.6 percent, proportionally one of the highest foreign populations in Europe) and another 429'430 foreigners that have acquired the Swiss citizenship in the period 1981-2004 alone. Numbers that don't seem to describe a "closed" country. It's actually easier to get Swiss citizenship than that of much of Europe, and it's certainly not that different than the US procedure.

Besides the Web, there are many others stories of Swiss innovation (Want to fly around the world in a solar-powered plane? Or win the America's Cup boat race?), and the country also enjoys other less spectacular, but decisive (even in the Talent Age) characteristics of competitiveness - such as trains that run on time, universal health-insurance coverage (an approach similar to the one currently discussed in Massachusetts), functioning immigration and work-permit laws, good schools and decent environmental protections. That's why Switzerland ranks in the top 10 in the most recent competitiveness charts from both the World Economic Forum and the IMD, although it could do much better. And I almost forgot: the proportion of foreign students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (our own MIT) is getting close to one in three, some of whom I suspect didn't want to suffer the humiliations involved in getting a US visa.

Friedman has done a lot of writing in the last few years traveling almost exclusively along the route Washington-Baghdad-Tel Aviv-Bangalore-Shanghai. Maybe he should consider spending a few days in "old Europe" -- including a detour through Switzerland -- other than his annual pilgrimage to the World Economic Forum in Davos (another example of Swiss closeness?). I will be glad to take him around and show him a few things and introduce him to a few people.

And, by the way, let's stop that cheap rap about the cockoo clock. It's entertaining, but despite what Friedman and Orson Welles (in the infamous quote from the "Third Man" movie) believe, the Swiss didn't invent the cuckoo clock. That was a German innovation. Besides, if you polled the flat world and asked what was Switzerland's most famous product, they would say, hands down: chocolate.

UPDATE - Coincidentally, the US firm Mercer Human Resource Consulting published yesterday the 2006 results of its annual global Quality of Living survey: Zurich and Geneva are ranked first and second.

UPDATE 12 April - Posts by Dannie Jost and Ellen Wallace.

[tags: Switzerland Tom Friedman New York Times world is flat immigration]

Comments

[Peter]

Thanks for pointing out (again) that the cuckoo clock is not from Switzerland. It's not hard to become a Swiss citizen, it just takes a long time. I know.

I wonder if Friedman has taken the time to ponder the numbers of foreigners who sit in the uppermost echelons of Swiss businesses. From where I sit, Swiss business certainly appears to be making the best use of foreign talent.

[Ellen Wallace]

Bruno, you are too kind - Friedman's remark deserves more than a little debunking. It's rubbish.

This is just lazy, poor journalism as far as I'm concerned and being a known author doesn't excuse anyone. I spent 20 years working as a journalist for large American publications, covering Switzerland for 13 of those years and I was increasingly irritated that editors who should have known better still wanted to start stories, or end them, with Switzerland and the cuckoo clocks and gold under the streets of Zurich. It's not even cute anymore, it's so out of date. Keep the chocolate in the stories, fine, but chuck the rest.

But the real sloppiness is in the remark about citizenship, something I know firsthand and he could have done minimal research to get up to date. Like you, Bruno, I started with another passport, in my case American, and I will have a second one, my new Swiss passport, once I become a citizen May 31. It has taken my family 16 months from the initial request for information to swearing in day. The process was interesting and very straightforward and the cost (an issue in the past) about $600 for a family of four. No, I didn't have to learn about cheeses but I was expected, at an interview by a committee from our commune, to know something about the Swiss form of government. They wanted to make sure we speak French well enough to participate in the life of the commune but they also asked excellent and thoughtful questions about how foreigners like us can enrich the life of our town and region. We left feeling warmly welcomed and with a sense that our specialness as outsiders is viewed as a positive thing.

I grew up hearing over and over that America is a land made by immigrants, that it opens its arms to them. Frankly, as an American who will be keeping her U.S. passport, I have a lot of trouble with the self-illusion lurking in that line. And I can vouch that I've seen 20 years of Switzerland embracing outsiders in a way I have never seen in the U.S.

Do your homework, Tom!

My children will, by the way, have three passports, since my husband is British. The Swiss don't have a problem with that: they were intrigued by what this adds to their community.

[scott]

Hi Friend,

Thomas Friedman is right and you are wrong. All those points you mention are not what he argues.

Your colleagues in the comment box also flatter your point, but their reasoning is misguided.

Look folks, compared to many other countries, switzerland does have a rigourous passport distribution system. You have some cantons where the village has to vote on people who have been good members of the community for years. And then they are sometimes turned down for questionable reasons. The swiss are definately not handing over passports very easily.

They are good at bringing in foreigners under the A,B,C, and L "green card" system, but that is not the passports that Mr. Friedman is speaking of.

Additionally, the comment about the clocks was not the most clever, but i don't think it was meant in offense.

The one person who i have a big problem with is this american journalist from a big publication who says he had no problem with his own passport, so therefore Mr. Friedman must be in error.

Well guess what buddy, the evidence you use of "yourself" is the lazy poor journalism. If you were really a big journalist, you may have learned critical thinking, which says that one's own personal anecdotes do not make up for real evidence. Obviously, if this guy is a big journalist in Switzerland for 20 years, Kanton Zurich or Geneva will hand him right away a passport. But if he is a young Czech or polish man who was born in St.Gallen and is now a teenager looking to get a pass, he must do lots of interviews and funny stuff to get in.

Can you imagine, people born in switzerland and live there for 10 or 20 years do not get a passport?

compare that to the US or UK which takes you in if you happen to be born on their shores. (Most people are unable to coordinate their own birthing location...)

I am not objecting to the current swiss passport system, but all I would like to say is that all those who are laughing at or condesending to Thomas Friedman in this blog for his supposedly innacurate information better go look again! Because it is you all who are mistaken and should listen to Thomas.

My passports: (USA, Liechtenstein, Canada)

[Dannie Jost]

Welcome to the diversity and creativity of the swiss system. I actually linked to this post on my blog before reading the comments. I was also rather trigger happy - with the publish button - and did not read the Friedman article because I have gotten a bit tired and sick of people with no knowledge of Switzerland and its inner workings going on and bashing the whole system armed with just a tad of ignorance.

Personally I think this bit of passports is not the point, we need an universal form of ID that ties us up to some local community and that says something about our social integration, but it is a bit irrelevant who issues the document as long as we all agree as to what kind of documents are valid. Do you get the feeling that I am a bit federalistic in my thinking?

Yes, the nationalisation procedure in Switzerland is not uniform, and some cantons have rather questionable practises that border on xenophobia. Vive la différence! You are free to chose where to live.

[Ellen Wallace]

Scott, I'm not a guy, and I haven't worked for those big publications for a while, so that sure wasn't looked at when I applied for Swiss citizenship. In fact, when I was working for Time magazine I asked about citizenship and there were no shortcuts at all. I seem to have hit a sore spot with you by mentioning my work, which I thought was relevant. If I had said I'm a teacher, female, and ok yes white with a U.S. passport, would you have been less angry? I wasn't talking through my hat: I teach a media course and about two weeks ago the students and I did research on this topic, so I had some recent evidence to hand. Fair enough, I didn't use it to back my comments here.

I have a very handicapped child who is eligible for federal support, and that would be enough to keep us out of some countries, but it was not an issue with the Swiss.

You're right that anecdotes don't equal The Truth, which is why I went from a quick comment here to doing my homework and checking my information before posting more on this. Check out the link on my blog to a study by three authors from the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies.

The news stories we see and remember tend to be about the exceptions: the Czech born here who doesn't get in easily, the Croatian family in Uri that has trouble. Sure, these bother our sense of social injustice, and they should.

But the numbers don't show them to be the norm and the statistics do show that the situation has changed. There are differences from canton to canton, and some nationalities will be viewed more suspiciously than others.

I'm not letting Friedman off the hook on this because he's a good reporter and writer and he let his standards slip in this case. He has too much influence to allow him that weakness.

[Ellen Wallace]

Dannie, our comments crossed in space, I think, so I published and then saw yours. I think you have some good points here.

[Isaiah]

Personally, I've always loved the Orson Wells line, but in fairness, it has more to do with post WW2 resentment of Switzerland's survival and very little to do with its contemporary achievements.

I thought that Friedman's equating Swiss citizenship and clocks was ironic considering that Lebanese-born Nicholas Hayek basically revived the Swiss watch industry here in the 1980s.

Ultimately, the issue that Friedman was addressing is how the US is grappling with distinguishing between work permits and granting citizenship. In many ways, Switzerland is a few steps ahead and there is plenty for the US to learn from Switzerland. I hope Friedman takes up Bruno on his invitation to visit.

[Matthias]

The article is behind a big gate (sorry, couldn't resist) at the Times, but it's available here: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_3681612

I think the point Friedman is trying to make is this:

"countries that make it easy to draw in human talent will have a distinct advantage today"

I work at the Inselspital in Berne. It's one of the biggest hospitals in Switzerland. We have no problem in drawing in human talent.

And you don't need a Swiss passport to work here, either. So the point about the passport is moot anyway.

Friedman just didn't research the actual work situation in Switzerland.

[SD Shantinath]

Thank you Bruno for bringing this to attention and thank you Matthias for the link to the original article.

This article raises many issues while trying to make a point, and that is part of the problem in Friedman's piece. He is trying to make a point but seems to take a lot of turns, and that comment about Switzerland strikes me as a misplaced detour that shows how much or how little the author knows.

Having been an immigrant twice in my life, and having lived for long periods of time in three countries (including Switzerland), what is striking to me are the similarities among countries rather than differences. Many places errect barriers to keep out people whom they deem "not suitable". And if you happen to be the wrong "demographic", well, you have it tougher than if you have the right demographics. People behave more or less the same everywhere. Just the degree of difference is greater or lesser in some cultures than in others.

As for the cuckoo clock remark, that was unfortunate. Perhaps more people need to remember that along with cheese, chocolate and watches, Switzerland also gave the world the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions.

[BG]

Reproducing parts of a comment left by Henri Muller here:
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=18566472&postID=114476180743347336

He must have had a bad fondue at the WEF once, otherwise there’s no explanation for his gratuitous (and in any event inaccurate) slap. Also worth noting is that Switzerland houses roughly twice as many foreigners per capita as the U.S. (roughly 20% vs. 10% of the population), laying to rest any notion that Switzerland is some sort of closed society hostile to outsiders and their contributions. Finally, perhaps a blogger more learned than I can list the things that were really discovered and invented here, beginning with the Theory of Relativity. It’ll be a pretty impressive list for a country with one fortieth the population of the U.S.

[Jack Yan]

My general knowledge, and this is without any researching but simply hearing from expatriates in Switzerland, is that immigration is welcome, and that the statistics bear that out. Actually assuming the opposite and not bother conrming it seems to be quite a slip-up, and quite contrary to what I had thought to be basic, everyday knowledge about Switzerland.
It should be mentioned that the America’s Cup was won for a Swiss syndicate mainly by New Zealand leadership, and I am unsure whether those parties did take up Swiss nationality. I do not believe they did. Small point—call it my sense of national pride (especially since our guys lost to your guys who used to be our guys; and I am an immigrant to New Zealand—rst nationality British).

[BG]

Thank you for the numerous comments. There are two topics here: acquiring the Swiss citizenship (which, yes, it's a long-ish and non uniform process, that should be perfected, but is certainly more straightforward than in many other countries) and the importance of openness to immigrants (independent of whether they become citizens) for the prosperity and competitiveness of a country. This second point is way more important, and Peter's and Matthias' remarks point to the fact that Switzerland scores quite high and is open enough to make "best use of foreign talent", as Peter says - although it could do much better still.
Let me pick up on the America's Cup comment, which may look marginal but is highly symbolic. The America's Cup was won in 2003 by the Swiss syndicate Alinghi racing with a Swiss-made high-tech boat manned by a crew of sailors and specialists from a dozen different countries, including many Swiss. The skipper (Russell Coutts) was indeed from New Zealand. He left the team, yet Alinghi is still favorite to win the next America's Cup (they will race in 2007 in Valencia, Spain). Thanks Jack for bringing this up, because Alinghi is to me the the perfect example of a certain "Swissness", the one that I want to oppose to Tom Friedman's rip. Success in top-level sports is made of thousands of small things, and in order to win one must excel in all of them: the courage to enter the challenge, the talent, the money, the development of innovative technology, the capacity to gather and amalgamate and train and motivate the best possible crew (ignoring the color of their passports), the capacity to organize and manage and lead and to create an identity, a winning spirit, and a narrative that can keep everything together for several years. Alinghi's victory in 2003 showed a Switzerland defined by creativity, technological excellence, entrepreneurial courage, seriousness of purpose, managerial skills, multicultural openness, ambition, a self-assured and cosmopolitan and modern country. A Switzerland that can navigate the troubled waters of today's world knowing that one can win on the high seas without having a sea (Switzerland is landlocked).
Now, that's Alinghi. There is another Switzerland, closed, fearful, content with mediocrity, that would love nothing better than curl up like a porcupine and wait for better times. I guess that most countries are traversed by the same contradiction, each in their own way. This won't disappear anytime soon. We right now have a federal government that is at least partially an expression of this Switzerland. But my sense is that the pendulum keeps moving, albeit too slowly, towards the Alinghi camp.

[Pascal Rossini]

La Suisse est bien un pays multilingue, je me permet donc d'écrire en français, je suis en Suisse depuis 1985.... et je ne peux toujours pas acquérir la nationalité suisse, pourquoi, parce que je bouge, tous les trois ou quatre ans.

En effet, j'aime changer d'atmosphère (-:) et je suis, de ce fait, non éligible dans la majorité des communes, car la nationalité suisse ne s'obtient que dans sa commune de résidence... à condition de demeurer au moins cinq ans...(un bail à l'échelle de l'humanité) sauf à Vugelle la Motte (ah non surtout pas ça:-)

Bon, je ne vais pas changer ma philosophie de nomade du territoire suisse. En fait, ma situation de Césien (permis C) me va très bien.