Fair enough. I appreciate the factual support for your earlier claim.
However, there is a catch:
"...a residence permit will only be issued if you have a valid employment contract..."
In other words, it seems more geared toward professional positions in high demand (or moving within the same company), than a genuine immigration.
It did however have a markedly negative impact on wages in some sectors of the economy and boosted housing prices. Many Germans have been seeking jobs in Switzerland in the last decade as a consequence of this agreement with the EU. They were fleeing the consequences of the "Hartz" austerity plans under the Schröder government.
You are right to say that they are seldom true immigrants: many of them are weekly commuters and have kept their houses in Germany. It is likely that they will return to their country when it will be time for retirement or when they lose their jobs and cannot remain.
On a related note, immigration issues (in the UK) are less contentious concerning EU citizens, it's all the others. Especially with Merkel imposing refugee quotas on member states (which Swiss are spared from).
As a signatory of the Schengen agreements, Switzerland also has to assume its share of quotas. However, like many other taylored deals with EU states, conditions are better than what ordinary members have as part of current treaties.
The reason for those deals was that Brussels thought they could entice Switzerland in joining the EU with attractive transitional deals. Once we understood that things could only get worse from there on, we stopped any further movement towards getting full membership and we kept the better deals.
As it has been pointed out in the thread above, those special conditions are unlikely to last since Switzerland wants to repell the Free Movement of Persons Agreement with the EU.
That was our Brexit moment, it happened 18 months ago in a narrow win referendum (50,34%) against the will of the government (does that sound familiar?).
In a similar fashion to the British government now, the Swiss government has yet to formally trigger the end of the agreement. That, however, did not stop the EU from unilaterally expelling us from several programmes which have not been formally invalidated and were funded by both parties.
While it remains to be seen how the EU will treat Britain after the Brexit vote, this previous experience with Switzerland leads me to think that
the non-activation of article 50 by the British government will not change anything. Britain will be forced out of the EU. Several German politicians have hinted that this will be the case even if Cameron or his successor leave things in their present state.
Cheers,
Fabien
