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Notes -
I'm pretty sure you're aware that there used to be such a thing as freedom of association.
I mean, you still have freedom of association in your personal life - some people in fact, call that 'cancel culture' when some people don't want to associate with other people due to their personal views, but yes, if you want the privileges and success that can come with being a business owner in America and all the advantages that has thanks to centuries of work by men and women of all colors and creeds, you don't get to make that business a private club for your own kind.
Or to quote a current Presidential candidate, you didn't just fall out of a coconut tree.
You know perfectly well that is not at all what cancel culture is. You also know perfectly well that freedom of association as a concept traditionally present in American civic life applies to communities and groups, not individuals and private lives.
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And it's been a dead letter for 60 years. Sadly we did not have Switzerland's foresight to allow people to deny citizenship to their literal neighbors.
Tbh in Switzerland the cantons where almost all immigrants are (Zurich, Basel, Geneva) have a standard naturalization process that doesn’t really involve locals having that kind of say.
The process you’re referring to was more about rural Swiss-German communities being able to stop annoying Germans (often wholly useless professionals like doctors and engineers) being able to waltz in and ‘become Swiss’, sit on the local town council etc. it affected the occasional unlucky migrant family from further afield, but for the most part they don’t want to live in Inner Appenzell or Schwyz or whatever.
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