In recent years Swiss politics has seen a slide to the right - or ‘Rechtsrutsch’ as they call it - and in 2015 the anti-immigration Swiss People's Party won 29% of the votes in the parliamentary election, the highest vote ever recorded. Earlier that year hundreds of thousands of migrants have poured into Europe and the main concerns of voters were immigration, integration and foreigners, which the SPS addressed during the campaign.
They promised to tighten restrictions on who can enter and remain in the country — including not just asylum seekers but nationals from E.U. member states. In 2014 they backed a referendum in which the people voted to impose quotas on immigration from the EU - however, in the hope of preserving Switzerland’s close economic ties with the bloc, they decided to reject the quota system in 2016 and try to curb immigration by giving locals priority in new job vacancies before recruiting from abroad.