You said Ireland, Noway… Based on another survey 1 in 4 children in Ireland declares straightforward racist and there is a huge anti-immigration campaign in the internet

Now if Switzerland is the friendliest for immigrants? I don't know. Based on another survey Canada was the best place for immigrants where you have to pay thousands of dollars for your visa application… I suppose when the statistics say friendly, they mean the people, not the law, government, politicians etc… The statistics can never be exact. How can UK score lower than Ireland? Uk has received immigrants for years and years, while Ireland has a very cold attitude towards them and the locals reject even Europeans which is shocking (I know it from my stay there the locals hate the foreigners and it is impossible to meet someone without mentioning to you how bad is the immigration law and how the immigrants destroy the country)… Ireland should be on the bottom of the list. Apart from that in the latest elections the Swiss voted yes to the immigration from Romania and Bulgaria, (the no votes were due to avoid cheap labor, nothing extreme right and xenophobic). Another survey confirms the 80pc of the Swiss want the immigrants to be integrated. However I do not suppose this is true at 100pc. Maybe the SVP has ruined the face of the country abroad but that was a mistake, or a misconception for the majority of the Swiss…

In Switzerland towns have voted to reject citizenship applications from all non-western applicants, although a court ruled the measure invalid it has not stopped its supporters. A recent initiative that barely failed was up for popular vote to amend the national constitution to allow localities to vote on citizen applications gained a lot of support and collected hundreds of thousands of Swiss signatures. The initiative, if it had passed would allow towns to pass open restrictions on citizenship, accept or deny citizens on any basis (discriminatory or not), and would allow localities to set up ‘competent’ citizen panels to review all citizenship applications. Not only that, these citizenship decisions can be deemed final, with no possibility of an appeal. There would be no accountability on the process, no check and balances, and no fair and equal treatment.

Under the above system there would be no standard, no freedom, no rights – merely a tyranny of the majority. Thats the negative direction the Swiss population may be moving towards. While there is a large immigrant work force in Switzerland I would not quite go as far as saying that Switzerland is the most Immigrant-Friendly Country out there. I would argue that Australia, Ireland, or New Zealand fits that title much better.

Imagine that all immigrants came from country A. And the total of people that move to other countries is the same on each one of them. If the country B has a larger population than country C, so country B will be less affected by the immigration flux of same magnitude than C.

Pehaps a better understanding of the situation is to consider the fertility rate rather than absolute population.

On the cost side: Switzerland is a hodge-podge of European culture – it has 4 official languages! This definitely lowers the costs of immigrating there for many Europeans (particularly those who already speak Swiss, German, French, or Italian), as adapting to a new culture is definitely a cost deterring many potential immigrants to other countries.

On the benefits side: Switzerland is staunchly neutral and keeps out of other countries' business. The more a country encroaches on the rest of the world, the more it has to fear and defend itself from the blowback of such encroachment, particularly in the form of terrorism. Swiss citizens don't have nearly as many things to worry about as other countries because of its neutrality.

I am sure there are other factors as well, but I would wager that these ones are fairly important.