Switzerland Tries to Convince Uninvited Tourists to Stay Home
Not all tourists are welcome in Switzerland.
Switzerland prefers tourists with valid visas and, among the aforementioned, we have a strong preference for tourists who spend a lot of money while they are here.
The Swiss government has recently developed and started broadcasting a new tourist office clip, this one designed to actually dissuade visitors rather than encourage them from visiting Switzerland.
The clip has already begun airing on Nigerian television stations and the clip – whose slogan is “leaving is not always living” — attempts to convey the sordid realities of illegal immigration.
The clip, while paid for by the Swiss government, was made by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN organization, and so the clip’s quality suffers from the habitual deficiencies inherent in confiding any task to an international organization whose civil 
servants are unemployable anywhere else.
In the clip, whose inspiration was perhaps taken from the television series ’24,’ images of a telephone number being dialed in obscurity, thunder, rain falling against a telephone booth somewhere in Switzerland and inside, an African calling home to his father. The latter, is reading his newspaper in a comfortable interior.
“Have you found a place to live?” asks the father from Africa.
“Well, I’m staying with friends…” answers the son evasively.
The editing tries to show the ‘grim reality’: the viewer sees the young man sleeping in the street, begging, etc.
The clip, whatever its production merits, is part of a concerted campaign undertaken in Africa, beginning with Nigeria, to discourage people from trying to come illegally to Switzerland by showing them that numerous difficulties await them, in particular a closed labor market, a vigilant police force, and a not particularly welcoming population.
Despite the campaign of dissuasion, there remains strong domestic demand for various pharmaceutical products not commonly available in the country’s drug stores, and jobs in this sector do not, as a rule, require proper working papers. In addition, prostitution, which is legal in Switzerland (though you need a valid work permit to engage in it) is a booming industry and the demand in this sector shows no signs of flagging.
