A clear majority of Swiss voters have rejected a tough proposal to expel all delinquent foreigners, spelling a defeat for the plan's key backer, the right-wing People's Party (SVP).
If passed, the measure would have allowed extraditions for foreigners, without judicial review, for minor and serious crimes, including false testimony and possession of drugs.
According to the final vote count on Sunday, 59 per cent opposed the plan, which had come to be seen as a test of the Swiss legal and political system.
"We have enough of fear-mongering," said Flavia Kleiner, the head of a broad political platform that opposed the initiative.
The SVP, Switzerland's strongest party in parliament, had pushed the referendum as a way to bring down crime rates.
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Opponents had warned that the proposal would undermine both the rule of law and the judiciary branch, as judges would have had no say on whether an expulsion is warranted or excessive in each case.
This restriction would have especially affected Switzerland's large community of second and third-generation immigrants, who risked being forced back to the homelands of their forefathers even though they have no language skills and social connections to cope there.
"It's a signal from a broad share of civil society that Switzerland is a successful country when it stands for diversity," Kleiner said.
Nearly a quarter of Switzerland's 8.3 million inhabitants have foreign citizenship, the second-highest rate in Europe after Luxembourg.
Many intellectuals and legal professionals had also warned that a `Yes' vote would have weakened the democratic system, because the SVP launched its initiative to bypass an ongoing parliamentary process on a similar bill.
Now that the new right-wing initiative has been rejected, the parliamentary bill is set to be turned into law.
In contrast to the SVP draft, it mainly foresees expulsions for grave crimes, while giving courts the right to review individual cases to exclude hardship cases.
Under the existing criminal law, 500 delinquent foreigners were expelled last year.
The number would rise to nearly 5000 with the parliamentary law in force, while the SVP-drafted law would have resulted in 10,200 expulsions, according to the Swiss national statistics office.
