For the second time in a decade, Swiss voters today rejected legislation (in French) intended to make it easier for second- and third-generation immigrants to acquire Swiss citizenship. BBC News has more. The reforms [PDF, in French] would have given the federal government authority over naturalization requests, which are currently handled at the local level, in order to make naturalization laws and procedures uniform throughout Switzerland.

According to Swiss newspaper Le Temps (in French), the plan to give citizenship to third-generation immigrants automatically if they were born in Switzerland was rejected by 51.6% of voters, while the initiative to facilitate the naturalization of second-generation immigrants was rejected by 56.8%. As in previous referendums on citizenship reform, the vote split along linguistic lines: most voters in French-speaking Switzerland were in favor while those in German-speaking cantons were overwhelmingly opposed.