guardian - "As one of Switzerland's richest industrialists, Blocher is also its most influential politician. He led the charge against membership in the European Union, maintaining that Switzerland shouldn't cede its cherished independence to bureaucrats in Brussels. He noisily campaigned against foreign pressure on Swiss banks - which sat on assets for decades - to pay compensation to the heirs of Holocaust victims.
He is an outspoken critic of Swiss asylum laws, claiming the country is being flooded with foreigners.
Blocher's critics maintain he's a right-wing extremist and a covert anti-Semite who foments anti-immigrant feelings - labels he denies.
Before the October parliamentary elections, Blocher's party ran full-page newspaper advertisements criticizing ``pampered criminals, shameless asylum-seekers and a brutal Albanian mafia,'' implicitly linking them to an increase crime. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees criticized the ads as ``nakedly anti-asylum.''
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nyt information on blocher
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