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Foreign workers head: 'Sending our kids to Africa is sending them to their graves'
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: Africa, Israel News

African families living in Israel are going "underground" for fear of a controversial plan to deport their children as of next month, the community's leader told Anglo File. "Our people now live in fear," said Swaray Alusine, director of the African Workers Union. He says the raid on Wednesday by immigration officers in the city's southern neighborhoods illustrated that the government is determined to deport workers and in the future "send children to a certain death."

Some 300 workers and refugees were rounded up in the raid, though most were released. Swaray Alusine, who came to Israel as a foreign worker from Sierra Leon, was also detained but released when he showed documents proving his legal status. "People are afraid to walk in the street now," he said.

What the African workers community finds most troubling, however, is a plan announced by the Immigration Administration in recent weeks to start deporting children of African workers as of August. "We are talking about children who were born in Israel," said Alusine, who lives in south Tel Aviv. "They know nothing about African traditions. Many speak Hebrew better than English. They will never fit in or find a job and if they survive, they will become part of the fringes of society."
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In its response to a query on the matter, the Interior Ministry said: "Children of illegal aliens do not give their parents the right to stay in Israel."

The children, according to Alusine, never came into contact with the African climate or the continent's diseases. "They have no immunity and they will be sent to countries with no health system whatsoever. Sending them to Africa is sending them to their graves."

In 2006, the cabinet decided to grant permanent residence to about 900 children from families of foreign workers and asylum-seekers, provided they had spent six consecutive years in Israel and that the applicants' parents had entered Israel legally. Israel is currently home to some 4,000 African workers, not including African refugees - primarily from Sudan - who are permitted to stay in Israel as asylum-seekers.

Although the authorities have so far not deported minors, approximately 2,100 children who do not meet the criteria face that potential. About 600 of them are Africans, mostly hailing from English-speaking countries in the continent's west. The African Workers Union is planning a succession of meetings with public figures and legislators in an attempt to prevent the deportation of children.

Children as leverage

"The Immigration Administration is using the children as leverage to pressure the parents," said Galia Tzabar of Tel Aviv University's Department of Middle Eastern and African History. "The Administration is hoping that parents will leave willingly in order to spare their children the traumatic experience of being arrested and deported."

Sabine Hadad, spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, said that the 2006 government decision was "a one-time and unique" occurrence. "In an effort to avoid removing children or families, the Immigration Administration is encouraging families to leave during the summer vacation, so as to allow parents and children sufficient time to make arrangements for schooling solutions in their countries of origins," Hadad said.

More than two thirds of all school-age children in Sierra Leon are currently out of school, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Labor. In Nigeria, considered one of the strongest educationally among the nations from where Israel's African community hails, that figure is approximately 40 percent.

"Before the government resorts to drastic steps like arresting and deporting children, it should implement a serious effort to try less radical tactics like encouraging families to leave willingly, by offering a grant to anyone who does this," said Sigal Rozen, director of the Hot Line for Migrant Workers. "From my experience with the community, such a program could have a good chance of working."

The 2006 decision to allow six-year-olds to stay is unjust if it not applied to younger children, she added. "Three years ago the government decided that African children entering their first grade in school are Israeli enough to stay," she said. "Just how do they differ from Israel-born African kids who will enter the first grade next year?
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