Foreign workers make up a quarter of Tel Aviv's population

Some 80,000 foreign workers, most of them illegal aliens, live in Tel Aviv, making up about a quarter of the city's population, the immigration police said yesterday.

The immigration police raided several foreign workers' apartments yesterday morning, taking 33 illegal Turkish workers into custody in the section earmarked for foreign workers at Ma'asiyahu prison. They will be held there until their deportation.

The workers told their interrogators that 13 of them had entered Israel illegally through the Egyptian border and the rest arrived here with a tourist visa and decided to stay and work, police said.

During the nine months since the immigration police unit was set up, it has deported 42,000 illegal workers out of an estimated 250,000 who do not hold legal work permits. Despite the attempts to reduce the number of foreign workers by deporting those here illegally, contractors continue to get permits from the government to bring in more foreign workers.

In recent months the immigration police have been distributing ads and notices in the foreign workers' communities, calling on them to return to their countries of origin in 11 languages. However, despite these efforts, the illegal workers are not leaving voluntarily.

According to the Immigration Police, after the captured illegal workers are taken to prison to await deportation, the police help them get their wages from their employers, who often fail to pay them, and sometimes the police even buy their ticket back home.

The workers may appeal the deportation order and get a hearing within 72 hours.