Interior Minister overrules deportation order for Filipina woman and her 11-month-old son

A foreign citizen who was to be deported along with her 11-month-old child, in accordance with an Interior Ministry order, will be able to stay in Israel after all.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai has announced that he will not approve his ministry's decision to deport Evelyn Belseng and her Israeli child just because her husband died before she could complete her naturalization process.

	Evelyn Belseng and her child. Her naturalization process was halted when her Israeli husband died.
	Photo by: Alon Ron

Belseng received the good news on Monday, about two weeks after her story was reported in Haaretz and a day after she petitioned the Jerusalem Administrative Court against the deportation order.

"I'm really moved," said Belseng, who is from the Philippines. "Especially during this holiday period, I'm pleased that someone here is capable of listening and is willing to help. I hope the minister will act [on his word] and end the difficult time we have been through, so we will be able to stay here with our family."

Yishai, who is typically a die-hard opponent of granting citizenship to non-Jewish foreign workers, had no qualms about overruling his ministry's bureaucrats when he discovered that their decision would entail deporting an Israeli child as well.

"We should deport people who are here illegally," he told Haaretz. "But the mother of an 11-month-old Israeli child cannot be deported. The minute her application lands on my desk, the matter will be dealt with."

Belseng, 38, came here in 2002 to work as a caregiver. In December 2007, she met Michael, an Israeli from Gedera, and the two began living together. Soon afterward, they applied to the ministry's Population Administration to begin the process of naturalizing Belseng.

The ministry demanded certain documents from the Philippines, but when these papers finally arrived, the copy of her birth certificate was blurred and the ministry demanded that she obtain another copy. Meanwhile, the couple had a child, Gilad, who was formally registered as Michael's son and an Israeli citizen, this past June.

Just a few days later, Michael died of cancer, after being diagnosed several months earlier. His death put an automatic halt to Belseng's naturalization process.

Belseng then asked the ministry to transfer her case to the special committee empowered to grant residency or citizenship on humanitarian grounds. But the ministry did not do so: Instead, the head of the Population Administration's southern desk decided to deport her.

In her petition to the court, Belseng argued that not only was the decision to deport her extremely unreasonable - as it also entailed the deportation of her Israeli child - but it also violated the ministry's own procedural rules. The only body entitled to accept or reject applications for legal status on humanitarian grounds is the special committee, the petition said; the head of the southern desk had no authority to make this decision on her own.

Belseng's petition was also backed by her former employer, whom she left when she became pregnant.

"She is a dedicated, sensitive, honest and fair woman," said Dalia Shmueli, whose father was in Belseng's care. "We knew Miki [Belseng's spouse] and we were aware of the close connection between the two of them... We watched as they filed the applications to the Interior Ministry to recognize Evelyn as Miki's common-law spouse, and we saw how one document that arrived blurred led to her being rejected out of hand. Evelyn cared devotedly for her partner until his dying day, just as I can attest that she cared for my father."