Netanyahu delays deportation of foreign workers with children

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will announce tomorrow that the deportation of foreign-worker families with children here illegally will be postponed until the end of the school year, people involved in the issue say. In that time, the authorities will develop a policy for handling the problem.

Netanyahu had been scheduled to decide on the matter today. Interior Minister Eli Yishai agreed to a temporary arrangement and said the children and parents would receive no formal status "until they are deported at the end of the school year."

He told Haaretz that he planned "to muster all of Shas' political power on the matter of the foreign workers," referring to the party he heads.

Over the past few weeks, human rights and worker organizations have championed the cause of 1,200 children of foreign workers who are staying in Israel without a visa.

While activists argue that the children should receive permanent status to avoid being uprooted or have to "pay for the transgressions of their parents," the Interior Ministry under Yishai said it would not allow illegal aliens to "use their children" to bypass Israeli immigration procedures.

The government, in any case, has postponed acting on an issue that touches on Israel's definition as a Jewish state.

Activists fighting the government's intention to deport the children criticized the latest decision. "It's very serious that the cabinet's ministerial team on immigration under Netanyahu choose to postpone their decision time and time again," said Rotem Ilan of the organization Children of Israel.

She added that three months had passed since the government last decided to put off its decision. "The government had 90 days to finalize a decision, so how come it now decides not to decide, mere hours before its deadline?" she said.

Romm Lewkowicz of the Hotline for Migrant Workers said that "each extension of this decision causes the children emotional damage, making them live in fear and uncertainty." He added that "the right decision is to follow through with a cross-partisan consensus that the children should be given status" and that this would occur "unless the xenophobia of Shas triumphs."

Nitzan Horowitz, a Knesset member for the Meretz party who opposes the deportation, said Netanyahu's postponement was "a political maneuver that has nothing to do with values or immigration policy."

He said Netanyahu was "trapped" between Yishai, who argues that the children should be deported, and a group of other ministers who favor allowing them to stay. Horowitz says these ministers include Gideon Sa'ar, Limor Livnat "and especially Isaac Herzog, who is beginning to think about leaving the government."

According to Horowitz, allowing the children to stay would create a crisis in Netanyahu's relationship with Yishai, a member of his coalition. "If the prime minister is apprehensive about allowing the children to stay because of Eli Yishai's threats to resign, he must make a brave decision and let Yishai leave office," he said. Horowitz said Yishai was one of Israel's "worst interior ministers."

Herzog called on Netanyahu to develop a comprehensive immigration policy "rather than patch one up." This policy would be forged by a public committee based on the need to prevent cruelty to children, while preventing the entrance of illegal workers into Israel.

Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar said he supported making all children attending Israeli schools Israelis, while acting to reduce the number of foreign workers living in the country.

Yishai, meanwhile, told Channel 2 television that "if hundreds of thousands of migrant workers come here now, they will bring with them a profusion of diseases: hepatitis, measles, tuberculosis, AIDS and drug [addiction]," Yishai said. "Will any of Israel's citizens be willing for migrants to enter at this rate?"

He also asked: "With all this sanctimony, do [the workers] not threaten the Zionist project in the State of Israel?"

The Oz task force, which replaced the Immigration Police, has said it is still operating according to its current guidelines, which prohibit the detention of families with children.

According to Yishai, "I need to choose between popularity and hypocrisy: How will I appear to the journalists today, or how will I appear to the State of Israel 20 years from now?"

" Allowing these children to stay in Israel "is liable to damage the state's Jewish identity, constitute a demographic threat and increase the danger of assimilation," he told Haaretz.