When in doubt, throw 'em out

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear over the past several weeks what he thinks of migrant workers and asylum seekers: They are a security risk and a social hazard that threaten the demographic character of Israel as a Jewish state, and are also to blame for unemployment. This constitutes a proper preamble to the plan that has been devised by an interministerial team, together with the Bank of Israel. According to the plan, the deportation of migrant workers, whose work conditions are to be worsened, should free up 30,000 to 50,000 jobs to Israelis.

The primary objective of the plan is to reduce the number of illegal workers, meaning that the number of legally employed persons would not be affected. According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2009, the number of migrant workers stood at approximately 255,000, including Palestinians and asylum seekers. The CBS estimates that about 105,000 of them are migrant workers lacking a valid visa - i.e., illegal workers. Some of the latter entered the country as tourists and remained here to work. Others came in with legal work permits and remained in Israel beyond the permitted period, or lost their visas when they left their place of work.

The following is a sampling of recent statements made on the subject, including some of the operational steps included in the plan, with responses from various elements.

W "The massive entry of workers into Israel in recent years has generated problems related to security, drug use and, most of all, disruption of the labor market and a decline in wages" - Netanyahu, late January

"There has never been any suspicion of migrant workers or asylum seekers causing any harm to security. Not even a hint, no investigation, nothing," says Shevy Korzen, executive director of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, a nongovernmental organization.

"That's slander, without any basis in fact. There's a drug problem among the migrant workers? Let [Netanyahu] find even a single report that backs up that statement. And if they're so dangerous, why don't the authorities stop giving them visas? Why do they continue to bring them here? Netanyahu is recycling failed decisions of previous governments and adding a pinch of xenophobia."

The Israel Police commented that it does not know of migrant workers or asylum seekers who have been involved in security offenses.

W "Reducing [the number of] illegal resident aliens ... will contribute in the future to an increase in the wages of Israeli workers in the relevant sectors and to an increase in the number of employed Israelis from the lower socioeconomic classes" - from the plan

Spokesmen at the Bank of Israel, one of the architects of the plan, explain that it focuses on deterring private employers and contractors from hiring illegal employees so that they will employ legal foreign workers or Israelis, whom they would pay more. Thus, over time more Israelis would replace the foreigners.

According to the Bank of Israel, this is a feasible plan. A total of 60,000 Israeli women already work in the home-care field - one of the more prominent sectors in which foreigners are employed. This has been the case since funding from the National Insurance Institute was recently increased for nursing care received by incapacitated senior citizens who agreed to employ Israelis.

W "The interior minister will cancel the residence permit of any foreign worker not employed for more than 90 days in the field designated to him or her" - from the plan

Migrant workers receive visas based on their field of employment - some for agriculture, some for construction, and others for nursing - but when they lose their place of work, they undoubtedly look for employment anywhere they can. The objective here is to prevent labor mobility. This clause in the plan will make workers afraid to leave exploitive employers, out of a concern that their visa will expire if they do not quickly find work and will lead to deportation.

Bank of Israel officials maintain that there is an intention to establish a database of information about workers with visas who have lost their jobs. It is still unclear who would maintain the database, but when it is created, bank officials say, employers and temporary-employment agencies would not receive permits to import additional workers from abroad until the entire roster is exhausted.

"This is deception," claims Hanna Zohar, director of the Kav La'Oved - Worker's Hotline, another NGO that engages in protecting workers' rights. "The 90-day regulation reinstates a restriction that the High Court of Justice ruled was illegal, and defined as being tantamount to 'modern slavery.' According to the plan, the worker would be restricted to a specific employer, and even to a geographic region. We are encountering senior citizens who received permission to hire a foreign worker, but who do not have the money to pay him. No one is checking this, because the state is indirectly profiting from it. Home care staves off the need to institutionalize senior citizens in nursing-care facilities at state expense. If the senior citizen does not pay, it becomes the worker's problem, because if he leaves, he faces the risk of deportation."

The Hotline's Korzen asserts that, "the entire plan is meant to grease the 'revolving door.' The employment agencies are already refusing to find jobs for people because the 90-day condition will soon come into effect, and it will be possible to deport a worker and bring in a new one instead, who will pay a commission to the companies and make do with low wages. The prisons will fill up, as they did when the Immigration Police were active in 2003, and after they destroy the lives of a lot of people, the number of migrant workers will go back to where it was."

W "The wave of refugees threatens to wash away our accomplishments and do harm to our existence as a Jewish and democratic state" - Netanyahu

The refugees seeking asylum and the infiltrators - as the prime minister and the drafters of the plan call them - actually constitute a relatively small group of some 20,000 people, mostly from southern Sudan, the Darfur region and Eritrea. They infiltrated mainly via the Egyptian border after, they claim, having suffered from persecution in their home countries. While Netanyahu warns of millions of refugees awaiting us in Egypt, only a few make their way to Israel, due to the high costs involved and to the risks posed by sneaking across the border.

"Perhaps Prime Minister Netanyahu does not know that we were compelled to flee - we didn't choose to do so," says Isaac, a 29-year-old asylum seeker from southern Sudan, who has been in Israel since 2006. (His surname may not be published, as per UN guidelines, out of concern for his safety.)

"I've been running since the village in which I was born was attacked, when I was a little boy. I escaped with one of my uncles and grew up in refugee camps outside Khartoum. Members of the secret police murdered my uncle and began to hunt me down. I ran from one camp to the other and eventually fled to Cairo, but there, too, I felt hostility because of my ethnic origin and religion. It is difficult to be black in Egypt and even more difficult to be a black Christian."

"In Israel, I'm safe from persecution," continues Isaac, "but I do not intend to remain here. I am hoping that there will be a referendum next year, and that southern Sudan will gain independence and I'll be able to return there. I believe that there will be good relations between my country and Israel, and I am therefore using my time to study Hebrew and English, so that I will be able to work in the business sector or in the diplomatic service of the free southern Sudan.

"Until then, all I am asking is that we be allowed to work and live here in peace and quiet. We do not have work permits, and Israelis are wary about hiring us. That is why many of us have applied to labor contractors. But at the end of the month, we see that they are deducting money from our wages for many things."

W "The interior minister is authorized to issue general regulations for the private-care sector, for controlling the number of transfers between employers that will be permitted to the foreign worker ... in order to prevent exploitation of his opportunity to work in Israel" - from the plan

This clause is also intended to indenture the worker to his employer. On the face of it, it protects senior citizens and the disabled from a situation in which caregivers decide to leave, but it compromises the latter's bargaining position when it comes to receiving adequate conditions, because their bosses will know that the worker can only transfer a certain number of times from one employer to another.

Ambika, an unemployed home-care worker from Nepal, has already switched employers three times in the three years she's been in Israel. But she is not the one who has "exploited" the "opportunity to work in Israel" - on the contrary.

"Last year, I cared for a very nice couple, senior citizens, but they paid me only NIS 2,500 a month," she explains. "I thought that maybe the agency that brought me over was taking something, but that didn't seem logical, because in Nepal I'd already paid $6,000 for the visa. I left, and found other work, where they paid me NIS 2,900. At my last job they paid me minimum wage, according to the law - NIS 3,850, but last month my employer died, and now I'm unemployed.

"I went with friends to a few agencies, but none are willing to give me any work. At one agency they told me that there are new laws and that we have to work 24 hours a day. At another agency they said, 'Why did you leave your old job? You must have done something bad to cause them to throw you out.' And at a third agency, they said, 'Pay us $500 and we'll find you a job.' If I don't find work and they deport me, it will be a catastrophe."

W "The penalty of imprisonment for a private bureau or an individual, who levied or received payment of any sort from a job-seeker for purposes of labor brokerage in contravention of regulations, will be increased from six months to three years" - from the plan

Says Sigal Rozen, of the Hotline for Migrant Workers: "First let's see them [the legal authorities] issue a verdict, then we'll quibble over the magnitude of the punishment. So far, not a single person has ever been put on trial, even though the migrant workers pay immense sums of money for their visas."