More people than at any time in human history are moving from country to country. And although the scale of those wanting to enter Israel is minuscule compared with the distressed, displaced millions gathering in Europe, Israel like every other nation has laws to regulate who crosses its borders — be they economic migrants, political refugees, foreign experts or homecoming Jews.
Those laws are increasingly complex and convoluted, according to Attorney Kobi Neeman of Dardik, Gross & Co., a leading Israeli law firm which specializes in Corporate, Labor and Immigration law. "Procedures have been tightening for years, and intensified with the pandemic restrictions," he says. "The government is asking for more documentation and more authentication, all presented in a highly circumscribed way."
Even aliyah, enshrined in the first law ever passed in the Knesset, can be a bureaucratic minefield. "All that olim once needed was a letter from their rabbi testifying to their Jewishness, making them eligible under the Law of Return," says Neeman's partner, Attorney Dan Gross. "Today, at very least, a notarized birth certificate, authenticated by an apostille, is required (unless the actual original birth certificate can be presented)."
And sometimes even that insufficient. Gross and Neeman ruefully recall an aliyah application by a middle-aged Jewish man who had been born in Morocco, grown up in the France, married in Belgium and studied for a doctorate in the US. "He needed documentation from all four countries, which was a runaround in itself," says Neeman. " Belgium, however, was where the trouble really began. He'd never been a Belgium citizen and the record of his marriage had been mislaid. Without it, his family status couldn't be registered in Israel. We found ourselves caught between the emotional life-change sought by our client, and the rigid bureaucracy he faced. Of course, eventually this was sorted it with the Belgium authorities, and the story had a happy ending."
While Dardik, Gross & Co. handles complex aliyah applications, their particular expertise is in short- and long-term entry permits to Israel for experts with specialized knowledge. "Gas drilling is one area where Israel needs foreign experts," says Neeman. "Its gas fields lie 90 kilometers offshore, under 3 kilometers of ocean and 2 kilometers of seafloor. It's a young industry here, so local companies are still developing their expertise, and many times need help from foreign experts, mainly from the US and the UK. Another area is the evolving railway industry in Israel and national rail grid, now underway, including the light train, the metro, and electrification of Israel's rail. That, too, is new here, and many experts from different nationalities, such as Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese are guiding it."
Two of Israel's main ports have undergone extensive renewal — that in Haifa by Chinese -led consortium and in Ashdod by a Swiss company . Today, both are fully automated, unloading millions of tons of cargo at the touch of a button. But hiccups in the system can sometimes be solved only by the foreign experts who installed the system. Or, on a far smaller scale, a single piece of machinery can fail and bring a factory to a standstill, as in an Israeli food and beverage company whose German-made bottling apparatus recently failed. Only the German engineers who had developed it could repair it.
The first step in bringing foreign specialists into Israel is convincing the government that they possess unique expertise. "Verifying proficiency and preparing documentation for accredited engineers and scientists is relatively straightforward," says Gross. "Far trickier is proving the expertise of people who have not completed high school. We recently acted for the builders of a luxury villa who wanted its marble flooring laid by Italians who'd worked at the Kremlin, and its walls gilded by a British team, which had worked in Buckingham Palace. It was a real challenge to prove that these workers are "experts" as they do not hold any formal education. We classified the craftspeople as artists, and brought the Israeli architect, building contractor and a British company representative to vouch for them at the requisite government committee. The project plans were so impressive that we managed to get the work visas we needed for the client"
Another major visa bottleneck is speed. Whether the client is an international port or a local beverage manufacturer, weeks of paralysis equals economic loss. Neeman smiles as he recalls an application some years back to bring an expert from the company that had sold an Israeli hospital a new defunct hematology analyzer. "The bureaucrat tried to brush me off, saying: 'Why the pressure? It's not life or death.' When I told him that's exactly what it was, the visa was rushed through. We shepherd many hundreds of expert visa applications every year, and, with each one of them, feel we're contributing to Israel's economy."
While the government's clear preference is to find the expertise at home (it takes a NIS 12,000 fee per visa, and requires that foreign experts receive double an Israeli salary), it accepts the contribution of foreign experts to the economy, granting some 6,500 expert work visas each year. It has even created an express track for short term visas and hi-tech experts, granting them visas within few days. Sometimes it is granted even within 24 hours.
"The government is also simplifying visa applications by moving the application process online," says Neeman. "But the bureaucratic burden has grown as well, and the online forms are so complex, that most applicants need help with them. Further, the contemporary reality and complicated Labor structures are creating sometimes very complicated cases, which required creative solutions. So the contribution of immigration specialists like ourselves has not yet ended."
Partnered with Dardik, Gross & Co. law firm
