Foreign Workers in Israel

By Naomi Freedman
Shlihat Aliyah to the Conservative Movement

In the beginning of the 90s, when the second Intifada started in Israel, Palestinian workers were not allowed to work in Israel anymore. The areas most affected by that restriction were construction and agriculture. To deal with that problem, knowing that Israelis would not be interested in these jobs, the state of Israel allowed foreign workers to come to work in Israel. Foreign workers came from sixty-seven countries worldwide, such as Romania, China, Nigeria, the Philippines, Turkey and Russia. Even though they came as legal workers, a large portion of them overstayed their permits and became illegal workers.

In the beginning of 2010, there were 279,700 illegal workers in Israel. 118,000 of them overstayed their permits and 90,000 entered Israel as tourists and their tourist visas expired.

Recently, the state of Israel decided to stop this process by deporting these illegal workers back to their countries. Some of them have lived in Israel for more than a decade; they have raised families and integrated with the society.

Today in Israel there are 2800 children whose parents are there illegally. These children were born in Israel, speak Hebrew and go to Israeli public schools. Their parents, however, are not Israeli citizens and are facing deportation from Israel.

This is a complicated situation, since on one hand, those Hebrew speaking "Israeli" children were raised in Israel and integrated in the community, and on the other, Israel, as a Jewish state, wants to maintain a Jewish majority.

As a Shlihat Aliyah (emissary) working with the Jewish Agency, my role is to promote immigration (aliyah) of Jews to Israel to strengthen and build it, but also to support the Jewish majority.

Jewish tradition talks about the ger, the ancient foreign worker, וְגֵר לֹא תִלְחָץ וְאַתֶּם יְדַעְתֶּם אֶת נֶפֶשׁ הַגֵּר כִּי גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם -- we should treat the ger properly since we can understand the ger’s soul because we were gerim in Egypt (Exodus/שמות 23).

I think this is a disturbing matter which needs to be addressed not just by Israelis but also those who care about this question - what should Israel do in order to maintain her Jewish identity and in order to maintain her Jewish values?

[Posted 6/11/10]