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No More Room For
Soviet Immigrants?
NECHEMIA MEYERS
Special to The Jewish News
ust a few months ago,
Prosper Azran, the
mayor of Kiryat
Shmoneh, was pleading with
the government to send
more Soviet immigrants to
his Upper Galilee develop-
ment town. Now he is
pleading with the govern-
ment to stop sending them
altogether.
This dramatic turnabout
reflects the situation in
many other places, where
"sorry, full up" signs are
also being hung out.
Kiryat Shmoneh had good
reason to ask for immigrants
in the first place. Being close
to the Lebanese border and,
until recently, the target of
terrorist rocket attacks, it
had great difficulty attrac-
ting new residents or even
holding on to its own youth.
So everyone was pleased
when the Soviets started
coming, particularly since,
at first, housing and jobs
were readily available. Now
both are in short supply and
the town, which already has
1,800 Soviet immigrants, is
loath to take in more.
Mayor Azran, never a man
to mince words, charges that
one body (the Jewish Agen-
cy) feels that all it has to do
is to put the Soviets on a
plane, and another body (the
Absorption Ministry) feels
that its task is limited to
handing them a check when
they get off the plane. The
local authorities are ex-
pected to solve all the other
problems, and without ade-
quate resources, Mr. Azran .
declares, they can't.
Jobs are clearly the big-
gest issue, in Kiryat
Shmoneh as elsewhere. Ac-
cording to Azran, 80 percent
of the immigrants in his
town are unable to find work
once they have completed
their basic Hebrew studies.
The mayor has asked the
government to solve this
problem by placing orders
with firms in and around
Kiryat Shomneh. Were
there enough orders, he
says, "we'd be only too
pleased to take in another
10,000 immigrants."
It could be argued that Mr.
Azran's statements were an
attempt to blackmail the
government into giving
greater support to Kiryat
Shmoneh, which, indeed, it
j
or
1-800-342.5604
Nechemia Meyers writes from
Rehovot, Israel.
has now done. Soon after he
spoke, the Ministry of
Defense announced that it
would increase the work
force at the military in-
dustries plant in Kiryat
Shmoneh.
This decision will be of
some benefit there, but it
won't help the many other
communities where immi-
grant unemployment is al-
ready a serious problem.
What makes matters worse
is that newcomers either
have skills for which there is
little or no demand in Israel
or, like doctors and mining
engineers, jobs for which
Israel already has a surplus.
The problem is not limited
to specific fields. According
to Shmuel Slavin, director
general of the Ministry of
Labor, there may be 500,000
unemployed Israelis in three
years time (as opposed to
It is only recently
that government
officials have
acknowledged the
gravity of
absorption
problems.
124,000 today). This figure is
based on the realistic
presumption that Israel's
gross national product will
increase by four percent, a
year; a rise of over 12 per-
cent would be required to
keep unemployment at its
present level.
Job and housing shortages
are inevitable considering
the size of the current wave
of immigration, though the
government could have done
far more to prepare con-
tingency plans.
Indeed, despite warnings
from Natan Sharansky and
other immigrant leaders, it
was only recently that Prime
Minister Shamir and his col-
leagues dropped their
"everything will be alright" -
smiles and began to ac-
knowledge the gravity of ab-
sorption problems, which
have already caused many
Soviet Jews to postpone
their aliyah.
There is no magic solution
to these problems. But
unless the government gets
its act together, and receives
greater outside assistance,
the last big chance to de-
velop Kiryat Shmoneh and
hundreds of other Israeli
communities may be miss-
ed. CI