The World
Fam les...
Israel Targets Foreign Workers
Expulsions follow years
of encouraging them to
take jobs Israelis didn't
want.
Tel Aviv
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F
or Michael James, the road
home from Israel to Nigeria
passes through the squalid,
dusty streets behind Tel
Aviv's old bus station.
James, a well-built man who looks
younger than his 45 years, is knocking
on doors of every clothing and shoe
store amid the peep shows and mas-
sage parlors of this dilapidated section
of Tel Aviv, hoping to find any job
that will pay for a ticket home.
But work is scarce and time is run-
ning out: In October, Israeli police
plan to step up deportations of illegal
foreign workers, and James' work per-
mit expired six months ago.
"I want to leave the country," he
says. But he adds, "I don't have
enough money for a ticket. I don't
want somebody to dump me in a
prison. I'm willing to work for my
ticket or I'll go home immediately if
the government pays."
Until recently, there were some
250,000 foreign workers in Israel,
about 100,000 of them legal.
Israeli officials say a decision to stop
renewing permits has reduced the
number of legal foreign laborers to
about 75,000.
Starting next month, Israel plans to
deport 1,000 illegal workers each
-month, after expelling 500 per month
during the past year. In 1999, authori-
ties hope to deport 2,000 workers a
month, and they say they hope to
double that number eventually.
The drive to deport foreign workers
stems from public criticism that their
swelling numbers, against a backdrop
of rising unemployment, are creating a
social time bomb.
Activists on behalf of foreign work-
ers say the deportation policy has been
accompanied by racist rhetoric of
racism.
Official Labor Ministry press releas-
es have compared the expulsion of for-
eign workers to "holiday cleaning" or
"burning the chametz," the ritual of
burning bread and other leavened
products before Passover.
In addition, activists say setting up
deportation camps is a cruel way to
treat people who were let in by the
state, who were often exploited by
employers and who have contributed
to the economy by doing jobs that
most Israelis avoid.
Israel began importing workers en
masse during 1993, when prolonged
closures of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip prevented Palestinians from
working in Israel. Before the closures,
Palestinians filled menial jobs in the
construction, agriculture and service.
Encouraged by Israeli policies,
workers arrived from developing coun-
tries all over the world. In Tel Aviv's
dingy pedestrian mall of Neve
Sha'anan, where lonely foreign work-
ers pass their free time nursing beers
and thinking of home, a hand-written
sign on an international telephone call
center advertises rates to more than 20
developing countries, ranging from
Romania to Ghana to Thailand.
Since their arrival in Israel, abuse of
foreign workers has reached epidemic
proportions. Many building contrac-
tors house laborers in cramped condi-
tions, often a dozen to a small room
in wall-to-wall bunk beds. Although
they are paid the legal minimum
wage, workers are often charged exor-
bitant rates.
In the months before a foreign
worker returns home, many employers
withhold wages. And most building
companies illegally confiscate pass-
ports from "legal" workers when they
arrive, to guarantee that they cannot
change jobs.
But there is little reason for such
action because according to Israeli law,
a legal foreign worker may not change
employers. If he does, he automatical-
ly becomes an illegal worker.
"In Israel, .it is actually better for a
worker to be illegal than legal," says
Hanna Zohar, director of Kay Laoved,
a hotline that provides legal assistance
to distressed foreign workers.
"Illegal workers are not bound to
an employer. At least nobody takes
their passports, and they can move
from one employer to another if they
are treated badly."
Zohar objects "Somebody let these
people into the country. The Israeli
economy has profited from them," she
says. "They are not criminals and do
not deserve to be treated like criminals."
Zohar, of the worker's hotline, says
the state has yet to prove that it is
cracking down on employers with the
same resolve that it is cracking down
on foreign workers. "If there were seri-
ous sanctions against employers, there
would be no work for illegal workers,
and they would leave the country on
their own." ❑