Foreigners pay the price

The fear campaign in the media, which was supposed to deter employers and foreign workers, drew a simplistic and deceptive parallel between two phenomena: 300,000 foreign workers, 300,000 unemployed. In other words, if only the foreigners leave, unemployment will disappear.

Richard Omani came to Israel from Ghana nine years ago. Eight months ago he had a son. Lately, the deportation ring has been tightening around him. Employers whose homes he cleaned faithfully for years explain shamefacedly that they are afraid of heavy fines if they continue to employ him and ask him not to come. He himself has decided that he does not want to live in constant fear.


For lack of choice, he has decided to leave. Some of his employers paid him severance pay, but two families refused. He told Haaretz that a Tel Aviv woman for whom he had worked once a week for seven years said he was not Jewish, and therefore, was not due severance pay. Her parents, for whom Omani had also worked,


also refused to pay.


A couple from Rishon Letzion refused to give severance pay to a worker who cleaned their home for five years. The worker notified them that he would stop working for them at the end of September, but they decided to forgo his services starting at the end of August for fear of being fined for the illegal employment of a foreign worker. In an angry letter to Kav Laoved, the workers' hotline, the couple claimed that under the circumstances, the worker was not due severance pay.


In the past few months, Kav Laoved has been contacted by hundreds of workers who have decided to leave and are asking the organization to help them obtain monies due them - wages, recreation pay, vacation pay and severance pay. Some of the employers pay, others exploit the situation - the workers' panic, the government's fear campaign - in order to claim that the state is to blame, because it prevents the employers from employing the workers. "Let the state compensate him," said one employer as she slammed down the phone when asked for a response regarding the claim of a Nigerian worker who had cleaned for her for three years.


For years, Israel allowed the entry of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. Some came with work permits, others came as tourists or pilgrims, and stayed. Everyone benefited: citizens of Third World countries found work at much higher wages than they had earned in their home countries; the farmers, contractors and industrialists gained an even cheaper labor force than the Palestinians; tens of thousands of citizens who did not want to clean floors and scrub toilets and were happy to pay others to do it. Everyone employed the migrant workers - ministers, Knesset members, police officers - both senior and junior, judges, the elderly in Dimona, and the rich in Kfar Shmaryahu.

One day the party ended. The economy deteriorated due to the collapse of the high-tech industry and the intifada, unemployment burgeoned, and the government decided that it could save the situation by evicting the foreign workers. The fear campaign in the media, which was supposed to deter employers and workers, drew a simplistic and deceptive parallel between the two phenomena: 300,000 foreign workers, 300,000 unemployed.


In other words, if only the foreigners leave, unemployment will disappear. True, if no new migrant workers are allowed in and the regular entry of the Palestinians is obstructed, there may well be a real shortage of manpower in the areas in which foreign workers work, and then, perhaps, some workplaces will absorb unemployed Israelis. This, however, requires persistence and perseverance - in order to stand up to the interested parties pressuring the prime minister and other ministers to import more workers - and these are traits in which politicians in general, and Israeli politicians in particular, do not excel.


In general, the influence of the migrant workers on the Israeli economy is hardly examined by policy makers in this area - unlike what is happening in most western states that have also had to cope with the phenomenon of migrant workers in the past decade. Could it be, for example, that policymakers have underestimated the influence of the presence of the foreigners on landlords renting out apartments, on money changers, grocery store owners, cell phone sellers, laundromat operators? Did these policymakers ask how the departure of over 100,000 industrious workers would harm the economy?


The deportation campaign decided by the government in the past year was intended to forcefully and swiftly achieve a goal that is altogether unclear, since it is warranted by reality, and which in any event could have been achieved gradually and reasonably had the problem been handled over the years. Instead, it was easier for everyone to ignore the long-term effects of the party: employers were not fined, there were hardly any restrictions on the numbers of foreign workers granted entry permits, and no consideration was given to alternative plans for employing Israelis as home nurses in order to reduce the number of foreign caregivers, most of whom have switched to working as cleaners and illegal caregivers over the years.


Mistakes have their price, but the state does not punish the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who for years broke the law and employed workers without permits. It has also exempted itself from payment, for example, by granting citizenship to some migrant workers who've been here for many years and have established families. The state and society are laying the whole payment on the lackeys, after all, they have done their jobs and are free to go.