The plan, which is in advanced stages, was presented for the first time on Monday by the head of the Immigration Authority’s Enforcement and Foreign Workers Administration
Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority is examining a plan to make foreigners slated for deportation pay for their flight tickets from the 16 percent of their salary that they deposit monthly with the state. The Authority is also looking into requiring foreign nationals to pay for any days spent in detention.
The plan, which is in advanced stages, was presented for the first time on Monday by the head of the Authority’s Enforcement and Foreign Workers Administration, Yossi Edelstein, in a discussion of the Knesset Special Committee on Foreign Workers.
In the discussion, the representative of the Israel Prison Service said that each day of detention costs the state about 450 shekels ($125). Edelstein added that in the case of foreigners who have no deposit account, the money would be taken from the cash they have on hand.
The discussion, which was based on data collected by the right-wing Kohelet Policy Forum and the Immigration Policy Center, opened with a presentation by attorney David Peter, a legal researcher at Kohelet.
According to Peter, between 2013 and 2018, no payment was collected from foreigners after a court of appeals ruled that they must pay. Peter added that there was an increase in the number of legal proceedings filed by foreigners in recent years, but the state chooses not to deduct their trial expenses from their deposit, despite legislation that allows it.
According to Peter, the legal procedures are used by the foreigners to postpone their deportation. “A foreign worker who goes through a [legal] procedure that can go on for 10 years gains time, does not pay legal fees and in the meantime works in Israel,” he said, adding that “it’s a way for them to buy time through an idle process.”
Peter further explained that cases which reach the Supreme Court are mainly discussed by Justices Uzi Fogelman and Dafna Barak Erez. Edelstein said, “In the end, it comes down to two justices that I don’t want to express my opinion on their worldview, but we see what the results are.”
The Immigration Policy Center presented a position paper showing how between 2015 and 2019 the cost of deporting foreign nationals came to nearly 340 million shekels.
During the discussion, committee chairman and Likud MK Eliyahu Revivo expressed doubts on one of the figures presented by Peter, saying the data was provided to the Kohelet Policy Forum by Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority. “There’s sometimes a problem with the management of data among the different [government] authorities on this subject,” Peter said.
Revivo said he would promote using deposit money that was not recovered by the foreign workers to finance professional training courses for them in another country.
Revivo also said he submitted a bill last week to speed up deportations by prohibiting foreign workers from taking money out of Israel while they are still in the country. “The more uncomfortable their lives are, the more they’ll leave and [others] will reconsider coming.
“These workers send the money they earn to their families abroad. As long as their money remains here until they leave, they’ll prefer to leave as soon as possible and return to their countries,” he said, adding that he hopes the e Population and Immigration Authority will support the bill.
He pointed out that due to a decision of the Supreme Court, it is not possible to deport “infiltrators,” as he put it. However, Sigal Rosen, head of public policy at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, told him that those “infiltrators” are actually asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan, who cannot be deported according to the government’s decision and the Refugee Convention to which Israel is legally bound. Rosen explained that most of the citizens who were deported from Israel are foreigners who stayed in the country illegally after entering Israel with a tourist visa.
According to the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants and data from the Population Authority, between 2019 and 2022 2,657 foreigners were deported from Israel. The data showed that 62 percent of them (1,628) arrived from Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and Moldova, while 20 percent (533) came from Thailand, Turkey, Philippines, India and Sri Lanka – countries from which many others arrive in Israel legally with work visas. The remaining 18 percent (486) arrived from other countries.