Children of foreign workers living in Israel will be able to obtain permanent resident status at the age of 10
Last week, President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the ministers of justice and interior, received the first-ever draft reform of Israel's immigration policy, prepared by a group of distinguished lawyers of the country, Haaretz reports. The document bears the signatures of former Minister of Education, Professor Shlomo Avineri, Professor Amnon Rubinstein, Professor Ruth Gabizon, and other prominent lawyers. The document was prepared by the 'Center for Zionist Jewish Liberal and Humanistic Thought'.
According to the authors of the document, Israel remains the only Western country without an immigration policy and modern immigration legislation, although the country has actually accepted hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish immigrants in recent years. Due to the lack of policy and a clear strategy, the authorities are unable to cope with the influx of illegal immigrants – the problem is 'left to' officials and police, who often act with purely harsh and brutal methods. The situation of foreign workers in Israel 'shames us as a people and as a state,' the lawyers write.
The initiators of the immigration reform believe that the country's immigration policy should be concentrated in the hands of a special agency. The basis of this policy is proposed to be the principle of 'hard outside, easy inside' – in contrast to the current state of affairs, when it is relatively easy to enter Israel, but extremely difficult for a foreign worker to achieve tolerable living conditions inside the country.
According to the draft, foreign workers should be given a path to obtaining Israeli citizenship, making the conditions for granting it renunciation of citizenship of other countries and taking an oath of allegiance to the State of Israel – i.e., introducing principles long adopted in Western countries. The lawyers also believe that Israel should sign an international declaration on the protection of refugees.
At the same time, it is proposed to strengthen border security and measures against illegal entry into the country.
Based on materials from Israelinfo.ru