Israel Matzav

Jerusalem court clears deportation of 1,500 South Sudanese illegals

None of you heard this yesterday, because it was a trial run and was not broadcast, but I participated in the preview of a BBC radio show that is going to be broadcast on the Beeb's revamped World Service. The topic I was asked to discuss was Israel's illegal immigration problem, and the person on the other side was a South Sudanese who has been here for 17 years.

What I said was that there are more than 60 Muslim countries, that there are many Christian countries, but that there is only one Jewish country. Israel is willing to take Jews from anywhere. We're not racists. We've had Ethiopians here for nearly 30 years (at least). We are willing to take people fleeing persecution on a selective basis. But we cannot take 1,000 illegal immigrants per week (yes, that's what coming over the border with Egypt) who are seeking economic opportunity.

The person on the other side raised remarks allegedly made by Interior Minister Eli Yishai about how the illegals are a 'cancer.' I said that I do not identify with those remarks. And he claimed without proof that the lives of the South Sudanese would be in danger were they to be returned to South Sudan. Now, a Jerusalem court has decided otherwise.

The Jerusalem District Court has lifted an injunction that it imposed in March on the deportation of some 1,500 South Sudanese who are here illegally. Their newly independent government, with which we have good relations, wants them back, and Israel is now free to send them back.

The Jerusalem District Court on March 29 issued an injunction barring their deportation of South Sudanese after receiving a petition from several NGOs arguing that the migrants who returned to their country would be in grave danger.

In its ruling, the court stated that the NGOs did not provide evidence that the South Sudanese would be in physical danger if they were returned to their home county.

"I praise the court decision that will pave the way for the expulsion of around 1,500 infiltrators from South Sudan," Yishai said. "I hope this is just the first of many steps that will allow us to expel the infiltrators from Eritrea and Sudan as well."

Yishai added that he is committed to the intermediary solution of building a tent-city to house the remaining infiltrators until the can be expelled "so that they will not remain in Israeli cities."

"This is not a war against infiltrators," Yishai said. "This is a war for the preservation of the Zionist and Jewish dream in the land of Israel."

While I don't agree with some of Yishai's other statements about this issue, he's got this part pretty much right.

Meanwhile, a poll shows that most Israelis want the illegals deported, and that a plurality couldn't care less if the illegals' lives would be endangered if they are deported.

Forty percent of the Israeli public believes in the deportation of all of the ‘infiltrators’ in Israel to their homelands, while 34% said Israel should only deport those whose lives would not be in danger if they were returned to their countries.

The figures, released in a poll compiled by the Knesset TV channel, also found that 86% of the public believes that the government is the most to blame for Israel’s inability to stop the migrants from entering the country.

Only 11% of Israelis believe that the migrants should be given legal work visas, a solution that some have proposed for solving the social problems and crime arising from the migrant population.

I'm actually surprised that many Israelis don't distinguish between those who would be endangered by returning and those who would not. Perhaps if the illegals themselves made that distinction more Israelis would make it.

Labels: illegal immigration, South Sudan

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:44 PM