Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not intimidated by the Sudanese illegal immigrants who want to be classified as refugees. CNN reports:
JERUSALEM – Several hundred Sudanese immigrants rallied Sunday on the streets of Tel Aviv, demanding refugee status.
Marching towards the United Nations Refugee Agency building, the demonstrators held up banners reading “We are not infiltrators, we are refugees,” “We are human beings too” and “We are refugees, we are not criminals.”
Israel is a democratic county that has a lot of immigrants and a high level of social services. No doubt these immigrants thought they could sneak into this first-world country and take their places as low-level workers and/or welfare recipients. But Israel is intensely focused on its national survival, and these immigrants, part of a wave of economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, are a demographic threat. So:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the violence [a May protest that turned violent]. “The problem of infiltrators must be resolved, and we will resolve it,” he said after the protest last month. “We will complete the construction of the security fence in several months and soon will start the process of sending the migrants back to their home countries.”
He added, “We will solve the problem and will do so responsibly.”
That doesn’t sit well with “human rights” groups, social services, and refugee agencies. But those who have to suffer the immediate impact of the immigrants understand.
Some residents of southern Tel Aviv neighborhoods, where there is a large concentration of Africans, have blamed their new neighbors for increasing levels of crime and suffocating the infrastructure and public services. Some also complain the illegal immigration is changing the fabric of Israel.