And, the success so far confirms what the Israeli government has been saying all along—the majority of so-called ‘asylum seekers’ are economic migrants who do not have a legitimate claim of asylum, or they would be making it!
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2014/01/07/waiting-for-the-unhcr-to-blast-saudi-arabia-as-they-did-israel-yesterday/
From Haaretz:
A record 1,705 African asylum seekers left Israel in February, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced Thursday. He also predicted that the wave of departures would continue in the coming months.
“This figure for the last month surprises me for the better,” Sa’ar said at a conference of Population and Immigration Authority directors in Ashkelon. “If the trend we identify continues, and I’ve been informed that it will continue into March, there will be a departure of enormous proportions from Israel this year. It is most important.”
February’s figure represents about 3% of the estimated number of African asylum seekers in Israel. The monthly figures have grown since November, from 63 to 325 in December and 765 in January.
“We stood up to constant propaganda insinuating there were tens of thousands of asylum seekers, even though you know that a tiny percentage of them submitted asylum requests,” said Sa’ar. “This whole theory collapsed in the last months when it turned out there was a large exodus of those who came for economic reasons and figured that in a day or two he would no longer be able to work and earn money, so we see a definitive change in direction.”
Sa’ar showed the statistics on a placard headlined “Voluntary departure data – illegal infiltrators” to make his point. Each African asylum seeker who leaves Israel through the end of next month is entitled to a $3,500 government grant.
Maybe we could try this in America! The only difference is that the Israelis now have an almost impenetrable border fence, so more are not on the way.
Back to Haaretz:
There was a recent flurry of criticism when it was learned that some of the migrants chose to go to Uganda rather than to their home country. But, leave it to a US refugee resettlement contractor, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to stick its nose into Israel’s business (see our previous post here).
It remains unclear what, if any, agreement was made with Uganda. The Jewish-American Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society contacted the director of refugee affairs in the Ugandan prime minister’s office, and he responded that he did not know of any arrangement with Israel.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is one of nine major US resettlement contractors who resettle refugees for the US State Department in your cities and towns. The US taxpayer supplies them with about half of their entire annual budget. Their past CEO collected a salary in excess of $300,000 a year and we can assume their new one does as well. Can it be called do-gooder-itis with a salary like that?
For new readers, we have 147 previous posts in our category ‘Israel and refugees’ here.