For some reason we keep getting hits on a story from last January, Asylum seekers head for Israel. Ann posted an update in July. Both of those stories put the numbers in hundreds or thousands. Now the Jerusalem Post reports IDF: ‘One million African refugees headed for Israel.’ The IDF is the Israeli Defense Force, Israel’s military.
IDF units responsible for guarding Israel’s expansive western border with Egypt said Thursday that there are one million would-be infiltrators from Africa waiting to cross the mostly barrier-less border and enter Israel illegally.
They were briefing members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, who called on the government to implement a plan called “Hourglass” to significantly reduce the number.
Committee Chairman Ya’acov Katz called upon the defense establishment to begin immediate work on one of the salient features of the proposed project – the erection of an electronic fence along hundreds of kilometers of isolated borderlands with Egypt.
The fence will cost an estimated one million dollars per kilometer.
Although these people flooding Israel are termed refugees they are actually more akin to the illegal aliens we get from Mexico. They are coming for economic reasons, because their countries are a mess and Israel has a good economy. And although most Israelis believe they should be stopped, there is a group pushing for their continued entrance into the country:
Katz has said that according to the data he has received, between 600 and 1000 people infiltrate across the desert border each month. But not all residents of the South are quite so enthusiastic regarding any cuts to the number of foreign workers in the work force. Even as Katz and his committee toured the Negev, farmers in the isolated Arava Valley put the finishing touches on their plans to launch a massive demonstration this coming Sunday to protest cuts to the number of foreign workers that they can employ on their farms.
The farmers complain that as they are located beyond commuting distance from any major cities, if they are not allowed to import hundreds of foreign workers – mostly from Thailand – they will simply not be able to harvest the produce that makes their farms viable.
It’s unclear whether the farmers want the Africans to continue to come, or if they are just afraid all foreign workers will be limited. Israel does depend a great deal on foreign workers, but they are usually from faraway places (like Thailand) where they have families, so they usually return home.
Israel’s population is about 7.4 million. Having a million would-be immigrants trying to sneak across the border is equivalent to having 42 million people at our Mexican border in terms of the percentage of our population.
But I have a question. If Israel is as oppressive as advertised, why do so many people want to get in? Of course, we’ve wondered the same thing about our country, which is now being apologized for around the world by our president.
Hat tip: Mark Krikorian.