“And yet the number of non-Jewish immigrants here is staggering. Non-Jewish immigration is supposed to be very limited,” said Alexander Yakobson, a historian at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“Israel is primarily a country of Jewish repatriation.
#Will the travel ban make more enemies full
(AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)īut whereas Trump’s travel ban allows few exceptions, Israel’s immigration laws are full of loopholes and are sometimes simply ignored entirely. President Donald Trump takes the cap off a pen before signing executive order for immigration actions to build border wall during a visit to the Homeland Security Department in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. The previous year, Israel built a detention center in the Negev just for the migrants, and it has given cash incentives to tens of thousands to return to South Sudan or go to third countries with which Israel has reached agreements. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted in a tweet responding to Trump’s shout-out, Israel in 2014 completed a fence along its border with Egyptian-controlled Sinai. That contrasts with the 84 percent of Eritreans and 56 percent of Sudanese asylum seekers who received either refugee status or extended protection in other countries in 2014, according to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.Īt the same time, Israel has deterred more African migrants from coming and sent out those who have already arrived. Between 2009 and the beginning of 2015, Israel granted refugee status to just five of more than 3,500 applicants, or a fraction of 1 percent. The state has generally deemed these migrants “infiltrators” seeking work, though many have fled persecution and human rights abuses at home, according to human rights groups. Israel has also taken a relatively hard line on asylum seekers, who in its case come mostly from Eritrea and Sudan. Asylum seekers protesting at the Holot detention center in the southern Negev Desert of Israel, Feb.