At the start of this week's cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relayed his impressions of the despair expressed by residents of Eilat, which he visited last week, on account of the thousands of illegal immigrants who have flooded the city and residents' feelings of reduced personal safety. He told the cabinet that the problem is not limited just to Eilat, but has also spread to many other cities, including Tel Aviv and other parts of central Israel. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai sent a letter to the prime minister requesting that the government curb the wave of illegal immigrants to neighborhoods in south Tel Aviv. Netanyahu explained that this phenomenon damages the economy, society, security and the demographic fabric of Israel, and that therefore the government must prevent it. The question is how. Netanyahu enumerated the steps he has already implemented, among them establishing a ministerial team to deal with the construction of the fence along the Egyptian border (only half of which has been built thus far), saying the fence will be completed in less than a year. In addition, Netanyahu announced a significant increase in financial penalties for employers who hire illegal employees. He explained that confronting those employers and reducing the financial incentives that attract immigrants to Israel are just as important as sealing the borders. Get the Israel Hayom newsletter sent to your mailbox! Two points are missing from this list. The first: Until the fence is completed, the government needs to instruct the Israel Defense Forces and the Border Police to use all necessary means to prevent every infiltrator from entering, whether terrorists, drug smugglers, sex traffickers, or migrant workers. They should stop anyone who wants to cross the border illegally. There are many means to achieve this goal, and it is likely that reservists would have to be called up as part of the effort, but the need for them will decline as construction on the fence progresses. It is clear that if the border is subject to constant surveillance, not many immigrants will succeed in crossing it. The claim that Israel must grant refugee status to anyone who comes from a country in which his or her life is in danger is incorrect. This argument holds only for immigrants who cross the border from their homeland to a neighboring country, such as from Sudan to Egypt. Their lives are no longer in danger in the neighboring country, and therefore Israel has no obligation to allow them into its territory. Once these immigrants make their way to Israel, their status changes to migrant workers and, according to international law, Israel can do everything to prevent their entry, even by force. The second point concerns weakening the magnet that attracts migrant workers to Israel in the first place -- in other words, the money they earn working illegally. In addition to penalties for employers, which the prime minister plans to implement immediately, we must create legislation to ban illegal workers from exchanging Israeli shekels to foreign currency and transferring it abroad. For most migrant workers, the motivation for coming to Israel is the opportunity to support from afar their families living abroad. If the act of transferring money abroad becomes illegal and complicated, there will be less motivation to come work in Israel. Exchanging currency and transferring it abroad could also be defined as money laundering when done by illegal immigrants, since the money was in effect earned by committing a criminal offense. Such a law would deter exchanging and transferring funds, because the punishment for money laundering is extremely harsh. This is certainly not an airtight solution, and things will certainly fall through the cracks, but it should be among the measures the government adopts to confront illegal migrant workers. It would even be possible to implement such a policy immediately.
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