Outlook India, March 16-23, 2009 print edition
Lily Devi paid 8000 dollars to make the journey from India to Egypt so that she could pass into Israel illegally via the southern border. The Indian man she paid had promised that work would await her on the other side. Instead, he abandoned her in the desert town of Eilat—leaving Lily, who doesn’t speak English or Hebrew, alone.
Lily recently appeared at the Tel Aviv office of the Migrant Workers’ Hotline, a NGO that assists foreign workers in the multitude of problems they face in Israel. She was accompanied by an Indian man, Yahm, who served as a translator for her. But Yahm and Lily were greeted with the news that there was little the NGO could do to help her—she didn’t know the full name of the agent who dropped her in Israel, and she didn’t know what employment agency, if any, he worked for. Lily disappeared back into the masses of foreign workers which are currently estimated to number well over 300,000—a majority of which are illegal.
Yahm says that Lily, deep in debt, wants to remain in Israel so that she can find work and repay her 8000 dollar loan. According to Yahm, Lily is hiding from Immigration Police in a friend’s apartment in hopes of avoiding deportation. He explains that he doesn’t know how to contact her—Lily is someone he met in passing at the Tachana Merkazit, Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station.
Located in one of the poorest parts of the city, the Tachana Merkazit is the weekend gathering place for foreign workers of all nationalities. There is a strong Indian presence, despite the fact that Indians comprise one of the smallest groups of foreign workers in Israel. The Ministry of the Interior of Israel estimates the Indian population at approximately 18,000—with only 5100 of these remaining in Israel on valid work permits. But people who pass illegally through the southern border—like Lily—may contribute to a larger Indian community.
Tables line the sidewalk outside the Namaste-Pinoy restaurant, which caters to Indian and Filipino customers. A vendor has set up a small table in front of the Om Indian Food Store, selling chaat masala to those who want a taste of home. Indian music with an upbeat tempo pulses from the recently opened “Om Bar.” Next to the door there is a framed picture of Ganesh, draped in a marigold garland. The walls are neatly painted in broad red and black stripes. A handful of men mill about, speaking rapidly with one another in a language that is foreign to this urban center perched on the edge of the Mediterranean.
Santiago Luis, from a village near to Goa, is amongst them. “You won’t find the people with the big problems here [at the Central Bus Station],” he says. “They’re all hiding.” Luis is happy with his current employer and his wage of 700 dollars a month, which is typical for a caregiver. “I am very lucky,” he says speaking of his job and his legal status. “But everyone who comes to Israel has problems.”
Three and a half years ago Luis paid an Indian employment agency the equivalent of 6500 US dollars to arrange for employment in Israel and a work visa. He arrived in Israel, however, only to find that no job awaited him. Because he didn’t have work, he lost his visa. Luis was an early victim of a then nameless scam that has since come to be known as a flying visa.
The flying visa starts—and ends—in Israel. Through Israeli employment agencies individuals, elderly or disabled, seek caregivers. In countries including India, local agencies work in conjunction with the Israeli agencies. The local agencies charge potential employees large sums of money for the arrangement of employment and, after the potential foreign worker has paid, they gain a visa. But their visa is precarious—it is dependent on their employment by the inviting employer. Flying visa victims arrive in Israel only to have their job, and thus their visa and their legal status, cancelled.
“It’s so simple, it’s so ugly, it’s so cruel,” comments Rivka Makover, manager of the registration department in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Labor. Makover is responsible for the licensing of employment agencies, as such she spends much of her time trying to ebb the flow of flying visa victims. “When I started this position in July of 2004, there were 350 companies,” she says. “Since then, I took [revoked] more than 230 licenses.”
Makover has forwarded many of these cases to the Immigration Police. David Peretz, superintendent of Immigration Police, and his colleague, Eli Tsemach, estimate they have made more than 100 arrests in flying visa cases. “The agencies bring someone, cancel, bring another—it’s a revolving door,” Tsemach explains. “One hand brings them, while the other hand takes them out.” Tsemach is referring to the fact that once a worker loses his visa, he becomes illegal is subject to deportation.
Peretz and Tsemach are troubled by the toll it takes upon the workers. “We’re talking about people here,” Peretz says.
***
The waiting room at Kav LaOved (Line to the Workers) is filled with Romanian, Nepali, Sri Lankan, Filipino, and Indian workers on a crisp, bright Sunday morning. The line for help continues into the hallway, where Manooj Joorees, from Kerala, waits patiently.
Joorees paid 10,000 US dollars to come to Israel. Though he was employed for his first three months in Israel, his employer refused to pay him and subsequently cancelled his work visa. Unemployed and unable to care for himself, he relies on friends to keep a roof over his head and food on the table. He remains deep in debt to the neighbors in south India who loaned him the money to come to Israel.
“If I live in India,” he says, “how can I get this money [to pay back the debt]?”
When he speaks of returning to India and facing his debtors, he lowers his eyes, looks at the ground. His hands tremble. “They will kill me, maybe.”
With deportation hanging over his head, Joorees hopes to find employment in Israel so that he can regain his legal status and repay his debt. He also has a family to support in India—his elderly father, aged 72, his mother, aged 62, and three sisters. “They need to eat,” he says.
Joorees has repeatedly called the employment agency that brought him to Israel. “When they answer,” he says, “they say that they will give me a new employer and a new license [visa] in two weeks, three weeks.” They have lead Joorees on for months in such a manner. “They’re playing games,” he says of the employment agencies. “It’s a big business and they will get too much money like this, playing.”
Anne Suciu, the migrant workers coordinator at Kav LaOved, has seen many Indians with similar problems. “Most of the workers from other countries come to complain about wage payments—Indians don’t even get to that point,” she says explaining that Indians are disproportionately plagued by flying visas.
Unscrupulous employment agencies contribute to other problems for foreign workers in Israel. “The agency uses the permit to get the visa [for the worker], bring the worker, cancel the visa, and bring another. The permit is used again and again—so the flying visa creates over population.”
A large pool of unemployed illegal workers, many of them in debt, is the result. These workers are ripe for exploitation—but, surprisingly, no more so than those who work legally due to the binding arrangement, a troublesome aspect of Israeli labor law.
The binding arrangement links the employee’s legal status to their employer, granting a large amount of power to an employer. If an employer fires an employee—or if an elderly or sick employer dies—the worker loses his visa, as well as his legal status. The flying visa preys on the binding arrangement, as do abusive employers.
“Workers are afraid to leave abusive employers, even if they’re being sexually abused, because non-employment is a disaster,” Hanny Ben Israel, an attorney for Kav LaOved, explains. According to Ben Israel, Kav LaOved has received unconfirmed reports of foreign workers committing suicide upon return to India.
“The state [of Israel] has a responsibility,” Ben Israel says. She points a finger at the binding arrangement, calling it, “a modern form of slavery. It offends the workers’ autonomy and freedom. The state has acknowledged the problem,” Ben Israel says, citing the March 2006 Israeli Supreme Court decision to end the binding arrangement, “so why does it continue?”
Kav LaOved has filed a case against the State of Israel for failing to uphold the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling. When asked if this will help to bring about change, Ben Israel replies, “I have my doubts. The fact that the state is in contempt of the Supreme Court’s decision for almost three years doesn’t give me a lot of hope.”
As Sunday passes more faces, etched with worry, line the waiting room of Kav LaOved. Victor D’Souza, who calls a village near to Goa home, tells his story. He paid 8000 US dollars to an employment agency in India only to have the caregiver job guaranteed to him disappear when he arrived in Israel along with his visa and his legal status. D’Souza was the victim of a flying visa.
But luck was on his side, or so it seemed at the time, and he found another job—which meant he would be able to get another visa. After working for a short while, however, D’Souza’s employer refused to grant him a visa, refused to pay the wages owed to him, and subsequently fired him. D’Souza has been in Israel for nine months now and has yet to begin the climb out of debt.
“We come to Israel to make our life,” he says, “but we come here and we spoil our life.”
***
On Saturdays, the festive atmosphere around Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station spills out onto the sidewalks. A steady stream of foreign workers flows to adjacent Lewinsky Park, passing three black and orange billboards advertising cell phone services—nestled between English and Hebrew is a panel bearing Hindi script. Nepali women, their foreheads marked with a red dot, their noses elegantly pierced, stand in a cluster, talking and laughing. The smoky smell of a barbecue drifts from the direction of a party of Filipinos. Rows of African refugees, mostly men, sit in the grass. A round-faced woman donning an emerald-colored sari, her arms lined with bangles, weaves through the crowd fluttering past tight groups of Indian workers.
Blue and white sheltered benches—the color of the Israeli flag—are scattered through the park. Jayesh Patel and his friends, all from Gujarat, relax on one of them. Patel, who studied at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, paid 9000 dollars to come to Israel but was the victim of a flying visa. Though he has managed to find legal work as a caregiver and he is content with his current employment, he is concerned about the future of arriving Indians. “The new people are coming and are not getting jobs,” he says.
Those who find work might still find themselves in trouble. Ramona Macuan, a friend of Patel’s, accumulated 7000 dollars in loans from friends, family, and neighbors in her hometown of Anand to come to Israel. Her first employer here provided her with very little food, she says, and she was forced to work so much that she didn’t get adequate sleep. Her health in decline, due to lack of food and sleep, she quit her job despite the fact that leaving her employer would mean losing her legal status—and severing the sole source of income for the husband and twelve-year-old son she supports in India.
Fortunately, Macuan was successful in her quest to find another caregiver position and she is gainfully employed. “But I am still paying on my loan,” she says, shaking her head. Israel issues five year visas to foreign workers and Indians typically report that it takes them two years to repay their debt—leaving them only three years to make money.
As the evening grows deeper and the next workday rapidly approaches, Babu Rao, from Hyderabad, and William Fernandez, from the area near to Goa, talk about what awaits them. Their experiences perfectly illuminate the snare of interrelated problems—the binding arrangement, the flying visa, a massive population of laborers, and the lingering specter of unemployment—that some find themselves trapped in.
“There is too much suffering here,” Fernandez says. Fernandez, like many other of his countrymen, paid 8000 dollars for a flying visa. “No one picked me up from the airport,” he recalls. Before finding a job, he survived on rice and the good graces of friends who provided him with shelter.
Now there are problems with his employer. “I don’t get enough food,” he explains. Fernandez says he receives only hummus and two pieces of bread or pita a day. “But how can I get another job?” he says. Fernandez has checked with local employment agencies for other caregiver jobs but, as many unemployed caregivers find, the agencies tell him they only want women. “It’s a problem for gents,” he says.
Rao estimates he only gets three to four hours of sleep a night. Not only does he work as a caregiver for his elderly employer, he is also forced to clean the house as well as the houses of his employer’s children. He does not receive extra wages for these additional duties, as he ought to in accordance with Israeli law. Other Indians tell similar stories. They have been hired as caregivers but find themselves laden with additional duties that they aren’t paid for, serving also as cooks, housekeepers, gardeners, or nannies—sometimes all—according to the whim of their employer.
Rao says that he complains to his employer, but his employer responds, “‘If you don’t work, you don’t have a visa. If you don’t want to work, go back to India.’”