You Made Your Bed, You Should Have to Lie In It

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8524723.stm


Israel is deporting East Asian and African migrant workers who have had children while in Israel. It seems like the same sort of mess we are dealing with in the US with the enforcement of immigration law.

Same sorry attitudes:

"Look around this part of town," he says, listing to me dozens of nationalities who hang out here, especially at night.

"This is an Israeli street, a Jewish street, but I feel the stranger here."

They have made it rather easy to exclude people, though, since it's hard to get residency unless you are Jewish. They don't just have it in for Palestinians, don't let the home demolitions and special place of hatred for them fool you. The children of Mexican illegal immigrants are often US citizens by birth. I think that's the way it should be.

I think, if I understand this correctly, that in Israel's case, the parents are legal foreign workers, but their children who were born there aren't legal workers (obviously) or citizens and can't or won't be given any sort of legal status temporary or otherwise. They don't want to look like jerks for deporting children. They should have to allow the children at least temporary legal status according to their parents' documents; at most, they should be citizens. Their insistence on this Jewish state where non-Jews don't get certain rights and benefits is what brought them this flood of foreign workers who dare to have babies on their soil.

Israel increased the number of work permits it issued to South East Asian workers in particular after the start of the second Palestinian uprising.

They've taken the place of Palestinian workers; Israel's government severely restricts their permits and presence in Israel for security reasons, it says.

If Palestinians filled this need for workers as in the past, they could just hop on over the border (assuming it took 15 min instead of half a day to cross...) to go home instead of them having "illegal" babies inside their borders. But then, there's the effect and resentment of the Occupation to think about. End the Occupation. Stop arresting, killing, destroying, starving the people who could do you a favor- if you really don't want those East Asian babies hanging around. Whatever. Israel's wrong on both counts.

End the Occupation. Problem solved. Make it one state for all. More problems solved.