Money badly spent

Should we really be spending so much money on bringing expats home?

Reuters | Published: 12.24.08, 19:49

On its 60th anniversary, the State of Israel decided to invest large sums of money and great efforts in encouraging Israelis who left the country years ago to return to their homeland.

As part of a campaign to bring those lost sons home, the Immigration Absorption Ministry launched a roughly $35 million incentive package aimed at facilitating expats' return. This package includes tax breaks, generous loans and benefits to employers who hire returning Israelis, among other things.

In addition the Ministry, along with the Jewish Agency, has recently started organizing aliyah fairs in the US, Canada and England, in which expats are presented with new tax reliefs that were passed especially for them, as well as employment opportunities in Israel.

Paradoxically, the outbreak of the global financial crisis has done wonders for the project: With the American economy entering a period of deep recession, many Israelis who came to the land of endless opportunities hoping to strike gold are now looking for a way out.

A Yedioth Ahronoth reporter visited one such aliyah fair in New York last week. An Israeli couple living there for the past 10 years told him that their return to Israel was prompted by the simple fact that they could no longer afford life in the Big Apple. "We're returning to Israel with a heavy heart," they told her, "our American dream has faded."

Why woo those who chose to leave?

Meanwhile in Israel, more and more people from every economic stratum are beginning to face the effects of that same global crisis: Mass layoffs are being reported daily, unemployment is expected to rise in 2009 and many small businesses and exporters are barely keeping their head above water.

In light of all this, one must wonder whether the funds funneled towards wooing people who left Israel in favor of better salaries and a more convenient lifestyle (which are completely legitimate motive), should not be directed instead towards improving the lives of those who never left. And should we really be thinking about finding jobs for expats when a growing number of Israelis is becoming jobless?

How about offering more tax breaks to working mothers? Holding employment fairs for skilled workers and academics here? Financially supporting companies to enable them to hold on to heir employees?

Yes, $35 million are just a drop in the ocean compared to the billions needed to stabilize the economy and assist a public in distress. But they send a message that the government's priorities lie elsewhere; that while we look to it for help, it chooses to look away.

This isn't to say that former Israelis shouldn't be warmly welcomed in their homeland, or that Israel shouldn't extend help and support to them like it does to any other immigrant. But sending delegations abroad and holding special fairs designed to woo this specific group, which once made a conscious decision to live elsewhere, just seems like an improper way to spend Israeli taxpayers’ money.