Government looking to expand deportation scheme
Foreign Ministry proposes to give illegal African migrants vocational training, $500 in return for 'consensual departure'
The Foreign Ministry is interested in expanding the "consensual deportation" scheme, by which African infiltrators sign a document agreeing to be deported from Israel.
The new $500 and professional training before putting them on a plane back to their home countries, the Israeli Army Radio reported on Thursday.
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According to the report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Mossad, Foreign Ministry and Interior Ministry to pitch creative solutions for the deportation of tens of thousands of illegal infiltrators,
The Foreign Ministry proposed to offer the African migrants vocational courses and give each of them $500 before deporting them from Israel.
Officials at the ministry claimed this was made possible especially after the declaration of independence in South Sudan. A similar program that has been running for the past two years included a few hundred people who received agricultural training, but now the ministry is looking to expand the program, which will require a larger budget.
Netanyahu with African infiltrator (Photo: GPO)
Netanyahu is expected to bring a proposal for the government's approval Sunday calling to build a new detention facility for infiltrators in the south. One such facility already exists in the region.
The initiative, which is estimated to cost an additional NIS 630 million ($169 million), calls for the establishment of a new detainment facility in the south. A new protocol for the deportation of infiltrators is also to be created as part of the plan. The government has already invested NIS 1.5 billion ($400 million) in aspects of the project.
The government ministries will be required to cut their budgets by 2% to finance the plan. The Defense Ministry is expected to contribute half of the NIS 250 million ($67 million) necessary to build the detention facility near Israel's southern border. An additional NIS 100 million ($27 million) will be required to operate the center. The Finance Ministry has proposed to place the center within military facilities with existing infrastructure.
Two weeks ago, Netanyahu visited the southern city of Eilat and met with refugees and infiltrators.
"There is a huge wave of illegal infiltrators from Africa. These are not refugees. We checked how many of them are refugees, and it comes out to less than one thousand," Netanyahu said.
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