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Africans Coming to Israel in Search of Work Are Not Refugees
(Jerusalem Post) Yonatan Jakubowicz - The majority of illegal infiltrators into Israel, who came from Eritrea and Sudan, do not meet the criteria for refugee status according to the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Most of them explicitly stated upon arrival that they had come to Israel in search of work. (A minimum-wage salary for one month in Israel is the same as the average salary for three years' work in Eritrea.) According to UN figures, 85% of the infiltrators are young men, a distinct characteristic of economic migrants, as opposed to refugees, who typically flee for their lives together with their families. All infiltrators have passed through at least one other country in which there was an active branch of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Article 31 of the UN charter explicitly states that rights should be awarded only to refugees who come directly from the country in which they were being persecuted. As a percentage of Israel's population, Israel has absorbed 10 times as many infiltrators as France, 20 times as many as Italy and 100 times as many as Spain. We're talking about a critical mass of people that Israel certainly is not obligated to absorb.