Since the early 1990s, Israel has enacted a managed migration scheme for low-skilled foreign workers.
Originally designed to replace Palestinian cross-border workers from the Occupied Territories in the
secondary labour market, in 2007 foreign workers comprised 8.7% of the private-sector labour force, 40%
of them without permits. Foreign workers are employed in three major sectors: construction, agriculture
and home-care for the elderly. The latter has become the largest and fastest-growing sector employing
foreign workers, mainly women. The Israeli temporary labour migration scheme is characterised by a
strong dependency of certain sectors on foreign workers; disengagement of governmental agencies from
direct involvement in recruitment, inspection of work conditions, effective enforcement of labour laws, and
provision of services for foreign workers; a strong emphasis on temporariness coupled with lengthy and
sometimes indefinite extension of possible stay (up to 63 months and potentially more); and lastly, by an
entrenched client politics that guides policies on quota setting, permit allocation and employer subsidies.
Recent government decisions that seek to overcome the distorting effects of the scheme on the Israeli
labour market, while tempering deep-rooted norms that violate workers' labour and human rights, are
heading in the right direction. However, they are also destined to fail if the scheme is not substantially
revised in all its parts rather than through a patchwork of focused and segmented measures.
