Foreign Workers in Israel: Global Perspectives

THREE The Evolution of Government Policies and the Migrant Labor Employment System

It’s a system of revolving doors, you deport, and at the same time you allow employers to bring in new workers. In many cases it is not for the sake of employment but for the sake of trade [in employment permits]. —Ran Cohen, chair, Knesset Foreign Workers Committee “The flow of labor migration,” writes Douglas Massey, has created a “postmodern paradox,” stemming from the nature of globalization: “While the global economy unleashes powerful forces that produce larger and more diverse flows of migrants from developing to developed countries, it simultaneously creates conditions within developed countries that promote the implementation of restrictive immigration policies” (Massey 1999, 312). Particularly in the wake of September 11, and the general climate of global economic and political polarization, Western governments are reconsidering their immigration policies. Recently, in Europe and the United States, more stringent immigration policies have stirred the public into a debate over the establishment of tighter national border control, tougher naturalization criteria, and more stringent measures against illegal migration. In addition, these restrictive migration policies brought to the foreground the role of migrants in receiving societies, and the policies instated to reconcile the needs of the state and the opportunities of migrants. This chapter reviews the labor migration policies in Israel and their subsequent evolution. It documents the various ways in which Israeli governmental bodies have attempted to regulate the entry and employment of labor migrants: a quota system, the binding system,1 an arrangement wherein a visa and work permit are issued on behalf of a worker but attached exclusively to a designated employer. It also depicts current attempts to turn working immigration 45 THREE The Evolution of Government Policies and the Migrant Labor Employment System into global-institutionalized human trafficking through high court jurisdiction and international state agreements.This process is gradually empowering international semineutral nods of power such as the United Nations (UN) or ministries sending countries that work on global levels to balance and modulate local politics. Each of these regulatory spheres has been plagued by similar problems : multiple interests have acted to fragment government policy formation and implementation as well as regulate human trafficking all over the globe. Inconsistent and conflicting administrative actions have become even more vulnerable to the corrupting influences of private employers and employment agencies that are working together to sustain illegal and exploitive employment practices. In this chapter the institutional framework of labor migration is delineated . Also traced is the evolution of a policy that constrains political action and administrative intervention with respect to the operation of quotas and the binding system. The chapter thus shows how policy has created a series of anomalies that eventually stripped the government of its ability to control practice and goal achievement instead of transferring those responsibilities to nongovernmental stakeholders, particularly employers. Quite unexpectedly, the government’s regulatory mechanisms have led to contradictory results (Asiskovitz 2004; Rosenhek 2000).2 These interactions—between the institutional framework, policy mechanisms, and stakeholders—may well represent an example of Pressman and Wildavsky’s notion of the complexity of joint action (1984), namely, the process of policy coordination among various stakeholders . As a result of this complexity, government has been unable to effectively challenge or even mediate among vested interests, nor has it been able to protect the basic rights of the migrant laborers (Freeman 1995). The chapter begins with an outline of the legal institutional framework that guides the policy process. It then moves to a description of the evolution of administrative policy, together with a review of implementation that exposes problems stemming from the institutional framework and its vulnerability to interference by private-market stakeholders. The final part of the chapter shows how the policy framework converges with the foreign worker employment system to encourage institutional pathologies. The Legal Framework Laws of Entry and Civil Status The legality of migrants’ entrance has far-reaching implications regarding their physical well-being and prospects of integration and assimilation into the host society. The context of migrants’ employment environment, in particular migrants’ ability to take advantage of certain opportunities, resources, Foreign Workers in Israel 46 and their respective bundle of rights, is meaningfully dependent on which side of the law the workers are standing. The bundle of rights accrued by migrants is differentiated in a sense that certain social and employment laws may be inclusive of noncitizens, however, at the same time, their temporary status excludes them from certain social and...