Israel

In Israel there is a sizable population of children, known colloquially as “sabra ghost”, who were born to migrant workers brought into Israel on temporary visas. After the first intifada of the 1980s, Palestinian workers were no longer welcome in Israel. Labour migration was put forth as a ‘temporary’ solution to labour shortages. Many migrants who initially entered with tourist or work visas have fallen out of status. Under pressure from civil society, Israel enacted one-off naturalization schemes in 2005 and 2010 with very stringent selection criteria to provide a humanitarian solution for about 1,000 Israeli-raised, Hebrew speaking children of migrant workers. Such options have not been available for children born to African asylum seekers, who began arriving en masse—mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, via the Sinai desert—between 2007 and 2012.