Dozens of pregnant African women are living in hiding, in order to have their babies here rather than risking their lives and those of their babies in African hospitals. The Israeli cabinet is impervious to this plight. The prime minister has set a goal - deporting 100,000 foreign workers or more - and the police must comply. Even if we accept the premise that this policy will help us secure the important goal of reducing unemployment, which may justify the campaign of deportation and terror against tens of thousands of people, including children, what happened in the cabinet meeting Monday night reflects not only stupidity and folly but also inadequate procedure and ethical corruption. The resolutions submitted by the Finance Ministry proposed cutting the quota of foreign workers to 40,000 from 61,000, including a cut in the number of foreign farmhands to 19,000 from 28,000. The treasury further offered to force employers to pay taxes on their foreign workers in the value of 20 percent of their wages. The treasury perceives these two measures as complementing deportation. Combined, the package is to reduce the number of foreign workers and make more jobs available for the locals.

But the farmers' lobby stepped in, Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz pleaded with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and the premier yielded. The quota will not be lowered and the tax will be 10 percent instead of 20 percent. The farmers and Agriculture Ministry argue that there is a big difference between deportation of workers who have lived illegally in Israel for many years and bringing over workers who get visas based on clear criteria and for a given period of time. They are right, except that any such legal worker can turn overnight to an illegal one, because of the policy the cabinet seeks to perpetuate, which stipulates that a foreign worker's visa expires immediately once he leaves the employer who brought him here. According to the Interior Ministry, there are at least 2,000 such "illegal" Thai workers in Israel, who came here with working visas and abandoned their employers for various reasons. Some employers did not pay them, some did not provide minimum standards of living and others just weren't as competitive as others.

Industry and Trade Minister Ehud Olmert, who is charged with finding jobs for unemployed Israelis whose national insurance allowances have been mercilessly slashed, has recently allowed employers to bring in another 2,000 Thai workers to replace the 2,000 "defectors." As man-power agencies make millions of dollars on the backs of the new Thai workers , the immigration authorities go on a manhunt for their elusive countrymen. Those caught will be incarcerated and deported, sometimes before they have even had enough time to earn the money they owe to the brokers who exploited them.

Some of the Thai workers who will be replaced next year are employed at the Sharon family's Sycamore Ranch. The ranch has a permit to employ 16 foreign workers . Last year, when a proposal was made to increase the quota of farmhands to 28,000 from 22,000, Sharon - under advice from the attorney general - recused himself from this debate. Eventually, however, he could not hold back and raised his hand in favor of the increase. This time around he also practiced little restraint: With one hand, he voted for accelerating deportations, while with the other he voted for bringing in thousands of new farmhands. Katz himself, who in the past was associated with an agency that brought foreign construction workers to Israel, stated when he took office that he would not be involved in any decisions pertaining to foreign workers , in order to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, even though he is no longer affiliated with Neot Hagolan, the agency that his wife used to run. Katz said yesterday that since his wife is no longer active in the field, he is free to get involved. The committee charged with reviewing possible conflicts of interest, which works with the state comptroller, sided with Katz.

It is probably true that Israelis are reluctant to work in the fields for minimum wage and there may be no other solution except hiring Thai workers . But according to farmers' accounts, there are plenty of Thai workers already in the country and there is hardly any need to bring over more of them. Last year, the cabinet decided to set up an authority to deal with migrant workers , but now the treasury is clipping its wings; it was decided several times before to impose taxes in order to make the employment of foreigners less lucrative, but now interested parties have torpedoed those decisions. Indeed, why cut quotas and impose taxes - which would have generated NIS 350 million - when you can cut allowances for people with disabilities, widows and the elderly, and deport entire families with such ease?