There are astounding rumors circulating in Israel's foreign workers' community. Speculation has it that pregnant women - even those here legally - are to be forcibly deported. Supposedly, a special police unit will arrest entire families in a massive campaign to expel unregistered workers. Many migrant workers are panic- stricken.

They have every reason to be.

This nightmare scenario is all too real. The government - under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Minister of Interior Avraham Poraz, and Minister of Labor, Industry and Trade Ehud Olmert - is planning the mass expulsion of "illegal" foreign workers, including those who were legal on arrival.

Let's face it: Some Israelis hold negative stereotypes about foreign workers. Criticism ranges from the understandable, but often mistaken, notion that they rob our own unemployed of jobs to xenophobic intolerance.

But whatever our concerns, would anyone disagree that these strangers who - as practical nurses and home health care companions - attend to our elderly and infirm parents and grandparents deserve special consideration? They do the work we can't, or won't, do; work round-the-clock shifts few Israelis would tolerate; and treat our loved ones with tenderness, respect and dignity.

The Israel Police is handing out yellow leaflets in areas where foreign workers tend to congregate. Oddly, the handouts contain no insignia or signature, and are not printed on government stationery. They give unregistered workers a choice: Declare by the end of August a readiness to leave and actually depart four days before Yom Kippur, or face the wrath of the police. "The Immigration Administration will launch law enforcement activities and arrests against families who do not register," the warning reads.

Some 60,000 of the approximately 300,000 foreign workers now in Israel take care of our elderly. Many, perhaps 35,000, are citizens of the Philippines. Indeed, the Israel Embassy in Manila wants locals to know - and tell their families in Israel - that a crackdown is imminent. Charge d'affaires Roi Dvir says: "All of the humanitarian aspects will be considered, but if they refuse to leave... then they will go to jail."

This perverse policy should be immediately reversed. The harassment should stop. Furthermore, caregivers already in the country should be registered, given work permits for seven years, and then allowed to apply for permanent non- resident alien status. How did a people who virtually invented the concept of labor fairness come to be so exploitative?

"Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates," says Deuteronomy (24: 14). And Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, wrote in his diary: "Build your home in such a way that a stranger may feel happy in your midst." (August 6, 1896).

Part of our moral downfall here results from the mechanism by which foreign workers are "imported" to these shores. According to Adi Laxer of the migrant workers advocacy group Kav Laoved, the system depends on a constant inflow of fresh, inexperienced, uninformed, cheap workers and the jettisoning of "old workers." The state facilitates this trafficking via deportations, arbitrary cancellations of work permits, and in the manner it issues new permits.

Individual workers never benefit from marketplace competition. Instead, they are indentured to the government-franchised agencies that bring them here.

Former labor and social affairs minister Shlomo Benizri explained Israel's scandalous approach this way: " Migrant worker trafficking is the most lucrative business in Israel - a business with a turnover of an estimated $ 3 billion. Unfortunately, it goes all the way to the top. There are interested parties in the most senior governmental ranks, in the Knesset, outside the Knesset, businessmen... I'm telling you, it is very big money...."

Money means power. The franchised agencies control the workers' visas and passports. Charging them commission is nominally illegal, but many Filipino caregivers wind up paying these agencies as much as $ 4,000 just to get here.

Once in Israel, a worker cannot simply move on to a different employer. If a client dies, her or she can quickly find themselves "illegal." Becoming pregnant or leaving an abusive environment can also transform a worker into an illegal. Agencies - supposedly advocates for their workers - often become their exploiters.

It is time to unshackle caregivers from their employers and agencies. It is past time we ceased importing workers as if they were a commodity without rights as human individuals.

Regardless of the general policy toward foreign workers, a special "caregiver" category should be created that would provide permits valid for seven years. After that, the workers could then can apply for resident alien status, or leave. Even with these rights most foreign workers would choose to leave. They are here to make money so they can build better lives in their home countries; most have no interest in becoming Israelis.

But there will be exceptions, and as a modern nation- state we have an obligation to establish a category of citizenship that takes into account the desire of some workers and their offspring to stay permanently, with the full rights and obligations of all Israelis. Jewish civilization obligates us to respect our parents. It certainly does not absolve us from respecting those to whom we delegate their care.