The Population Registry ministerial committee will hold its first debate tomorrow over Interior Minister Avraham Poraz's plan to give legal status to hundreds of Israeli-born foreign workers' children and their parents. These children are living in Israel with no civil rights and are non-existent in the eyes of the law.

When Poraz, who heads the committee, was appointed interior minister in March, he pledged to change Israel's immigration policy and grant permanent legal status to those ineligible to become Israeli citizens by virtue of the Law of Return.

Those individuals include Israel Defense Forces soldiers, the elderly, non-Jewish parents of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and the children of foreign workers.

At the end of one year in office, Poraz has been only partially successful. He enabled Israeli citizens who married foreigners abroad to bring their spouses into Israel immediately after their marriage. When Shas ruled the ministry, the couples had to wait six months before the foreign spouse was permitted to enter the country. As of today, homosexual foreign spouses also will be able to become permanent residents with civil and social rights.

But Poraz failed to make a real change in Israel's immigration policy that could affect the country's demographic composition, such as naturalizing foreign workers' children or giving permanent status to senior non-Jewish citizens from the former Soviet Union.

Poraz's desire for an overall civil reform was torpedoed by the former attorney general Eliyakim Rubinstein, who maintained that the entire cabinet should decide on issues that could change Israeli society.

The prime minister accepted Rubinstein's position, and set up the Population Registry ministerial committee, which does not always agree with Poraz. The panel recently rejected the minister's recommendation to grant two elderly non-Jewish parents of immigrants from the former Soviet Union permanent resident status for budgetary reasons. Poraz's initiative to naturalize soldiers after partial military service is still pending cabinet approval.

The Population Registry estimates that 10,000 foreign workers' children live in Israel, and therefore, the status of some 30,000 foreign workers must be regulated. Poraz rejected these figures, and prefers those of the Knesset's research center indicating that 1,987 foreign workers' children live in Israel, almost all of them in Tel Aviv.

Poraz will recommend naturalization of foreign workers' children, from the age of 9, in stages. "Today these children are in fact non-existent," Poraz said. "Although Israel is the only country they know, they have no identity card number, and therefore, cannot be given medical insurance, get a passport, and visit their land of origin. They become prisoners here, and when they graduate from high school, they cannot find regular work or continue to higher education."

Poraz said there are 300 foreign workers' children attending school starting from third grade, which means the committee will have to regulate the legal status of between 1,000 and 1,500 children and their parents.

The chairman of the Knesset's Committee for the Advancement of the Status of the Child, MK Michael Melchior (Meimad), dismissed the religious ministers' fears that giving foreign workers' children identity cards is a threat to the country's Jewish character.

Melchior's stand is boosted by a recent study conducted by the Joint, Brookdale Institute, and Tel Aviv Municipality indicating that the foreign workers are not a demographic threat to Israeli society. According to the study, 1,761 foreign workers' children up to the age of five live in Tel Aviv. Two-thirds of the foreign workers' families are small, with one child here, and 70 percent of the mothers are afraid of being deported or arrested. Most of the mothers - 74 percent - do not expect their children to live in Israel when they grow up.