Authorization of the proposal will be considered by the ministerial committee, whose members are Poraz, Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Zevulun Orlev, Minister of Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky, Minister of Immigrant Absorption Tzipi Livni, Acting Transportation Minister Meir Sheetrit, Public Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, and Minister without Portfolio Gideon Ezra.

They are expected to approve the proposal, which Poraz drafted together with Orlev, and was submitted to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the end of last week, to win his approval prior to the upcoming meeting of the ministerial committee.

Poraz said yesterday, "Since this is a government decision of considerable political and social sensitivity it was logical to submit to the ministerial committee a proposal that will be backed by a consensus forged by Minister Orlev, who represents humanistic Judaism in the state. It is doubtful that if I had submitted a proposal alone, as a representative of secular Judaism in the state, it would have won approval."

Under the proposal, children of foreign workers who have been in the country for ten years or more, who are today in high school or who have completed high school, will receive status as permanent residents of the state.

This permanent status will be granted to all those who are eligible to serve in the IDF - in other words, to all that do not have criminal convictions.

Temporary resident status would be conferred on foreign workers' children older than 12, who are in junior high school or (in some cases) high school, and who have been in the country for at least five years or longer. The temporary resident status will be granted on the basis of recommendations made by a professional committee to be appointed by Poraz. The committee's task will be to determine the youths' relationship with the state - do they speak Hebrew, are they being educated in an Israel school, do they have Israeli friends.

Under the proposal, children of foreign workers will receive citizenship status "if they, or their parents, entered Israel legally, or if they were born to parents who entered Israel legally." The parents of such children will receive their residence permits from the Interior Ministry when their children reach the age of 20. The precise status of siblings of such children is not spelled out under the law to be considered by the ministerial committee - but the proposal says that such siblings "will be entitled to remain in Israel so long as their parents are allowed to stay."

The ministerial committee's decision will anchor the status of foreign workers' children "in a one-time arrangement," as the decision phrases it. "This is a one-time attempt to clear up the situation of illegal workers," Minister Orlev explained yesterday. He said, "Anyone who is not of the right age, for example, children in primary schools or nursery schools, will be deported from the country, together with their parents, after the committee confirms the proposed decision."

Defending the proposal, Orlev said that "the state of Israel faces today a sensitive situation, and it must defend its Jewish identity carefully. We are threatened demographically by the Palestinians, and we don't have the luxury of taking on additional demographic threats posed by foreign workers who are not Jewish."

Orlev continued: "Since this is a decision which applies to the Jewish character of the state of Israel, I referred the proposal to the NRP's central committee for approval. I felt that the issue is so crucial that I could not decide on it independently."

Poraz explained that "the proposal submitted to the ministerial committee calls for humanitarian policies toward the children of foreign workers who were born in Israel, or who have lived here for many years and who are rooted in Israeli culture.

"As far as they are concerned, they have no other country, and uprooting them from Israel and deporting them to their native lands would be traumatic. Even if their parents `sinned' and live in Israel today illegally, the children are not guilty."

Poraz said that the proposal applies to the children of about 800 workers but Orlev, said it affects only a few dozen.