The decision determines that citizenship will be granted only to those children of foreign workers who were born in Israel, have lived here continuously and are at least age 10. How many such individuals are there? These are the fact and figures:

In all of Tel Aviv, according to the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Education Authority, there are 197 pupils with foreign passports in grades seven and up. Some 340 such pupils study in grades one through six. Generously assuming that 100 of them are at least 10 years old, there are approximately 300 pupils with foreign passports in Tel Aviv.

Based on data released by the Knesset's research and information center last year, only about 10 percent of children of foreign workers above age 10 live outside Tel Aviv. In other words, there are approximately 330 such children in the entire country. However, about 10 percent of this number consists of children of diplomats, meaning that there are only 300 children of foreign workers above age 10.

Of this number, at least 20 percent were not born in Israel. Sigal Rosen, of Moked - the "Hotline for Migrant Workers", says these are the children of South American foreign workers who came to Israel with their parents. That leaves less than 250 children of foreign workers who meet the conditions of the government decision.

In Tel Aviv, the registration of children of foreign workers in schools is very well documented. Assuming that school registration in other towns and cities is less well documented, or that there are children of foreign workers who are not reported as such (Rosen estimates that one-third of the children of foreign workers live outside Tel Aviv), it is possible that another 100 children meet the conditions, bringing the total to 350 children of foreign workers who qualify for citizenship, with a generous margin of error.

However, even those that meet all the conditions will not have an easy time proving it. They will have to prove they were born in Israel, but Rosen states that most of the children of foreign workers do not have birth certificates. In addition, they will have to prove that their parents entered Israel legally. By the nature of things, the majority of families no longer have the passport with the stamped Israeli entry visa, either because the passport was replaced and remitted to the embassy, or it was lost.

So even if the Interior Ministry will be bighearted, and make do with affidavits as proof of birth in Israel and lawful entry of the country, less than 350 children will receive citizenship. The proposal calls for citizenship to be offered to the other members of these children's families. Assuming that each of them in Israel has a mother and one sibling (the fathers have been deported), at most there are 1,000 people entitled to citizenship.

If the population authority behaves like the Population Registry, and places every possible obstacle in the path to citizenship, less than 100 children will receive citizenship. Together with the other members of their families, that total comes to less than 300.

The children who were left out

The proposal that will be approved today is less generous than the partial proposal made by the former interior minister, Avraham Poraz, who required residency in Israel of at least five years and did not stipulate that the child had to be born in Israel. Rosen say there are about 20 children of foreign workers age 18 or more, but that only four of them were born here. The others - despite being culturally Israeli through and through - can now expect to be deported.

Another 300 children are enrolled in elementary schools, but are not yet 10 years old. They, too, will be left without any legal status. It is hard to see how Israel will deport them, meaning that even after the government decision, the problem of the children of foreign workers will still not be resolved. There will be a need to naturalize more children.

One of the main reasons for the discrepancy between the above mentioned data and the Interior Ministry numbers is that many families with children have left Israel, but this has not been recorded. Another reason is that the records also include the children of diplomats and high-ranking employees in the high-tech sector.

Who are the children who remained in Israel after their fathers were deported, or the families were urged to voluntarily leave the country? A Moked document states that they are "those families that cannot go back: families that have been here for about 20 years, families with children that have diseases that cannot be treated in their home countries, intermarriages (an African father and a Filipino mother, for example) in which it is unclear where they can go, or how their mestizo children who speak perfect Hebrew and good English, but do not at all know the local languages of their father and mother, will fare." Israel can afford to show generosity toward the few hundred children in this category.

Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz contends that today's decision will apply to more than 2,000 children of foreign workers between the ages of 10 and 18.

"The workers of the population authority worked hard, they went through the lists name by name," says Pines-Paz. "There are no real reports in the education system on the number of children, because they are protecting them."

Pines-Paz claims that his proposal is better than that of Poraz, since "he said 650 children, and I am saying an infinite number." Pines-Paz promises that the children will not be asked to produce the original documents. "We will most certainly meet them halfway," he said.