Here are just some of his serious findings about what was done to reduce the number of foreign workers in Israel: Foreign workers guilty of nothing were arrested to force their employers to pay levies to the state; detained workers had no interpreter to help them communicate to the authorities; remand hearings were held in cars; and workers were deported without signing a waiver for a hearing.

State Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg also found that the number of workers who left "voluntarily" is lower than the 30 percent figure provided by the Immigration Administration; that bureaucratic and ego struggles prevented the establishment of an immigrant authority and resulted in the existence of six separate databases of foreign workers that required unnecessary expenditures; that close to 3,000 permits were granted without any authorization to foreign workers in industry and above the ceiling set by the government; and that most effort was invested in deporting workers rather than in punishing employers who violated the law.

During his inspections Goldberg found that 29-41 percent of the workers employed with permits in 2004 had illegal worker status for one to twelve months of the year, since their employers had not paid the fees for the permits to employ them. As a result, these workers were subject to deportation at any time.

Nevertheless, noted Goldberg, not only did the state not order the employers to pay interest and late charges or fines on nonpayment of fees, but the "Interior Ministry's policy is to force employers to pay the fees - by arresting and detaining the workers." In March 2004, for example, four Chinese workers whose employment permits had expired were arrested. They were detained for 48 hours, until their employer paid the fees.

The comptroller also reviewed cases in which workers were arrested after their employers illegally transferred them to other employers. Thus 11 Chinese laborers were arrested, also in March 2004, after being in Israel for only a few weeks and paying up to $10,000 for an Israeli work permit. They came with permits to work in industry, but their employer transferred them to a construction site. Four of the workers spent 78 days in jail before an employer was found for them; four were deported after one month in detention, and the other three were deported after a shorter period. The employers were not punished, states the report.

The policeman signed

The immediate deportation of illegal workers was also scrutinized by the comptroller. This practice is supposed to avoid placing workers in jail, but first they must forgo their right to appeal by signing a waiver. The comptroller found that in certain cases no such waiver was signed, while in other cases the waiver was in Hebrew, which the workers did not understand, or the immigration policeman signed instead of the worker.

"It is doubtful whether the detainee's consent was given knowingly or willingly," writes Goldberg.

It also turned out that while the Immigrant Administration reported the voluntary departure of 25,000 foreign workers between September 2002 and the end of 2003, the real number of deportees was 21-29 percent lower. This is because the figure includes legal workers who went abroad on vacation, Jews who came to Israel for a visit and stayed longer than three months and tourists from Western countries.

Contrary to the policy for reducing the number of permits for foreign workers, in 2003 the foreign work permit department of the Industry, Trade and Employment Ministry issued 3,000 more permits than the official allocation for industry - additional permits intended for the extension of existing permits for 2002 for hotels in Eilat, restaurants, artists and experts in the industry and service fields.

Despite the government decision to increase the cost of employing foreign workers, Goldberg wrote that a large portion of the cost-increasing measures had not been implemented and the enforcement of the labor laws against illegal employers was particularly low. Between January 2003 and September 2004, for example, the Industry, Trade and Employment Ministry collected just 17 percent of the fines levied on employers who had illegally employed foreign workers.