The draft bill, presented by Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz, proposed granting foreign workers' children aged 10 to 18 permanent residence and naturalizing them after completing military service. The parents would receive permission to reside here legally until the children reached the age of 21.

The cabinet decided to vote on this proposal in two weeks.

The bill, which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon supports, will be debated together with the interior minister's bill regarding Israel's immigration policy toward illegal aliens, including foreign workers and their children, foreign spouses of Israelis and relatives of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said she objects to granting permanent status to children of foreign workers who are illegal aliens.

"The debate on the condition of the foreign workers' children must not be separated from all the illegal aliens, and the problem should be approached in a comprehensive way," she said. "I see no difference between a child of a foreign worker and a relative of an immigrant from the former Soviet Union in Israel illegally."

In his bill, Pines-Paz says deporting the children to their parents' country of origin "would involve cultural exile to a country with which the child has no cultural affiliation."

Livni counters that this argument could also be applied to a Palestinian child living in Israel illegally. If such a child were deported to Gaza, he too would suffer cultural exile due to the great difference in living standards.

Speaking as absorption minister, Livni said, "The children of the former Soviet immigrants, whose parents uproot them from their countries without asking them and bring them to Israel, a country with a different culture and language, suffer cultural exile."