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| By Nurit Wurgaft | "Haaretz", May 10, 2007 |
He lost his passport - will they let his daughter stay?
The rejection surprised Galit Tufo. She was waiting for a letter from the Interior Ministry informing her parents of her new legal status. They were sure their daughter was eligible for legal status in Israel. After all, she met all of the criteria: She was born in Israel, studies in a junior high school and speaks excellent Hebrew. Therefore, when Galit was summoned to the Interior Ministry with her parents, she was glad. "They just said 'come,' and nothing else, so my expectations rose. I didn't think they would tell me that I had been rejected." When an Interior Ministry clerk told her and her parents that her request had been rejected, she asked to know the reason why. The clerk explained, she says, "one of my parents, Mom told me afterwards that it was her, entered the country under a different name and with a South African passport." Galit understands this is not standard procedure, because both of her parents are from Ghana, but she says, "I didn't understand why it was so important. It happened a long time ago and what's it got to do with anything? After all, I'm not to blame for the fact that my mother entered with a passport not listed in her name. I shouldn't have to suffer because of that." Galit is one several children of migrant laborers who sought legal status in Israel by virtue of a government decision some two years ago. The decision was born out of a desire to arrange the status of those born in Israel or who have lived here most of their lives, and for whom expulsion would be a kind of cultural exile. So far, the Interior Ministry has received 823 requests, which, including the children's family members, includes 2,350 people. Some 394 children and several hundred members of their families have already received legal status, 397 were rejected and many have submitted appeals. Thirty-two requests are pending the acquisition of the necessary documents. Many of the rejected requests came from children who did not meet the age or duration in Israel requirement. However, requests from children, such as Galit, who meet the criteria but whose parents entered Israel illegally or cannot prove otherwise, have also been rejected. Fifty-eight appeals were filed by children rejected on the basis of the clause requiring legal entry by their parents. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and the Hotline for Migrant Workers appealed to the High Court of Justice as far back as August 2005 to eliminate this controversial clause. The High Court of Justice is to hear the appeal in another month or so. Attorney Michal Pinchuk, of ACRI, says it is hard to exaggerate the extent of the emotional anguish incurred by the children as a result of this. She says, "This is an arbitrary act that misses the objective of the arrangement and punishes the children for their parents' actions." Haaretz extensively covered the story of Herzliya Kanes, a native-born Israeli and first-grade student who was four and a half months short, according to the criteria, of receiving legal status. In her fight to obtain legal status in Israel for herself and her parents, she went as far as the Knesset. The attorney representing her, Sagiv Rotenberg, argued in the appeal that there should be no discrimination between children of the same age just because one was born a few months after the other. She is still awaiting a response.
The curse of the missing documents
Abigail and Nancy Kofi are 10 and 9, respectively. They are both in elementary school and are too young to understand what it is that the Interior Ministry is refusing to grant them, but they know that many of their fellow classmates have received it and they haven't, and they have no idea why. The reasoning does sound a little outlandish. Their father, David Kofi, arrived in Israel from Ghana in 1999 on a tour organized by his church. Since then, his passport has been renewed several times at the Ghanaian embassy, but he did not hold on to the original passport. Documentation of his entry into the country has disappeared and therefore his daughters' request for legal status has been rejected. Arthur Javadov Blarnako's request was rejected, according to the rejection letter he received last month, because "a birth certificate was not presented to the committee and regarding the birth certificate you transferred to the population registry office, there was some concern that it was forged." Arthur, 13, a native of Turkmenistan, came to Israel with his mother when he was five. He says, "Mom told me that we got a negative answer, I don't know why." Is he upset with his mother for bringing him to a country that is imposing so many difficulties on him? "No," he says, "it's good for me here." The lawyer representing him on behalf of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, Yonatan Berman, argued that according to the government decision, a birth certificate is not required and an unsubstantiated suspicion of a forged certificate cannot serve as a pretext for rejection. Galit is also not angry, even though she only learned of the circumstances of her mother's arrival in Israel in the cab on the way back from the Interior Ministry. "I understood that my parents didn't have much of a choice," she says, "because it was difficult to enter Israel and Mom wanted to join my father. I understand her. If she hadn't come, I wouldn't be here now." Until the meeting at the Interior Ministry, she says, "I was very happy because I thought now there'd be a free feeling, with no fear and no police coming to catch my parents." Her father was arrested on more than one occasion. When she was eight, she remembers "they nabbed him on the street and didn't believe him when he said that he had a daughter, so they brought him home, with cuffs on his hands and legs. I started crying. The police were convinced he had a daughter, but still took him." At first, she says, "I thought they only took brown people and I didn't understand why. Then they also arrested the fathers of friends of mine from the Philippines and from other countries and some of the kids in the class suddenly went away." Her parents, tired of the police raids, occasionally discussed the possibility of returning to Ghana, but Galit always objected. "I imagined that there were lions and snakes there and families that sold one child to work in a fishing village, because that's what you see on television about Africa," she says. She was also not appeased when her parents said that Accra, the capital, is a regular city, like Tel Aviv. The meeting at the Interior Ministry took place two days before Passover and the family was given two weeks to submit an appeal. Galit does not rule out the possibility that the intention here was to impose obstacles, as the ministry was closed during the intermediary days of Passover. She likes Israel, but now she is angry. "If they want me to leave, they should just say so and not say 'your request has not been accepted.'" Do you think it's personal? "When I was there, I felt it was personal. I don't think it's logical that an entire country doesn't want you to be there. It's not logical that after you are born here, they say you don't belong, that you're superfluous. I asked the man who was there, 'why do I have to go away? I haven't done anything bad.' He said, 'We aren't the ones who decide, it's the government. We're just trying to help.' I told him, 'you're not trying to help, you're just sitting here and looking.' I started crying and left."
'This is my culture'
Perhaps your parents made a mistake when they came here? "I don't think so. True, they could have gone to another place. There are other countries, but here I feel connected. All of my friends are here, this is my language, this is my culture. And I have the opportunity to live in Israel, not everyone has that." After this conversation, she rushed to a Scouts' activity in her neighborhood, Hatikva in South Tel Aviv. Afterwards, she met with friends, with whom she does not share her troubles with the Interior Ministry. "It's hard to talk about it with someone whose parents are not going through it," she says. She doesn't think about the possibility that her appeal will not be accepted, because "that doesn't seem logical to me and I don't want to panic," she says. If she does receive legal status, the first thing she wants to do is travel to Ghana to see her big sister, whom she knows only from photographs. The Interior Ministry spokeswoman responded that every decision has its criteria and it is essential to follow them in the initial stage exactly as they appear. She further stated that discussions are currently underway in the appeals committee, whose members include officials from the Social Affairs Ministry and the National Insurance Institute, and it has the authority to decide on each case. According to the spokeswoman, the guiding principle of the committee is to be lenient and not to take a stringent approach. Interior Minister Roni Bar-On, according to his associates, does not intend to leave the handling of the matter exclusively in the hands of the committee, but will show an interest in its decisions. The minister, who is behind several generous revisions to the decision, even has said in the past that in his opinion, children need not pay for their parents' deeds.
