As the phenomenon of illegal migration increased, the number of asylum requests filed in Israel has risen. In the early 2000s it stood at several hundred per year. As of 2017, more than 10,000 asylum requests are filed in Israel every year. Most of the asylum seekers are migrants from safe countries like the Ukraine and Georgia, who entered Israel on a tourist visa. In these cases, the asylum request is usually intended to gain time in order to work in Israel illegally without being exposed to the risk of deportation.

The Israeli Immigration Policy Center is acting in order to raise awareness of this new and troubling phenomenon.

Yonatan Jacubowicz, representative of the Israeli Immigration Policy Center, was interviewed by Channel 2 regarding the issue.

חדשות 2: גל המסתננים החדש

In addition, the IIPC revealed in a report in Yisrael Hayom that since the Interior Ministry took from the UN High Commissioner on Refugees on 2009 the responsibility to examine asylum requests filed in Israel and started examining them internally, more than 50,000 requests from migrants from more than 100 countries were filed, the absolute majority safe countries. The phenomenon points to the fact that the Israeli asylum system is being taken advantage of, is collapsing under the weight of requests, and the issue is generally going out of hand.