Following the severe escalation in the number of crimes committed by illegal aliens, the police began opening criminal files over the offense of infiltrating Israel. The police also began collecting DNA samples from the migrants. Following the move, NGOs helping the migrants convened a special discussion in the committee in light of the damage to the migrants’ “privacy”. The Israel Immigration Policy Center sent a representative to the discussion and presented comparative studies from other countries as well as statistics of criminal behaviour that justify the establishment  of  DNA database.

From the committee’s protocol:

Jonathan Jacubowicz, head of public policy at the Israel Immigration Policy Center

“In Switzerland they are legislating a law following the rise in illegal migrant delinquency, allowing the sampling of DNA from asylum seekers, and in the US there is a federal law from 2009 that enables to take a DNA sample from any person committing an offense, including illegal aliens and including asylum seekers.

For the purpose of establishing the databases, the question should first of all be how come there is no database on a population of 50,000 people? This is the question that needs to be asked, not why you decided to enforce the law if it is part of the law. Secondly, I would like to note that this is a population that does not have a normal demographic breakdown, it is mainly comprised of young men, some 85% of the illegal aliens are young men. Surely if we compare this population to the population of young men of the same age then we will see that the level of criminality is similar to the rest of society. But since this is not a society with a normal demographic breakdown and it is very hard to find a home address then this needs to be taken into account. We need to consider when we examine a move that without a doubt harms people’s privacy. Since there is a phenomenon of Israeli citizens living in South Tel Aviv who have lost their sense of security, and I think we as lawmakers should give the enforcement agencies as many means as they can have to give the residents of Israel the strongest sense of security.

Protocol No. 2 from the May 7 2013