An initiative of the Israeli Immigration Policy Center: The Deposit Law
The law on deposits from infiltrator funds, law to prevent infiltration and to ensure the exit of migrants from Israel (legislative amendments and executive order) 2014*
On September 22 2014, the High Court of Justice canceled for the second time clauses from the Law Against Infiltration (Amendment 4). Following this, in an effort to find a solution to the new situation, the IIPC initiated and promoted a law intended to guarantee the exit of the migrant population residing in Israel. The bill obligates people employing infiltrators to deposit a percentage of their salaries in a dedicated fund where the money will be saved until the infiltrator leaves the country.
The Deposit Law was intended to make the infiltrators leave willingly, since Israel avoids sending them by force to their home countries, even though most infiltrators in Israel can return there with no fear, except for a small minority of people who would face danger in Sudan or Eritrea. Israel does not deport the infiltrators for several reasons:
The decision to avoid expelling Sudanese citizens to Sudan is mainly technical: Israel has no diplomatic relations with this country, and therefore infiltrators can only be returned there through third countries and with cooperation from the returnees.
The difficulty in repatriating Eritreans stems mainly from the fact that the Eritrean government refuses to accept citizens returned to it forcibly. Eritrea conditions the voluntary return of its citizens with paying a tax amounting to 2% of their entire income while away from the country. In addition to the direct income this tax brings the government, the economy of Eritrea relies on money from work migration: The funds sent to Eritrea by its citizens abroad constitute a third of the country’s GNP. It can be said that Eritrea’s government depends on its main and almost exclusive branch of export today: migrants.
Therefore, the Deposit Law was intended to create a double incentive for leaving Israel voluntarily:
- Depositing a certain percentage of the migrants income to the deposit fund will stop the stream of funds sent to families in home countries, and thus will reduce the incentive to remain in Israel.
- After some time, the money in the fund will accumulate to a respectable sum that would encourage migrants to leave in order to receive it.
The law can be especially effective in the case of infiltrators from Eritrea, which constitute a majority among the migrant population in Israel, since they are a significant source of pressure on the Eritrean government to ensure their safe return. On the one hand the stream of money flowing to the country will stop, but on the other hand the deposit funds will grow to hundreds of millions of shekels that would be released to the country’s small economy immediately upon the migrants’ leaving the country.
The legislative process:
October 2014
Work on the bill began when the interior minister was Gideon Sa’ar, before the Law Against Infiltration was struck down by the High Court of Justice for the second time (amendment 4). After the High Court of Justice ruling the need to create a mechanism that would hurt the economic incentive to remain in Israel has become more urgent, and a bill was raised in a special discussion of the Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environmental Protection Committee in October 2014.
From the protocol of the discussion:
Jonathan Jacubowicz, head of public policy at the ICIP:
“In order to cope with the mass of people who are here, we need another tool apart from the holding facilities. Therefore we propose the establishment of a fund, similar to the ones currently in existence for legal foreign workers, where about 40% of the income of migrants who are already in Israel and working can be deposited. They will be able to receive the money only when they leave the country or alternatively when they receive refugee status. We want to negate the economic incentive to stay here and thus to also prevent people from coming here. The money they are sending home, we can save for them, and thus we will increase the incentives both to leave Israel and to never come here in the first place. In addition, it will save the country a lot of money because we would not need to pay them in order to leave unless they want to leave and receive the money themselves. I think this fund is vital in order to complete any legislation the Knesset would pass on the issue and it needs to complement the holding facilities. (1) (1 Protocol of meeting 384 of the Knesset Committee for Internal Affairs and Environment Protection, Knesset 19, p. 26 [6 October 2014]).
For further reading:
Original bill as filed by the IIPC
Then-interior minister Gideon Sa’ar adopted the IIPC’s position on immigration policy and even promoted the initiative in a special session of the committee, after several weeks, on 7 October 2014:
“I would like to present here another idea which is not part of the legislation being written following the ruling: We need to find additional incentives, economic ones, and I think we also need to go for a mechanism where part of the wage of migrants who work, and this is the majority today – will be placed in a fund and would be returned to each person leaving the country when they leave. The sums will be saved, of course.” (1 Protocol of meeting 385 of the Knesset Committee for Internal Affairs and Environment Protection, Knesset 19, p. 5 [27 October 2014])
The Deposit Law was raised as part of the legislative process of legislating the Law Against Infiltrators and to Ensure their Leaving the Country, as an indirect part of the Foreign Workers’ Law. From the start, the schedules for legislating the law were short, since there was a need to meet the 90-day deadline imposed by the High Court of Justice. Furthermore, the timetables became even more stressful when the coalition fell apart in the middle of the process: the prime minister effectively announced elections on the day the bill passed the first reading at the Knesset plenum in early December 2014.
The IIPC took part in marathon discussion at the committee and even had some comments on the law memorandum. Due to the time-pressured timetable, clauses dealing with the deposit of foreign workers who are not infiltrators were removed from the legislation. Even though the government fell apart, the law passed the second and third readings a mere week and a day after the first reading, and only hours before the Knesset disbanded itself.
In the text of the law as it was passed, there are two main clauses: The first one includes the depositing of 20% from the wage of an infiltrator to a deposit fund, and the infiltrator would receive these after leaving the country or after receiving refugee status in Israel. The money is saved for the infiltrators in any case and cannot be confiscated. The second clause obligates an employer to deposit in the fund a sum equal to 16 percent of the monthly wage of an infiltrator at the expense of the employer. This sum serves as a substitute of sorts to pension deposits, compensation in case of termination etc. From this second component, a small percentile will be taken away so long as an infiltrator remains in the country after he was expected leave, up to six months from when he was asked to leave, at which time the entire part of the money paid by the employer will be deducted.
As one would expect, non-governmental organization helping the infiltrators have announced that they would appeal the deposit law immediately after it was passed in 2014. An appeal was filed only in March 2017, when the government was intending to begin enforcing the law. On April 19 the High Court of Justice rejected the request for an injunction.
Enforcing the law
In the original bill it was determined that the law would be in force within six months from the day on which the minister announced the establishment of the fund. Representatives of the IIPC appeared before the Knesset’s Internal Affairs Committee and demanded that the precise date for the establishment of the fund would be dictated by law. Following this, the law eventually forced the finance minister to announce the establishment of the fund within six months from the day the law was published, with an option to extend the setting-up period only with approval from the minister of interior affairs and the Knesset’s Internal Affairs Committee (clause 9).
In spite of this, the establishment of the fund was delayed and the law did not enter into force for a long time. In July 2015 the IIPC turned to Likud MK Yoav Kisch, and the latter raised a query with the finance minister, asking to learn why the establishment of the fund was being delayed. The finance minister responded that the fund was only expected to be establishment close to November 2015 but this did not happen. Only near the middle of 2016 there was some development on promoting enforcement of the law, and another amendment to it was published. Finally, the law was enforced for the first time on 1 May 2017.
6.10.2014
30.12.2014Easing regulations in the Deposit Act
Memorandum of the Deposit Law Regulations: Exceptions. (November 2017)
In March 2017, the pro infiltrators organizations filed a petition to the High Court against the Deposit Law. Following this, the state succumbed to pressure and set exceptions to the law: 2017 and demanded that the exemption apply only in humanitarian cases and based on the level of wages.
The memorandum of the law was voted in the Labor and Welfare Committee in July 2018, but following strenuous activity by the IIPC vis-à-vis Knesset members and ministers, the vote failed and regulations were returned to the Interior Minister for redrafting. After a discussion in the Interior Ministry, the clause excluding men with families was deleted and replaced by the entire population of women. In addition, it is stipulated that the Minister of the Interior will report to the committee each year on the number of people to whom the regulations for exceptions to the law apply.
The Deposit Law is the only effective tool left in the hands of the State of Israel in dealing with infiltrators and their families in Israel, a population that other laws have omitted: family owners were exempt from the obligation to stay in a sick facility and deportation to third countries. A sweeping exemption for families from the Deposit Law is also unacceptable because according to all available sources of information, women with children have no impediment to returning to Eritrea. Moreover, the women’s organizations that sought to join as friends of a court in a petition against the law explicitly admitted that the exemption granted to family owners from staying in a sick facility resulted in increased births, often against the will of the women, who were pressured by their spouses.
Repeal of the Deposit Act
HCJ 2293/17
ASSAF Petition – Aid Organization, Refugee and Immigrant Center, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, ARDC – Center for the Advancement of African Refugees, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Association, Restaurants in Israel and others.
On April 23, 2020, the High Court ordered the repeal of the Deposit Law, arguing that it was unconstitutional. Supreme Court justices rejected state statements that the law was found to be effective in eradicating the infiltrators ‘motivation to immigrate to Israel and ruled that the directive to cut infiltrators’ wages was illegal and that the state should return their money to foreign workers. As a result, the law was repealed.
The Israeli Immigration Policy Center is currently working to formulate a new version of this legislation and bring it up for discussion around the cabinet table.
