As Soviet Jews Seek Other Destinations, Israel Blocks the Exits

By Frank Collins

The new Soviet law granting passports to all citizens has resulted in an immediate, sharp drop in the huge numbers of Soviet Jewish immigrants arriving in Israel. The previous deluge of immigrants has changed into a mere trickle, perhaps permanently.

The flood of Jews leaving the Soviet Union began in 1989 when, in response to pressure from abroad, the Soviet government lifted most restrictions on Jewish emigration.

Deteriorating economic and social conditions in the Soviet Union, which were feared to present a special threat to Jews, gave a tremendous impetus to their newly permitted emigration. At the height of the wave of the emigration, more than 20,000 Jews per month streamed out of the country. Even last February, when Scud missiles were failing, 10,000 Jews arrived in Israel.

All of this halted July 1 when the new Soviet law granting the right to hold passports came into effect, because the same law also required that passports be presented when leaving the country. Previously Soviet Jews had used a laissez passers when departing. Arrivals at the Tel Aviv airport immediately dropped by 80 percent—from between 700 and 800 per day to 150 or so.

The sudden drop was partially attributable to two "technical" factors. The new Soviet passport law excluded those males between the ages of 16 and 26 who had not completed their compulsory military service. Most of the families departing in the latter part of June, therefore, included young men who wanted to avoid military service. This factor sustained the high rate of immigration right up to June 30. After this date, delays in the issuance of passports, which then had to be stamped with Israeli visas, contributed to the drastic drop in departures in early July.

The new passport law is an historical break with three-quarters of a century of totalitarian denial of the free movement of the Soviet people. Now, in common with Americans and most other peoples, and apart from military service restrictions, Soviet citizens are free to leave, to visit other countries, to immigrate to those countries that will grant them residency, and to return to the Soviet Union with full rights of Soviet citizenship. According to Soviet government estimates, 500,000 Soviet citizens will leave the Soviet Union every year. There are no estimates of how many of them will return.

When the Soviet government originally lifted barriers to Jewish emigration, they could leave the Soviet Union only after having obtained visas for Israel. After arriving in Europe for the change of airlines to Tel Aviv, however, roughly 90 percent chose to go elsewhere, mostly to the United States.

Closing the Loopholes

The Israeli government and its American supporters moved promptly to close the loophole and staunch the flow of Jewish "drop outs." First, the United States was persuaded to refuse visas to any Soviet Jew who already had a visa to go to Israel. Then the United States put a ceiling or "cap" of 50,000 on the number of Soviet citizens allowed to immigrate into the US each year. Previously, Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union had been admitted to the US as refugees under a higher admissions ceiling.

Throughout the whole period of the mass immigration, the Israeli government campaigned desperately for direct flights from Moscow to Tel Aviv to reduce to zero the possibility of Soviet Jews slipping away to Western countries of their choice. At the same time, Israel has applied pressure to European and other countries not to admit Soviet Jews for residency.

When Germany announced that it would admit Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Israeli government raised a storm of protest. An official at the German Embassy in Washington, explaining his country's position, said:

"Soviet Jews who want to go to Germany can apply for an immigration visa. There is no quota. However, according to an agreement between the federal government and the Laender [states], visas are issued on a case-by-case basis on humanitarian grounds. Preference is given to cases of family reunification. Germany respects the Israeli position that Soviet Jews should immigrate to Israel as the homeland for all Jews. On the other hand, in view of her historical past, Germany does not want to close her borders just for Jews from the Soviet Union."

In order to encourage immigration to Israel, the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government have offered free passage and transportation of household goods to Israel, together with a basket of benefits covering a year's rent and living costs, payable in cash on arrival. The cash benefits are presently $7,000 for a family of four. Much to the surprise of many of the immigrants, however, the cash benefits may be free but transportation costs turn out to be a repayable loan that will be forgiven only after five years of residence. In short, once in Israel, the Soviet Jews cannot leave.

The indebtedness of the immigrants has been consolidated through a single bank set up for the purpose. Immigrants applying for Israeli passports that would enable them to leave can be confronted the very next day by a representative from the bank demanding ftill payment of the loan. Without such repayment, the passport is denied. Under these circumstances, only the wealthier of the immigrants are able to pay off their debts and go elsewhere on an Israeli passport.

Life in Israel for most of the Soviet immigrants has been hard. On arrival, many have found no suitable housing. While few have had to live in tents, thousands of families have had to double up in small apartments because of the housing shortage. There have been reports of as many as four families living together in one small apartment.

One byproduct of the housing shortage has been a phenomenal increase in rents. In the central region of the country, rents have more than doubled. For this and other reasons, many immigrants used up the basket of benefits before the end of their first year of residence.

When the benefits run out, the immigrants have to find jobs, no easy feat in a country flooded with new arrivals. The Israeli Bureau of Statistics gives the figure of 40 percent unemployment among those who arrived last year. The Israeli Hebrew press, however, generally estimates the unemployment rate among last year's immigrants to be somewhere between 70 and 80 percent.

The main difficulty of the immigrants in finding work is a conspicuous mismatch between the skills of the immigrants and the jobs available in Israel. At least 60 percent of the immigrants are professional and managerial specialists. Seventy percent of them have educations equivalent to a high school degree, and 50 percent of them the equivalent of a university education. Professional degrees are common. Under communism, Soviet Jews appear to have done exceptionally well.

The only jobs available on a mass scale in Israel, however, were those opened up by the exclusion of tens of thousands of Palestinian workers from Israel after the Gulf war. These had held low-paid, physically strenuous or dirty jobs that Israelis have in the past refused. There were high expectations in certain quarters in Israel that the jobless Soviet Jews would replace the banned Palestinians. This scheme failed, not only because the immigrants refused the jobs previously held by the Palestinians, but because those who accepted them were generally incompetent in those jobs. A good musician does not necessarily make a good building trades worker.

This policy failure has been tacitly acknowledged by the fact that the government has lately issued work permits to 110,000 of the 120,000 Palestinians who had formerly worked across the Green Line in Israel. Prospects for employment of the 150,000 potential workers among the 322,000 Soviet Jews who had emigrated before July 1 are poor for the foreseeable future.

Will high levels of immigration to Israel be maintained, now that the Jews in the Soviet Union are eligible for Soviet passports that enable them to emigrate to countries other than Israel? The fact that 90 percent of the immigrating Jews dropped out to go to other countries when they could strongly suggests that the answer will be negative. Reports of life in Israel from those who have already immigrated there will surely discourage others.

A second question is what effect, if any, the new Soviet passport law will have on the Soviet Jews who had already immigrated to Israel. According to a May 30 Soviet Embassy press release: "Beginning on July 1, 1991, the Soviet Supreme Presidium Decree of 1967 that stripped persons leaving for Israel of Soviet citizenship will be revoked. " Mikhail Ivanov, spokesman on the new law for the Soviet Embassy in Washington, told us:

"The law is retroactive and Soviet citizenship has been restored to the Soviet Jews who have immigrated to Israel. However, since the Tel Aviv Soviet Consulate is in Israel, it will not issue passports there. Soviet Jews from Israel will be welcome in Moscow and could be issued passports there. The question of how the Soviet Jews in Israel could get to Moscow is up to the Israeli government."

Before the new Soviet passport law was passed, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Israel expected at least one million more Soviet Jewish immigrants. He also estimated that $40 billion would be required to settle one million Soviet Jews. This would amount to $40,000 per Soviet Jew, or $160,000 for a family of four. Shamir talked about raising $10 billion from US guaranteed private loans, $20 billion in gifts from the 10 million diaspora Jews ($2,000 each) and $10 billion in loans from governments other than the US. The raising of this money would increase the Israeli government's debt to foreign lenders by $20 billion.

This additional debt would be horrendous for the Israelis, who number at best about five million. It would be equivalent to a debt of $32,000 for a family of four, with annual interest, at seven percent, of $2,240. This is in a country with a per capita annual income of $6,000. These figures make defaults on the private loans by the Israeli government almost inevitable. Under loan guarantees, the interest and principal on $10 billion of these debts would have to be picked up by the US Treasury.

The mass immigration fulfills a current Zionist political need. That is to settle the occupied territories with Jews, and to claim those territories for the land of Israel. For this reason Israel is prepared openly to defy the United States, while at the same time demanding US guarantees for private loans of $10 billion for the settlement of the Jews, both immigrant and veteran, in the occupied territories.

The exorbitant costs cited by Shamir of settling one million Soviet Jews contrasts sharply with the American experience in settling one million refugees in the US over the last 11 years. It is $5 billion, or $5,000 per refugee. In short, the American taxpayer would save money by welcoming Soviet Jewish emigrants into the United States, rather than paying the outrageous monetary and political costs of their settlement in Israel. One reason for the eight-fold difference in the cost of settling a refugee in Israel over the cost in the United States is that one million refugees would constitute only 0.4 percent of the US population, in contrast to 20 percent of Israel's population. There are many American niches for one million immigrants to fit into, but almost none in Israel.

Frank Collins is a free-lance journalist specializing in the Middle East.