More Refugees Fleeing to Israel from Egypt

Via The National:

Many once fled no farther than Egypt, but the increasingly dismal situation for refugees there has sent many running for the border.

Previously abundant resettlement programmes in Egypt have been slashed, asylum-seekers are detained and often denied access to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) or even deported.

At the same time, rumours of high wages and a sense of security in Israel have spread as far as the highlands of Eritrea and the villages of Darfur.

Last year, Israel adopted a policy of ‘hot returns’ – quickly sending illegal border crossers back to Egypt without processing refugees’ claims. The policy is now being challenged in Israel’s Supreme Court, but this year alone over 200 new arrivals were promptly deported to Egypt – a policy human rights groups and the UNHCR says is illegal under international law. Others have been held in detention centres for months.

For those that do manage to make it to Tel Aviv, work and residence permits are being restricted and earlier this year the government cracked down on illegal migrants with mass arrests.

Changing realities will not, however, necessarily dissuade people from making the journey.

“People talk. It doesn’t take long for a message to get passed back,” said Mr Kagan of Cairo’s Center for Migration and Refugee Studies. “There is a ‘the-streets-are-paved-with-gold’ phenomenon in terms of what people back home learn about destination countries. They might not learn about all the hardships.

Isreal is searching to find solutions, but has not had the best record for their treatment of refugees.