Love and marriage are forbidden. Migrant workers in Israel tell their suffering

Strict immigration laws in Israel have led to the imprisonment of many families of migrant workers, including mothers and children, and the threat of deportation, according to a report by the Middle East Eye website.

According to the report, prepared by writer Moran Nakar from Tel Aviv, the Israeli immigration authorities raided just two weeks before the start of the school year the two children Lori (12 years) and her sister Rose (9 years) at 6 am.

In an interview with the writer, Lori recalls that her sister woke up and started crying, noting that the immigration police started screaming and threatening to break the door.

Lori and her family are among dozens of families of immigrants - most of them Filipino nationals - who were held in detention centers last summer to deport them.

The author says that Israel accepts foreign workers as long as they are unmarried and have no children, and work permits are automatically renewed for almost six years in many cases, but if they have children, permits are usually denied unless the children are sent a month after their birth to their home countries.

Israel's crackdown on immigrant families saw children arrested alongside their mothers, and Laurie and her sister were detained along with their mother for 14 days.

Since last summer, the Israeli immigration authorities have detained 12 children and their families, but the parents' association has been able to provide them with lawyers and take them out before bringing their cases to court.

Speaking of her suffering in detention centers, Lori said it was sad that the center was a real prison locked. "We didn't make a mistake until we were imprisoned," she said.

Targeting women
Angela, 53, has been living in Israel for more than 20 years and is a cleaner. Angela, a mother of 10, describes Israel's immigration policy as inhuman.

"When you become pregnant you have two options: abortion or childbirth and sending the baby within a month to your home country," Angela tells the author.

She adds that many women are forced to send their children because they are afraid of breaking the laws "but it is cruel to separate the mother from her child, because the relationship between them is broken."

According to Angela, laws in Israel "prohibit love and marriage, but only human beings", explaining that women may work 24 hours a day throughout the week and get only one day off, so they need companionship.

Mary, 46, arrived in Israel at the age of 21. She spent her twenties caring for an elderly woman, married a Filipino, whom she met at work and gave birth to two children.

Mary says Israel's laws specifically restrict women, creating a reality that drives them to live illegally.

"For 12 years since the birth of my eldest child, I have been on the run from the immigration police," she says, noting that she has to stay for her children, who find their schools and friends in Israel and speak Hebrew.

Mary and her husband are now perplexed in recent months after immigration police have become less resilient with immigrant families.Although the immigration authorities have cooperated before August to allow children from kindergarten to 21 years of age, they have returned to strict laws.

The immigrants find solidarity from parents in schools, where they have demonstrated to prevent them from deporting, Moran said, adding that efforts are being made to raise money to help them pay for lawyers who are working to secure legal residence.