Are Eritreans in Israel Economic Migrants or Refugees?

Over 700 Eritreans in Israel attend a meeting hosted by the Eritrean government. Most of these people entered Israel claiming to be 'refugees' and 'asylum seekers' and claimed they would persecuted by the Eritrean government if returned to Eritrea. In reality, however, they are economic migrants who still love their country and government but need to keep echoing a false story to UNHCR officials in order to stay in Israel to make more money to send to their families.

Are Eritreans in Israel Economic Migrants or Refugees?


Although economic migration impacts every developing country, it's not always treated or reported equally. For a number of reasons — mostly political, migration stories in the region have disproportionately centered around Eritrea's migrants in the media, even as its neighbor to the south, Ethiopia, has more people fleeing their state than any country in the continent. Part of the reason is Eritrean migrants, especially those who entered Israel, are referred to as refugees or asylum seekers by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). But are Eritrean migrants in Israel really refugees?

Israel says there are 53,600 African migrants in their country and nearly all of them do not meet the criteria for refugee or asylum status. According to an Israeli official, only 1,800 applications for asylum have been submitted. In other words, only 3.4 percent of migrants have requested that they be recognized as refugees. Even among the 3.4 percent that have requested applications, that doesn't necessarily mean they are being genuine about their claims.

In 2012, Danny Adino Ababa, an Israeli reporter who went undercover as a migrant in Tel Aviv, shed light on a popular false story African migrants like to sell to UNHCR officials and aid agencies in order to stay in Israel:

My cover story has not been finalized yet, but luckily I run into Jeremiah, who’s been in Israel for three years now. “What do I tell those who ask how I got into Israel?” I ask him. “Lie,” he says. “Don’t tell the whole story. The Israelis, and mostly the non-profit groups working with the infiltrators here, like to be lied to.”

“Say you were a soldier, and that if you return to Eritrea you’ll get a death sentence. Keep in mind that you must be consistent with your story. The bottom line is that everyone uses the story I’m telling you here, and this way they fool everybody,” he says. “Almost none of them arrived on foot from Egypt to Israel. None of us crossed any deserts…it’s all nonsense.” 

Not only are these migrants coached into synchronizing their false stories but they are also encouraged to lie about their identities, too. Israel says around 36,000 Eritreans have entered their country since 2006. However, Tesfamariam Tekeste, the Eritrean ambassador to Israel believes at least half (18,000) of those who are claiming they are Eritreans in Israel are Ethiopians or other African migrants masquerading as Eritreans in order to stay in the country.

 "They know the Eritreans automatically receive a six-month visa, so they pretend to be Eritrean," he said.

Ambassador Tekeste links Eritrean migration to Israel with a politically motivated policy that allowed Eritreans a six-month work visa between 2006-2012. Before this policy went into effect, it was unheard of for Eritreans to migrate to Israel.

"Israel is turning itself into a migration destination for Eritrean citizens fleeing from army service or looking for work," Tekeste said. "The fact that you issue six-month visas encourages people to come here."

Not surprisingly, when Israel finally ended its controversial policy in the summer of 2012, migrants from Africa virtually stopped coming overnight. In the first half of 2012, Israeli officials said 9,570 citizens of various African countries entered their country illegally, while in the first six months of 2013, only 34 did – a decrease of over 99 percent. To go from hardly any Eritreans entering Israel between 2000-2005 to thousands from 2006-2012 and back down to almost none in all of 2013, unequivocally shows Israel's six-month work visa was inducing Eritreans to flee.

One problematic issue for those who still insist African migrants in Israel are refugees is why are some of these migrants increasingly seeking to return back to their country of origins? According to Israeli figures, a total of 2,612 migrants willfully left Israel in 2013, of these 1,955 were from Sudan and 461 from Eritrea. Despite claims that these migrants would be arrested, tortured and even killed by UNHCR and the so called Eritrean 'opposition' groups, the Israeli government says organizations who visited Eritrea found they were not arrested.

"Organizations that visited Eritrea to check if the people who returned were safe reported that these individuals had not been arrested." Said Gideon Sa’ar, Israel's Interior Minister.

The minister also adds that some of these Eritrean migrants naively believe that if they pretend to be part of the so called Eritrean opposition groups, that this would improve their chances of staying in Israel. "I think there are people who believe that being opposition leaders would mean a better chance of receiving refugee status for Eritrean migrants."

Last month, a group of 49 hooligans claiming to be Eritrean opposition members thought Israel would accept their bogus asylum claims if they attacked a venue in which the Eritrean ambassador to Israel was giving his briefings on national matters to over 700 Eritrean community members in Kibbutz Kinneret (3 hours north of Tel Aviv).

The ruffians, who arrived in a bus that was sponsored by local aid agencies, were let into the venue by security thinking they were part of the delegation. Carrying chains, iron bars and bricks with them, the mob attacked dozens of innocent Eritreans, including two Israeli officers, before they were apprehended. This brutal act of violence is not the trademark of desperate refugees; it's the sign of cunning economic migrants who are doing anything they can to deceive immigration officials to letting them stay in the country permanently.

To their credit, Israel does not believe Eritreans in their country are genuine refugees. They understand it was their six-month work visa that first enticed them to come Israel and then once their visa expired, they started to claim they were refugees to stay in Israel permanently. In making this point, the former head of the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority, Mí. Yaakov Ganot acknowledged that “in our examinations, I would say that 99.9 percent of them [Eritreans] are here for work. They’re not asylum seekers: they are not at any risk.”

Even though nearly all of the Eritreans in Israel are economic migrants, they still deserve to be treated humanely and with dignity. Imprisoning them for long periods of time is cruel and unnecessary. After all, they wouldn't even be in Israel today if Israeli policy makers didn't offer work visas for Eritreans at the behest of the Bush administration, which is at odds with Eritrea.

That being said, UNHCR and European countries should stop rewarding Eritrean economic migrants with bogus refugees and asylum statuses. When they provide Eritrean migrants with these statuses this further induces others to leave their country since they know if they leave for work in the West, they are almost guaranteed full immunity as refugees and asylum seekers. The refugee status diminishes many of the risk factors that economic migrants would typically face, thus making more potential migrants to leave.

But what is UNHCR and European country's excuse for providing Eritean economic migrants with ridiculous refugee statuses that even people from conflict zones such as the DRC, Mali, Ethiopia (Ogaden), CAR and others have a hard time receiving? After all, there is no war in Eritrea, and Asmara is arguably one of the safest cities in the world. Yet Eritreans economic migrants are being accepted as refugees by UNHCR officials and several European states over real refugees from other countries. The only rational answer is its politically motivated at the behest of United States, which is at odds with Eritrea.

In conclusion, nearly all the Eritreans who leave their country, especially those in Israel, are not refugees or asylum seekers. They are economic migrants seeking higher wages. We can say this with certainty because these migrants openly send money to Eritrea and attend Eritrean government meetings in the Diaspora, all while UNHCR officials have their hand on the Bible professing these same migrants are refugees that would be persecuted if returned Eritrea. In the end, it is UNHCR's nearly automatic refugee statuses for Eritreans, like that of Israeli's six-month work visa policy, that is inducing many of these economic migrants to flee in the first place. Therefore, it is long overdue that UNHCR stop rewarding Eritrean economic migrants with bogus refugee labels just so it can score political points.

Over 700 Eritreans attend a meeting hosted by Eritrea's ambassador to Israel, Tesfamariam Tekeste 

Over 700 Eritreans attend a meeting hosted by Eritrea's ambassador to Israel, Tesfamariam Tekeste

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