While sightseeing and visiting my family in Israel recently, I took some time out to pursue a longstanding interest, immigration.
My grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe and I've found that their early 20th-Century experiences are paralleled by the lives of today's newcomers from Asia, Mexico, Central America and other places. Like the United States, Israel is a nation of immigrants. I thought they might handle the immigration process differently, as indeed they do.
When I returned from Israel, I found the interviews were particularly relevant to what was happening at home. Immigration had become an issue in the campaign for mayor of L.A. and the debate centered on how government should deal with immigrants, particularly those here illegally.
The debate is cast in the angry, extreme terms you find in political campaigns. In fact, it goes to the heart of the racial tension gripping the city.
First of all, there are limits to what we can learn. Israel's immigrants are overwhelmingly Jewish and there legally. Of the 460,000 arriving since 1989, about 400,000 are Jews from the old Soviet Union, according to a recent report by Yehuda Weinraub of the Jewish Agency, a non-government organization which brings newcomers to Israel. Most of these are professionals or skilled technicians. And, each immigrant family marks another victory in the Jewish demographic battle with the Palestinians.
L.A. is the Ellis Island of the late 20th Century, with immigrants from many nations, ranging from the poorest country people to immensely rich business owners. Nobody has an accurate count of how many are here illegally.
I understood these differences as I talked in Jerusalem to Weinraub and two other Jewish Agency workers, Akiva Werber and Kalya Gelles. Still, there was something useful in the national philosophy toward immigrants.
In Israel, immigrants are considered a national resource. In the face of substantial unemployment, the government and the Jewish Agency make a top priority of absorbing the immigrants into Israeli society. I visited a job fair at an immigrant absorption center outside Tel Aviv one night and watched them line up for information about jobs, loans, housing and schools. Jobs don't always materialize. A substantial number of immigrants have trouble finding work. But there was information about government retraining programs. "Come Join The Family," is how one brochure put it.
