ROHTAK, India, Jan 18 (Reuters) – Thousands of men queued in India’s northern state of Harayana during a recruitment drive to send workers to Israel, where the offensive in Gaza, now in its fourth month, has caused a shortage of labour.
Masons, painters, electricians, plumbers and some farmers said they were looking for jobs in Israel with some willing to risk going into a conflict zone because they could make five times more money in a year than they would at home.
“There is unemployment here and it’s because of it that people want to leave,” said Lekharam, a mason who was among the workers gathered at a recruitment camp in Rohtak, 66 km (40 miles) from the capital, New Delhi.
“If it’s in our destiny to die, then we can die either here or there. My hope is that we will go and do good work and spend some time and come back.”
India, now the world’s most populous nation with a population of 1.4 billion, has an urban unemployment rate of 6.6%, government data shows, but more than 17% of workers younger than 29 are unemployed and others work as casual labour.
Unemployment and underemployment are a key concern for authorities, despite world-beating economic growth of 7.3%.
An Indian foreign ministry spokesperson on Thursday said an agreement on labour mobility with Israel was signed before the conflict erupted last year.
“The idea behind this agreement was to put in place an institutional mechanism to regulate migration and ensure rights of people who go there are protected,” said Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson.
“Labour laws in Israel are very strict and robust…we are very conscious of our responsibility to provide safety to our people abroad,” he told reporters.
an Israeli financial daily said, opens new tab the country planned to bring in about 70,000 foreign workers from China, India and elsewhere to boost its construction sector, which has come to a standstill since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants.
India’s National Skills Development Corporation canvassed in recent weeks for workers to live and work in Israel.
Recruiters at the camp refused to comment on the drive.
Vivek Sharma, a 28-year-old mason, said he was aware of the risks in Israel from the conflict but was willing to take the risk if he could earn more.
“Yes, I am aware of the conflict, but I can earn a lot of money in a short time,” said Sharma, who estimates he could end up earning more than a million Indian rupees ($12,000) by working in Israel for a year.
“It could take me at least five years to earn the same amount of money in India.”
Government data shows about 13 million Indian nationals work overseas as labourers, professionals, and experts.
Israel and India signed an agreement last year to allow more than 40,000 Indians to work in the Jewish state in the nursing and construction sectors.
Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Christina Fincher
Now the government of the Jewish state is acting the same way as the British Mandate authorities:
1) we cannot permit/ have to limit Jewish immigration because the land doesn’t have the capacity to support a larger population;
2) we need workers! we must bring in more Arabs!
Curious, isn’t it?
Why don’t the Jewish mass media ever cover this topic?
This is thoroughly disgusting.
This is instead of aliyah!
And in addition to the contract to bring 35,000 foreign workers from Ecuador!
A baby child
https://twitter.com/amjadt25/status/1747934464766795902?t=IIoQHPltfGPa3lBMU41Agg&s=19
Gonzalo Lira died in Ukrainian jail. An American.
https://twitter.com/AKorybko/status/1747283821475561984?t=4hexvFKAFklIhY-kISHeoQ&s=19
I am in agreement. With all.
Filipinos are great people, but they do have an Islamist separatist movement there, so they have to be vetted for that. Israeli society is too politically correct to be able to handle the issues I’m discussing. Imagine the guilt tripping and name-calling if you ask a Filipino farm worker, are you a Catholic or a Muslim? You can’t do it in Israel, America or Europe, because we all have those 5th column progressives with their boilerplate accusations. This problem of how do we get the crops picked without losing our country has destroyed many countries, even in the past.
Longterm, I think robots are better than guest workers. Although there are already ethicists who are earnestly trying to figure out the rights of robots. Sane people have to wargame this issue far in advance, so they don’t even have a chance to win by accusing you of racism. Would the Israeli Supreme Court allow normal people to make a distinction between a Catholic and Muslim Filipino who wants to work on an Israeli farm?
NO palestinian workers, just foreign guest workers. Indians, Filipinos, Thais, Viet Namese might be good choices, if you really need to import workers at all.
@Felix, I am not saying this or that individual guest worker is a danger to Israel, not at all. I just want to warn people of the possibility of losing control of the situation. This happened in the USA and Europe, also South Tel Aviv. No doubt there are some Eritrean infiltrators who are actually nice people who work for a living, but the net result of all of them is bad.
One thing to calculate is, how big is the country of origin. All things being equal, workers from South Korea, Japan, Singapore could never overwhelm Israel or the USA, because those are small countries with culturally first world people. India and China are huge countries with millions of low iq people who aren’t doing well where they are. Open the floodgates, and there goes your whole country.
And some people will say, but their children will assimilate and even convert to Judaism or whatever. What’s the problem, are you a white supremacist? This sort of argument is gaslighting by people with an agenda, you could call it 3d world lebensraum.
Ketzel2
The interview I heard makes more sense. He most probably was Buddhist. He was in bitter conflict with a Islamist.
This division made him a real friend of Israel
There has to be a requirement that they have to leave and there must be absolutely no way they or their children can get Israeli citizenship. Large countries like India and China have huge populations that can easily take over any small country without firing a shot. Guest workers are a resource until you become a minority in your own country. Truth, not racism.
Take a trolley that stops at the La Jolla campus of the University of California, an elite public university system in California. The only white people you see are old like me. The students are all Indian and Chinese, most born and raised here, American citizens. It will happen even faster in Israel than in America, due to the size of Israel.
India, Thailand, etc. have large and militant Muslim populations, so unfortunately, this can be exploited for infiltration and jihad. Israel must vet its guest workers based on religion. Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, welcome.
I heard an interview with a Thai worker. From what I understood he was earning about 20 times with very good conditions. He stood up for Israel against some Antisemite back home against Hamas very emotional he was…seems obvious way to go