Kav Laoved filed a petition this morning to the administrative court in Tel Aviv on behalf of a migrant worker from India, who was brought to Israel to work as a caregiver. The petitioner, like dozens other migrant workers from India, was brought to Israel to work as a caregiver despite the fact that no employer wishing to employ him in fact exists, and even though he lacks one of the basic skills to work as a caregiver in Israel – the ability to communicate with his employer.

This case is one example to a much wider phenomenon Kav Laoved became increasingly familiar with in the past months, which is the bringing of migrant workers to Israel from remote, rural parts of India, who do not speak English (and in many cases – not even Hindi, but rather different dialects) supposedly to work as caregivers, even though no employer awaits them, and even though they lack the skills to work in this field. These workers are brought to Israel for no purpose other than charging them thousands of dollars in fees for obtaining a work permit in Israel. As a result of the Israeli government's "binding policy", which persists in spite of the fact the Israeli Supreme Court found it unconstitutional, these workers immediately become "unlawful residents" (since they do not have an employer), and are detained and deported from Israel without having the opportunity to pay back even a small amount of the debt they incurred.

This phenomenon is possible in light of the State of Israel's omission to supervise the recruitment of migrant workers for work in Israel, and as a result of the fact that there are no criteria in Israeli consulates abroad for the issuance of entry permits for work in caregiving in Israel, or to conducting effective interviews with workers, aimed at informing them in a full and an accurate way about the work that expects them in Israel and the immigration process to the country. These severe omissions enable manpower companies and recruitment agencies to cheat the workers they bring to Israel, and serve as an incentive for these companies to search for the most vulnerable and desperate workers, who are most easily lured into believing their baseless promises. The power gaps between migrant workers and these recruitment agencies, particularly the gaps in the parties' negotiating power and their access to reliable information about the immigration process and the kind of work they come to perform, demand effective regulation on the State's part and oblige its effective engagement, in order to prevent such corruption and abuse.

Kav Laoved repeatedly cautioned the different authorities in Israel – including the ministry of Interior, the ministry of industry, commerce and employment and the ministry of foreign affairs – against this phenomenon, and demanded that the State will both act to prevent it and that it will offer acceptable solutions for workers who were brought to Israel after having paid enormous amounts of money in fees, but can't find work as caregivers since they cannot communicate with employers. These cautions did not receive any response.

In this petition we demand, that the petitioner will be given a "general" B/1 visa, until he completes the maximal allowed period for a migrant workers to work in Israel (63 months), in order for him to be able to work lawfully in a place that does not require an ability to communicate with the employer, thus enabling him to pay back his enormous debt. In addition, we requested that the court will instruct the State to establish rules for the issuance of such "general" visas to other migrant workers in the petitioner's condition, and that it will instruct the state to establish rules for the issuance of entry permits in Israeli consulates abroad – at least until the governmental decisions to sign bilateral agreements with source countries in order to protect migrant workers coming from these countries to work in Israel are executed.

In the petition we argue, that the State has the obligation to act with due diligence in order make sure, that workers who don’t have employers in Israel, or workers who lack the required language skills to work as caregivers, will not be brought to Israel. Since these workers were brought to Israel, our claim is that the state cannot overlook their distress, created as a result of it's lapses. The state does not need to be the entity that cheated the migrant worker directly in order to conclude, that it must take responsibility for his dire condition, because the State's lapses, and the wide array of institutional failures which characterize the way it chooses to recruit migrant workers to work in Israel, are the factors that laid the ground for his deception and effectively enabled it.