For four years S, a migrant worker from Nepal, was employed as a caregiver for an elderly woman from the Tel Aviv area. She assisted her with all her needs and was very well liked by her whole family. Because of a mistake made by a junior clerk in the placement agency that employed S, the Interior Ministry informed the worker that she was slated for deportation even though she committed no crime.

The story, described as no less than Kafkaesque by Kav LaOved, which have been supporting S, began in 2005. After S paid a great deal of money to a placement agency for migrant caregivers, she started caring for an elderly woman from the Tel Aviv area. About a year ago the woman passed away and S was placed at a new job caring for another elderly woman.

According to the law, because S received her visa through her former employer, all the placement agency had to do was to report to the Interior Ministry that S was now working for a new employer, and when the time came to renew her work visa, it was supposed to go through with no problem, like in thousands of similar cases every year.

Outrageous conduct 

However, only recently, months after she started caring for the second elderly woman, S found out that the placement agency did not transfer the necessary report to the Mionistry, a fact that left her with an illegal status after her the expiry of her original visa, which she had received for her first employer. 

At this point the Ministry of Interior refuses to renew S’s permit, and has informed her that she will be immediately deported. Meanwhile, the worker is waiting for a solution, but fears that leaving the house may end in her arrest and immediate deportation, even though she has not committed any crime

“The outrageous conduct of this clerk led to the fact that the worker suddenly found herself in an allegedly illegal situation, when in fact she continued to the next employer and worked for her for months according to the placement arranged by her agency”, says Idit Lebovitch, who is in charge of caregivers in Kav LaOved. “But what turns this story in to a very strange one is the fact that the Ministry explicitly on the one hand stated that it will open an investigation against the agency for negligence and failure to report the worker’s change of placement, but on the other hand informed the worker she is to be deported. The right hand is investigating the agency and the left is deporting the worker. The Ministry of Interior has not yet responded at this point. 

Translayted by: Shira Levy