For
Westerners contemplating aliya, moving to Israel may soon become a more
comfortable and streamlined experience - if an initiative launched
Tuesday in the Knesset bears fruit.
At
the official launch of the new Knesset Caucus for Western Aliya on
Tuesday, caucus founders MKs Gilad Erdan (Likud) and Yoel Hasson
(Kadima) called on organizations involved in aliya to submit working
papers within a month on how to improve the absorption of Western olim.
The caucus plans to create a national plan for increasing
immigration from Western countries and submitting that plan to the
government. It will serve as a hub that will link olim and aliya
organizations such as the semi-official Jewish Agency or the
independent Nefesh B'Nefesh and Ami with government bureaucrats,
legislators and the government.
Erdan and Hasson, representing both the coalition and the
opposition, believe that the Knesset may be the best platform to
advance the issue.
"When MKs and the Knesset factions begin to put
Western aliya on the agenda, it will force the government and the prime
minister to deal with it," explains Erdan.
"The Knesset is saying that we need to reexamine how we handle and understand the needs of olim from the West," said Hasson.
The new caucus will be an
address for both problems and solutions, according to Erdan. "All sorts
of things get buried in the bureaucracy," he said, "and bureaucrats
move faster if MKs are involved. If, for example, there's a problem
with professional licensing of French optometrists - there is no such
problem, it's just an example - then we can develop legislation to
solve this. If we find that giving Western lawyers, who would take a 60
percent pay cut by moving to Israel, an exemption from income tax would
bring them here, we could push for that. The idea is to develop a
comprehensive program to attract olim from the West, and to start
taking care of this through legislation and through government policy."
According to Hasson, "If we're going to ask Westerners to move
to Israel, we have to tell them how this will happen, how they will
find a job and a home. We have to show them how we're making Israel
more attractive to them."
Are economic and bureaucratic incentives enough to increase
Western aliya? "One of the biggest obstacles to aliya is that the
Diaspora communities don't encourage it," Erdan believes. "They hear a
mixed message from us - that we need their strength in the United
States and elsewhere. It's true that we see American Jewish strength as
important, but we see greater importance in the strength we gain when
Jews come to Israel."
Erdan believes the caucus "will have to create a hasbara plan
for the leadership of those communities. Part of the problem is that we
haven't been sending a clear message."
Get JPost Toolbar! 
