We are proud to announce that ACRI’s Rotem Ilan was awarded the New Israel Fund’s prestigious Gallanter Prize at the Guardian of Democracy Dinner in San Francisco on October 28.
The award is granted to those who promote religious pluralism, tolerance, equality and justice for all of Israel’s citizens. Rotem’s acceptance speech can be viewed at the bottom of the page.
Congratulations Rotem!
In awarding Rotem with the Gallanter Prize, the New Israel Fund released the following profile of Rotem and the work she does:
Rotem’s work with foreign workers started around six years ago, when she began volunteering as a babysitter with Mesila, a social services program run by the Tel Aviv municipality. Migrant workers are able to work legally in Israel for long periods of time, but the “pregnant migrant woman” regulation stated that migrant women would lose their visas if they didn’t send their child abroad within three months.
Suddenly, 1,200 children who had known no home other than Israel faced deportation. . With only one month to go, Rotem along with two other Israeli women and three foreign workers created the Israeli Children organization and began a successful campaign against the deportations.
In 2010, the government decided that children who have spent at least five years in Israel, whose parents entered the country legally, and who had attended first grade, would be given Israeli residency. However, this was a one-off offer which still left hundreds of children facing deportation and Israeli Children with plenty more work to do.
In April 2011, the Supreme Court finally cancelled the “pregnant migrant woman” regulation, stating that the procedure “harms the right for parenthood and family and the economic expectations of migrant women.” This August, Remi Rolle, one of the founding members of the group who has lived in South Tel Aviv for eleven years, finally received her ID card. “I wanted to jump, I wanted to shout!” she recalls. However, there are still hundreds of children living under the threat of expulsion.
One of the organization’s priorities is to get the welfare services more involved in the issue. “In other countries there’s always an alternative to jailing children,” Rotem explains. “It’s terrible that when the children come face-to-face with the authorities, they’re always in uniform. Israel needs an immigration policy that is backed up by an immigration law. The longer it doesn’t happen, it’s just like putting a Band-Aid on an open wound.”
In addition to legal work, the Israeli Children project within ACRI helps the foreign worker community organize. It does this through leadership and advocacy training, with an emphasis on empowering the community. “We provide guidance,” Rotem explains. “They lead everything.”
