The foreign hand in Tel Aviv

At least 250,000 foreign labourers,about half of them illegal,are living in the country,according to the Israeli government. They include Chinese construction workers,Filipino home health care aides and Thai farmhands,as well as other Asians,Africans and Eastern Europeans,working as maids,cooks and nannies. Israelis wont do this work,so they bring us, said Wang Yingzhong,40,a construction worker from China.

But even as foreign workers have become a mainstay of the economy,their presence has increasingly clashed with Israels Zionist ideology. The government has lurched through a series of contradictory policies that encourage the temporary employment of migrants while seeking to impose tight visa and labour restrictions that can leave them vulnerable to abusive employers,advocates for the workers say.

The government insists it wants unskilled jobs to go to unemployed Israelis,especially Arab citizens and ultra-Orthodox Jews. Critics say the policies are hypocritical and racist because they treat foreign workers as undeserving of legal protection.

All too often we have to fight to make Israelis see that these foreign workers are human beings, said Dana Shaked,the coordinator for Chinese labourers at Kav LaOved,a workers rights group.

Although the Israeli government issued a record 120,000 foreign work permits in 2009,the countrys political leaders say they want to phase out migrant labour. We have created a Jewish and democratic nation,and we cannot let it turn into a nation of foreign workers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in January.

The No. 1 target is the Chinese,who in recent years have received nearly all of the construction work permits. Chinese accounted for a quarter of all deportations from 2003 to 2008,more than any other foreign group.

The Chinese must work for an average of two years just to repay the money they borrow to come out here. Unaware of their rights and unable to speak Hebrew or English,many fall victim to a minefield of abuse like squalid living conditions,withheld wages and the early termination of work permits.

The government has quietly begun to replace Chinese with other non-Israelis,issuing 15,000 construction permits to Palestinians this year. This comes as right-wing politicians have heightened accusations that foreign workers are stealing Israeli jobs and threatening the nations Jewish character,an assertion many on the left dismiss.

Saying foreign workers are diluting the Jewish state is racism, said Nitzan Horowitz,a member of the Israeli Parliament. On one hand,Israel is bringing them here and making money off their backs,and on other they face all sorts of harassment.

Even if the law is changed,it will be too late for people like Lin Qingde,a Chinese construction worker who is one of the 26 plaintiffs to sue an Israeli-Arab merchant accused of stealing 1.7 million from hundreds of workers,money he was supposed to wire to their families in China. The police arrested the businessman,but,while waiting to testify at the trial,Lins work visa expired and he was also arrested.

Stuck behind bars for five months and afraid he might be killed in China for failing to repay a 40,000 debt,Lin was finally called into court in May to give his account. A few days later,he was deported.

Hay Haber,the lawyer for Lin and the other plaintiffs,said he was ashamed of Israels justice system. Here they are nothing but cheap slaves, he said.