Israel will toughen its Jewish repatriation policy. The new government wants to limit as much as possible the possibility for new citizens to leave Israel with a passport and also, for the first time in many years, to modify the law of return – depriving the grandchildren of Jews of the right to emigrate to Israel. But even now it is not so easy to repatriate. Often refused even to those who, at first glance, everything is in order with the roots. Israeli lawyer Aleksey Kovalenko, managing partner of law firm Kovalenko & Partners, recounts the mistakes most often made by returnees from Russia.
The new government coalition in Israel, created just before the new year, is perhaps the toughest on immigrants from the former USSR (and in particular from Russia) since the emergence of the state of Israel. From the start, authorities began to express doubts about the quality of aliyah from countries of the former Soviet Union.
Last year, out of 70,000 returnees, almost 37,500 were Russians. The total number of those wishing to move has doubled, which even causes disruptions in the work of local bureaucratic services. This is reflected in the lives of ethnic Israelis, as the timeframe for issuing an ordinary passport has increased to six months. This provokes groans from the local population, and consequently dissatisfaction with the “come in large numbers” of the elected authorities.
They are particularly annoyed that 41% of Russians who received passports returned to their homeland, without making any contribution to the development of the State of Israel. Why supposedly? Statistics are closed and only individual government officials operate with them, which justifies restrictive measures.
The first measures have already been taken: the elimination of additional benefits (starting at 690 dollars per month) for those arriving from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, as well as the reduction to a minimum of the number of repatriation centers for emergency that were opened specifically for citizens fleeing Russia and Ukraine.
Other planned restrictions are the ban on repatriating the grandchildren of Jews. Jews, their children and grandchildren now have the right to citizenship.
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But for now, the old rules are in effect, and the third generation can get a passport and go live in Israel. But now it’s not so easy to do that. If I classify the issues that can lead to denial of citizenship, I would divide them into five parts. Each of these cases was in our practice. Some issues can be resolved in court, but it is better not to come to that.
The first and most common problem is the lack of documentation clearly indicating that a person is Jewish. It is preferable that these are the birth certificates of your parents and grandparents. But they are not always there.
Often, to find evidence of Jewish roots, people spend a lot of money and a lot of time. Sometimes this evidence is in the most unexpected places. Thus, we began to search the personal records of a client’s relatives in order to prove his Jewishness, and found that his grandfather, whom he said he wanted to restore Jewishness, was an NKVD punisher. It also contained information that he was Russian.
Luckier are those whose loved ones have already been displaced. They can easily find documents in the archives of the Red Cross, where the information is kept in a safe place and the response is given within two weeks.
The second reason, it seems, is obvious – the criminal past. But all is not so clear here. Yes, you will need to have a criminal record certificate, but there are exceptions.
For example, in my practice, a person imprisoned three times for marijuana trafficking was able to prove that he was not a danger to society and be repatriated peacefully.
And vice versa, the client had an absolutely “clean” biography and a certificate of non-conviction. But at a meeting with the consul, he admitted that in Soviet times, on the slander of a former wife, he was imprisoned for rape. And then it was rejected.
The third reason is religious. “I am a Jew, here is a cross for you” – this is exactly how you should not joke during an interview with the consul. If you’ve talked about your baptism, be prepared for the path to obtaining Israeli citizenship to become much more complicated. You will have to prove that you were baptized at an unconscious age, which is sometimes far from easy to do.
The fourth reason for rejection occurs among those born out of wedlock. Here, Jewishness will only have to be proven by a court and DNA analysis. An understandable and boring procedure, lasting about six months, sometimes reveals interesting family secrets. So, as adults, the sisters who decided to move to Israel suddenly discovered that they had different biological parents.
And finally, the fifth reason is your mistake when talking with the consul. During the interview, a person must prove their intention to move to Israel for permanent residency. But in fact, you have nothing to prove, they take your word for it. So you have to be very careful about what you say.
We strongly advise against boasting that you are a big person, that you are good with money and that you just need to get an Israeli passport quickly and leave for Dubai (this has a number of advantages in the UAE).
If you are nevertheless refused, you can contact lawyers and restore the right to repatriation in court. But it’s better not to talk about it.
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