Infiltrators or Asylum Seekers? Framing and Attitudes Toward Asylum Seekers in Israel

Abstract

This study asks whether framing asylum seekers in Israel as “infiltrators” posing threats to the country amplifies exclusion toward them. The term “infiltrators” associates asylum seekers with the anti-infiltration law passed in the 1950s to fight terrorists and dissociates asylum seekers from their unique position as holders of special rights. The term “infiltrators” may thus influence the attitudes of the Israeli public regarding the treatment of asylum seekers. Findings demonstrate that respondents presented with the “infiltrators” frame were more likely to show exclusionary attitudes. Findings additionally show that the framing effect mediates the relation between perceived socioeconomic threat and exclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Asylum-seekers, Israel, framing, socioeconomic threat, exclusion

Notes

¹The number of undocumented labor migrants is currently estimated at 15,366 when website was accessed June 25, 2014. Population and Immigration Authority (2014), Foreigners in Israel Data. http://www.piba.gov.il/PublicationAndTender/ForeignWorkersStat/Documents/563343n80.pdf

²Importantly, the term “asylum seekers” is applicable to these individuals because they are placed in Israel under temporary group protection (TGP), although many of them have not formally applied for asylum. In fact, since 2006, Israel has not acknowledged asylum applications filed by those placed under TGP. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but even among those who did file an official asylum claim, rates of acceptance are minimal. Yaron et al. (2013) maintain that of the 3,693 asylum claims submitted during 2010–2011, only one was approved. Under these circumstances, the UNHCR officially acknowledges individuals placed under TGP in Israel as individuals in a “refugee-like situation.”

³Since 2010, the visa carries a line stating, “This visa is not a work permit,” thus withholding the right to work from asylum seekers. However, the Supreme Court has prevented the state authorities from implementing this prohibition. The prohibition of work statement is thus used mainly to spread uncertainty among employers who might otherwise be willing to employ asylum seekers.

⁴Pressures were also voiced from IDF reserve soldiers positioned at the border, as demonstrated in a news report by A. Bereshkovsky (2007): http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3414994,00.html

⁵The amendment to the infiltration prevention law was implemented in June 2012. Yet, in September 2013, the Israeli High Court of Justice found the amendment to include unnecessary violations of basic rights and returned it to the parliament for further amendment. A new law was than designed to overcome the problems noted by the High Court, which nevertheless followed the exclusionist approach of policy makers in Israel toward asylum seekers.

⁶One example for this association is evident in the following news report by T. Goldstein (2010) http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3837667,00.html

⁷The media too recognized the association between the realities of Darfur and the Jewish Holocaust as apparent for example in the following column by Bauer (2008) http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/what-do-we-have-in-common-with-them-anyway-1.247743

⁸The two groups sampled have a different number of respondents due to limitations associated with the funding sources of this project. A random sample of 300 out of the 501 respondents to the asylum seekers questionnaire revealed robustness of the findings as compared to the sample size.

⁹I first tested the factors separately for the two frames and then pooled for the entire sample. In all cases, the factor loadings were well above 0.7, indicating that respondents do not consider them to represent a third different factor. Moreover, I estimated the model without these two items, and the main findings remained the same. The convergence of security and socioeconomic threats in the Israeli case is not surprising. Given the strong position of ethnicity in Israel's political culture (Peled, 1992), threats to society that are associated with a foreign (non-Jewish) group are likely interpreted as threatening the existence of Israel as a Jewish-democratic state.

¹⁰Israeli-born participants whose father was born in Israel were coded according to their mother's foreign country of birth, and Israeli-born participants whose mother was born in Israel were coded according to their father's foreign country of birth. If both parents were foreign born but from a different ethnic-descent group, the participant was coded as mixed.

¹¹The scale was developed by Semyonov, Lewin-Epstein, and Mandel (2000).

¹²Percentages given in the text are approximate. Please refer to the tables for exact values.

¹³Among Jewish Israelis some 25% did not vote (Ben Meir, 2013).

¹⁴To maximize information about the different predictors, several steps were taken: Missing information on respondents’ education (in years) was imputed using their reports on the highest education certificate they hold. To narrow down the number of nonresponses regarding SES, a dummy variable representing retired individuals and students among whom reports on SES are past oriented or temporal is included in the estimation model for control. Individuals who did not provide an answer regarding their income were represented in the model using a dummy variable.

¹⁵The interaction between perceived symbolic threat and frame was insignificant.

¹⁶Interestingly, I also find that respondents with no clear political identification show similar tendencies to those found among respondents who identified as left-wing or center (b^exp = −0.645).