How Many 'Asylum Seekers'?

How many are there in Israel?

I do not know.

But from a September 2009 academic article in the Journal of Refugee Studies Vol. 24, No. 1 by Haim Yacobii I found this information:

the movement of Sudanese migrants to Israel...began in 2005, mainly from the Darfur region, and the continuation of this migration in 2006, when more and more asylum seekers crossed the border from Egypt into Israel. By the spring of 2007, the number of asylum seekers had increased significantly, reaching 50 to 100 per day (interview with Eithan Shwartz, previous spokesman of the Committee for Darfur’s Refugees, 3 May 2008). According to a report by Israeli Television’s Channel 2 (23 February 2008), 5,000 Sudanese asylum seekers entered Israel in 2007, while by early 2008, the number entering Israel from the south had already reached 2,500. Other sources report 8,000: approximately 2,400 African asylum seekers, including about 1,700 Sudanese (25–30 per cent of them from Darfur), with others coming from Eritrea, Ghana, and Kenya. According to the available data, this number has now reached 20,000 people (interview with Elisheva Milikovsky, Israeli Organization for Aid to Refugees and Asylum Seekers, 18 December 2008; see also: Human Rights Watch Report 2008).

From an April 2010 report:

...According to Amnesty International, as of 2009 there were approximately 18,000 African asylum seekers - people applying for refugee status - in Israel.

And as for the more general term of "foreign workers", well, this week we read:

More than a quarter million foreigners live in Israel, according to a report issued on Sunday by the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers. According to the report, which was based on Interior Ministry figures from November, there were 88,864 legal foreign workers in Israel. In addition, there are around 95,000 people in Israel illegally on expired tourist visas, 31,000 Palestinians working legally in Israel, and around 45,000 African “infiltrators,” most of whom are requesting group protection status.

The figure also includes a few thousand Jordanian citizens and Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip who work in Judea and Samaria.

And specifically African:

By the end of 2010, there were 33,273 African migrants in the country, and by the end of November 2011 there were 45,000. These migrants are overwhelmingly men; of the 13,940 who arrived in 2010, 11,961 were men, and 11,567 of the 13,686 who came in 2011 were men, according to the report.

In 2010, 10,142 of those who entered Israel via the Sinai border were from Eritrea, 2,927 from Sudan, and 38 from Ivory Coast. In January-November 2011, 6,339 Eritreans entered Israel, followed by 3,739 from Sudan and 72 from Ivory Coast.

A number of people came across the border from other countries including Georgia, Turkey and North Korea, seeking asylum in Israel.

A record 16,000 African migrants illegally crossed into Israel from Egypt in 2011, according to the IDF. In 2010, in comparison, 14,000 Africans crossed into Israel.

Something to mull over.

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