bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

sponsorType

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

factSheets

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

copyrighted

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

This is a story which should sound familiar. A small territory, with a largely immigrant, but settled population is busy getting rich quick, chatting away on mobile phones and living as if there were no tomorrow. Suddenly, it is faced with a massive and unexpected surge of immigration.

 Up to one million people have to be accommodated in a decade. Some will be rich and educated. A few will be illiterate. The majority will not be able to communicate in the local language. Planning is vital.

 The territory we are talking about is not Hong Kong in 1997, but Israel at the end of the 1980s.

 There are many obvious differences between Hong Kong and the Jewish state. Israel, though a small, crowded country, is 28 times the size of Hong Kong.

 And while Hong Kong's new immigrants will all be ethnically Chinese, Israel's share only a religion. They are ethnically and culturally diverse.

 But for all the differences, there are lessons for Hong Kong from the Israeli experience.

 From late 1989 to the end of 1996, Israel absorbed about 750,000 new immigrants, 15 per cent of its previous population, mostly from the former Soviet Union. In 1990 alone, 185,000 people flooded in from the Soviet Union, and 150,000 the following year. New immigrants are still arriving at the rate of 50,000 to 70,000 people a year.

 In 1991, in Operation Solomon, 15,000 Ethiopians were flown in in the space of just 36 hours. Another 5,000 arrived during the course of the year.

 The Government moved into action. Thousands of caravans were purchased from Israel and abroad and the land rented to put them on. Thousands of hotel rooms were rented.

 Landlords were immediately promised they would pay no tax on rents from new immigrants.

 For permanent shelter, the government has since relied not on public housing, but on private sector construction. Developers were offered rent guarantees and new immigrants helped with rent and mortgage subsidies. Ethiopian families, with their special needs, can get 98 per cent mortgages and repayment subsidies of around 90 per cent.

 Then the hard part started. As Shmuel Adler of the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption put it: 'There are two separate types of problems. There are the important problems and there are the urgent problems. What is urgent is the roof over the heads.

 'The important things are finding an income and building new lives.'  But there was one more similarity to the Hong Kong situation: There had been a realisation that a new wave of immigration could come at any time, although no one really knew the scope of it.

 In this, Israel was well ahead of Hong Kong. According to Mr Adler, the government had drawn up a master-plan in the mid-80s for an influx of 400,000 people.

 When the Soviet Union suddenly allowed mass-emigration in 1989, the Absorption Ministry had to ask for ever-increasing budgets from a reluctant Treasury.

 Eventually it budgeted US$10 billion (HK$77.4 billion) a year - the equivalent of a Chek Lap Kok, Lantau link and all the attendant infrastructure every two years - to cover every aspect of immigration from housing to education, employment subsidies and old age support.

 The money came from the hard-pressed Israeli taxpayer, donations from overseas Jewish organisations and, from 1993 onwards, Israel government bonds.

 The enthusiasm and expertise came from the Israeli people, imbued with a national ideology of absorbing Jews from anywhere in the world, whatever the cost. The Basic Law provides only the legal impetus for bringing large numbers to Hong Kong. Israel's commitment to 'the ingathering of the exiles' is one of principle.

 Nurit Malachi was in Hong Kong running the territory's first Jewish school when the floodgates opened. By the time she returned to Israel five years ago, the urgent task was largely dealt with. The important part had hardly begun.

 Like other teachers all over the country, she threw herself into helping the immigrant children. She became the principal of a school in a caravan area funded by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, offering special education to 200 children from both the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia.

 It helped children integrate in Israeli society.

 'After Hong Kong, it was wonderful. It was like a mission,' she said. 'I didn't recognise my country. Everything had changed. There was a lot of warmth.'  Then she spent two months in Kazakhstan and a year in Moscow helping to train teachers to prepare future immigrants with Hebrew and Israeli culture.

 Now she is back in Israel training Israeli Arab teachers in new, modern educational techniques.

 Like Mr Adler, she recognises there have been special problems for the Ethiopian immigrants. They face social alienation and the complete collapse of their own traditional leadership structures. They also face some racism.

 But many are now in university and, eventually, Mrs Malachi expects the majority will make the same success of life in their new country as previous immigrants from developing countries.

 As for the Russians, Israel has pulled out all the stops to provide them with employment.

 It helped that a high proportion of the newcomers were highly educated. In 1989, Israel boasted 6,000 scientists working in the civilian sector. By 1995 another 10,700 had arrived in the country. Even larger numbers of engineers and doctors, many of them with specialisations and qualifications of little use in the Israeli market, had to be absorbed at speed.

 Not surprisingly there were reports of nuclear physicists working as road-sweepers.

 But with the help of employment subsidies, intensive language training and retraining schemes for those that needed them, unemployment among the immigrants is now lower than in the population as a whole. By the end of 1995, 8,000 immigrant scientists had found science-related jobs, though not necessarily of a level commensurate to their expertise. A year earlier, 44 per cent of immigrant physicians were working as doctors and the number has grown since.

 And there has been a proliferation of full-time orchestras, as the many immigrant musicians have found new outlets for their talents. Russian language newspapers are more profitable than their Hebrew counterparts.

 But the picture is not uniformly rosy. There is a Russian mafia, although as Mr Adler pointed out 'there are not more delinquents than in previous immigrations'. Many Russians continue to work in jobs well below their capabilities. Disaffected youths hang out in the streets, take drugs or turn to prostitution. Many have returned to the former Soviet Union.

 Tens of thousands of economically unproductive elderly immigrants are a heavy burden.

 But Israel's economy has grown by an average of 7 per cent a year.

 What are the lessons for Hong Kong? Clearly planning and commitment to heavy long-term investment are needed. Teaching missions to China to prepare potential immigrants before they arrive might be looked into.

 Mr Adler modestly suggested the best lesson the world could learn was 'not to make the same mistakes'. However, Mrs Malachi, with her experience of Hong Kong education, had some specific advice. 'Of course there is a need for preparation,' she said.

 Recommending a greater flexibility in teaching methods, new books, new ideas and a greater involvement of psychology in schools, she said Hong Kong should recognise that people are different and the learning culture on the mainland was different.

 'Clear policy changes are needed,' she said. 'Hong Kong needs to try as much as it can to give the children a good feeling, and make them welcome.' 



Model for absorbing migrants