Huge risks for Romanian illegals

By Nick Thorpe BBC, Romania

Ioan Lupascu starts to cry in his front room in a Bucharest suburb, as he tells me about his return journey, from Israel to Romania, seven years ago.

He had just been handed $1,040 of more than $10,000 he says was owed to him, for a year's construction work. He hadn't eaten for days, so he spent $40 on food at the airport.

Suicide bomb attacks have compounded foreign workers' misery

On arrival in Romania, the police confiscated the rest of his money when he tried to cash it. The dollar bills were fake.

Tens of thousands of East Europeans, Romanians in particular, have worked in Israel in the past decade.

They were needed as the security situation deteriorated, and Israelis felt they could no longer trust the Palestinians who had worked as labourers until then.

The foreign workers had and have a rough life. Most have to pay middle-men for the chance to go to work in Israel in the first place.

Once there, their passports are often taken away from them by their employers.

Vain hope

According to Ioan's story, they are paid only pocket money while there, and told that their wages are being put safely into a bank account in their names.

When their contracts are up, they are sent back to their own countries, with only a fraction of the money they are owed.

I feel ashamed of what my fellow Israeli citizens are doing Giaro Iahr Ex-president of Assocation of Israeli Entrepreneurs

For the past seven years, Ioan Lupascu has been writing letters to the Romanian and Israeli authorities, so far in vain.

I showed his written testimony, detailing every hour he worked in Israel, to Giaro Iahr, the ex-president of the Association of Israeli Entrepreneurs in Romania.

"Everything that is written here is true," he said. "I feel very unhappy about what happened. They were exploited - to the full extent possible. I feel ashamed of what my fellow (Israeli) citizens are doing."

Mr Iahr has helped a small number of Romanians to receive the money owed to them, from the national insurance scheme in Israel.

Helpless

As most were working legally, their employers paid national insurance contributions for them - even if they never paid the workers. So the Israeli state could help a bit, Iahr maintains.

The only thing that might make a difference would be for the workers to find a lawyer Razvan Cirica Romanian Labour Ministry official

But he says the men will never be paid unless their government supports them. The practice of exploiting the workers was so widespread, he says, that legal action could be taken against both their former employers and the Israeli state.

At the Romanian Ministry of Labour, state secretary Razvan Cirica wrings his hands. Like Iahr, thousands of cases like this have been sitting on his desk for years. But he says he too is helpless.

"We tried to conclude a bilateral agreement with Israel. It was impossible," he said.

"We cannot exercise any more pressure. The only thing that might make a difference would be for the workers to find a lawyer."

Jailed

And so the story goes, round and round, with no-one willing to take responsibility. Some blame Romanian naivety - some men were cheated several times, by different employers, each time hoping they would be lucky.

To compound their misery, several have been killed and injured in suicide bombings.

And many now sit in Israeli jails - arrested during a crackdown on illegal foreign workers.

Giaro Iahr estimates that Romanians who worked in Israel are still owed between $50m and $60m.

The only glimmer of hope comes from fellow East Europeans. More than 200 Bulgarians have just started legal action against an Israeli construction firm, alleging similar treatment.