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No Citizenship, No Health Care
By Relly Sa'ar, Ha'aretz
Israel
January 5, 2005
Natalia Lynn immigrated 10 years ago from the former Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). She is very angry with the State of Israel for denying her 80-year-old father, Ivan Zbialov, basic human and civil rights, such as the right to receive basic health care.
"I'm a second-class citizen in this country," says Lynn, 48, who lives in Haifa. "When my eldest son endangered his life in a combat unit of the IDF, the state considered it to be just fine. But when it comes to my right to care for my father, Israel says to me, `You can't do anything for him, even if he is sick and suffering'."
Lynn became a citizen when she immigrated with a Jewish husband. However, the Law of Return, which grants full civil and social rights to a non-Jew, as defined by Jewish law, his children, and his grandchildren, does not take the aging parents of a non-Jewish partner into account. According to the Interior Ministry, elderly parents of an immigrant who was granted citizenship due to his or her spouse are not guaranteed permanent status. These parents are denied access to suitable health care that is necessary to maintain quality of life at their advanced age.
Unlike many Western countries, which grant citizenship to aging parents based on humanitarian considerations, the Population Administration grants retirement-aged parents of "mixed" couples tourist status, including a work permit. However, tourist status, which is valid for only two years, does not provide such parents with the right to receive government health care. Therefore, it is not a viable solution for the oppressive problems facing elderly parents, and does little to insure that they will not be abandoned in their old age to a desperate life in their country of origin.
No insurance company is willing to privately insure individuals over 65 years of age, because their monthly fees may not cover their health care costs. Immigrants are also unable to fund their parents' medical care, which may cost thousands of shekels each month.
Lynn had the difficult experience of watching her mother die without being to help her finish her life with dignity. Her mother, Victoria Zbialov, died in March at the age of 76 after suffering from two strokes. She spent the final year of her life bed-ridden, paralyzed and without medical or nursing care.
To prevent Lynn's father from a similar fate, an attorney from the Center for Jewish Pluralism, Nicole Maor, represented her in an appeal with the Haifa District Court last week. The appeal, filed against the Interior Ministry and Population Administration, called for Lynn's father to be granted resident status, based on humanitarian considerations, which would grant him the right to receive medical insurance. Lynn's circumstances are common to the current wave of CIS immigrants. According to Interior Ministry statistics, only 40 percent of the nearly 7,800 immigrants from the CIS who arrived between last January and November were registered as Jews by the administration.
Maor is representing another 17 families from the CIS who are in the same boat as Lynn. "High Court President Aharon Barak described an individual whose access to basic medical care is denied as a man robbed of his human dignity," Maor says. "And the appeal mainly rests on that - the right of an elderly parent to receive appropriate and vital medical care in keeping with the Basic Law of Human Dignity and Freedom." In the absence of formal statistics, Maor estimates the number of CIS seniors who have been denied the right to basic medical care, despite the citizenship of their children, to be "only several dozen."
Despite Barak's declaration, the High Court has not protected the civil status of elderly immigrants from the CIS in litigation. In August, Maor appealed to the court, on behalf of the 17 families, to force the Interior Ministry to grant their elderly parents resident status. The court rejected the appeal, citing its opposition to an inclusive decision that would not consider each family's individual circumstances.
In her civil appeal to the Haifa District Court, Maor is demanding that the Interior Ministry return to a former protocol in effect until August 2002, about a half a year before Avraham Poraz became interior minister. According to the Population Administration's previous policy, a single elderly parent had the right to attain resident status and social benefits such as government health insurance. The appeal notes that the protocol was canceled in August 2002, and emphatically states that "The Population Administration hid from former interior minister Poraz the fact that another protocol had been in effect before he took office. That protocol was kinder to elderly parents."
The appeal also reveals that in October, five weeks before Poraz was fired, the minister directed Population Administration Director Sassi Katzir to return to the situation in which a single elderly parent could attain resident status. Poraz did not publicize the decision while he was interior minister. According to the appeal, Katzir ignored the request.
"The change that Poraz sought represents a shift in immigration policy, and the subject demanded deliberation in the ministerial committee pertaining to population administration," the Population Administration spokesman says. "Until there is another decision, the administration is acting according to the existing protocol.
"The claims made against the Population Administration are inconsistent and have no basis. The administration works according to law, protocol and instructions, and does not make its own decisions. Because the matter of Zbialov will be the subject of judicial deliberation, the Interior Ministry's response will be heard in court."
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