Thousands of olim and other Israelis are facing severe difficulties in obtaining entry permits for their parents, children or siblings to enter the country for important life-cycle events, while hundreds are missing flights or are forced to reschedule without knowing when such a permit might come.
These difficulties come as the government has increased restrictions and regulations for those entering the country due to the resurgence of COVID-19 in Israel and abroad, in an attempt to halt foreign nationals who may be infected from entering the country.
But even requests in which the applicants seemingly meet the criteria for entry, and whose documentation and applications are filled out correctly, are not receiving answers to their entry permit requests in a timely fashion.
The failure to provide responses is creating deep distress and anxiety among olim who desperately wish to have their parents, siblings and children present for weddings, as well as the birth of grandchildren, circumcision ceremonies and for other events and necessities.
JESSICA AND DANIEL from Chicago, not their real names, have a daughter living in Israel, whose husband is away from home for work purposes several days each week.
With kindergartens closed for the summer, their daughter, who has a full time job, needs assistance looking after the children and so Jessica and Daniel applied for an entry permit and booked a flight to come to Israel.
They applied through the online application portals of both the Foreign and Interior ministries’ Population and Immigration Authority on July 19, and booked a flight for Sunday, August 8.
They have yet to receive a response as to whether their entry permit application has been approved or denied, and are now anxiously wondering whether or not to pay for and take COVID-19 PCR tests and pack their bags, or just cancel their flight.
The couple already missed the birth of their now four-month old grandson due to the government’s closure of the airport back at the end of January, and are now facing new difficulties coming to Israel.
“It’s so frustrating why it has to be this way; I’m devastated, I’m disappointed. My daughter will now have to pay money they don’t have to pay for private day care, which will cost a fortune,” Jessica told the Post.
“This is my daughter, I want to be there and support her, and she wants and needs our support,” she said.
“We are trying so hard to keep a glimmer of hope, but my heart just aches as our fight is on Sunday.”
ANOTHER CASE is that of Brendon Davis, 32, who made aliyah from South Africa in 2015 and is due to get married on September 12.
In anticipation of the wedding, his parents applied for an entry permit via both online application systems, also on July 19.
Davis’s parents’ flight to Israel is on August 18 but they are also awaiting to receive approval for their requests.
Coming from South Africa, currently designated as a red-list country for COVID-19 infections, Davis’s parents will need to quarantine for at least seven days upon arrival in Israel, and they are therefore anxious to fly with enough time to complete their quarantine by the time of Brendon’s wedding.
“I’m not sleeping; it’s made me really anxious,” said Davis.
“This is not just a regular visit, it’s for my wedding day. Dealing with this has taken over my life for the last two and a half weeks; I’m waking up at all hours to see if I have received confirmation,” he said.
“I’m checking my work email, private email, refreshing them every half hour, I check junk mail the whole time, it’s very nauseating not knowing what’s happening.”
IN A BIZARRE and almost Kafkaesque twist on Friday, Davis’s mother was informed that her entry permit application had been approved, but his father’s was still pending.
And in an astonishing development, Davis’s mother was then told her entry permit had been issued erroneously and she was still not authorized to enter the country.
Applications for foreign relatives of Israeli citizens to enter the country are made via online forms, either through the Foreign Ministry or the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority.
Israeli embassies and consulates deal with applications made from their jurisdictions, although a central processing center in the Foreign Ministry itself assists embassies and consulates with high numbers of requests.
The Foreign Ministry online application form requests a scheduled flight date, although not a proof of a flight ticket.
Entry permits once issued are valid for 31 days, while some applicants are told that their request may take up to 21 working days for approval.
Applications to the Population and Immigration Authority are processed by 50 regional branches of the authority, depending on the place of residence of the Israeli citizen whose relatives seek to enter.
According to the Population Authority, it has dealt with 7,000 applications since the online application system went live on July 15.
There are some 140 authority employees dealing with the requests.
A spokesperson said the authority has not been given extra manpower to deal with the large number of entry permit requests that it has to deal with, and that employees processing such requests are doing so in addition to their regular duties.
Entry permit applications are processed in accordance with the date they are received, with an emphasis put on urgent requests “as far as possible.”
THE FOREIGN MINISTRY said that it has worked “in accordance with the criteria established by the State of Israel for the entry of Israelis and foreign nationals into the country,” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It said that it had experienced a large number of such requests, and that “at some of the consulates where there are large Jewish and Israeli populations, there have been thousands of new requests every day.”
It further said: “The Foreign Ministry is making the utmost effort to improve and make more efficient the processing of entry permit requests, and to ensure that anyone who is eligible can do so in the quickest possible manner.”
The ministry declined to say how many employees are working on permits at the embassies, consulates or the central processing center in its headquarters, and also declined to say whether or not it had been given extra manpower to deal with the heavy number of entry permit applications.
There are dozens of stories like that of Jessica and Daniel, and Brendon and his parents, many in which the applicants never hear back from the Foreign Ministry or the Population Authority before their scheduled flights.
RABBI DOV LIPMAN, who has set up a new organization called Yad L’Olim to provide assistance in these and other situations, says the group receives between 10 and 20 requests a day from the desperate relatives of Israeli citizens requesting assistance in obtaining permits ahead of imminent flights.
Critically, applicants are not informed if they have incorrectly completed the application forms or omitted necessary documentation, meaning the applicant never knows they need to rectify the application and waits in vain for entry permits which will never come.
In other cases, apparently illogical decisions are made such as in the application of one couple in which one spouse received the permit and the other did not, such as that of the Davis parents.
“The new ministers and their staff are committed to helping olim and their families within the constraints of the health concerns,” said Lipman.
“We have a channel of communication with them and a good working relationship,” he said. “The problem seems to be the volume of requests and the lack of manpower to get to all of them in a timely manner.
“Based on what I am seeing, I would recommend hiring more people to review the files, communicating with applicants if they are missing specific documents, and creating a mechanism for requests to be addressed when it’s 2-3 days before the flight,” Lipman said. “Those steps would remove most of the pressures, anxiety and stress from all sides.”