These days mark three years since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war – an event that shook the entire world, changed the lives of millions, and deeply affected the State of Israel as well.
Considering the thousands who have left Israel in the past year, mass immigration could have served as an invaluable economic growth mechanism for Israel during its most difficult period. Unfortunately, however, the government never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Since the war began, more than 120,000 immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have arrived in Israel. These are educated individuals, most of them professionals in high-demand fields such as doctors, engineers, and tech specialists – the exact workforce that Israel desperately needs, especially after a war erupted here as well.
Yet, instead of viewing them as an engine for growth and integrating them efficiently into the labor market, the state has failed to establish rapid and high-quality absorption mechanisms to facilitate their employment and societal integration. Immigration absorption has been sluggish, lacking strategic planning and financial investment to ease their transition.
How integrating immigrants could have helped Israel
According to research conducted by One Million Lobby, if 80% of these immigrants were employed in their professional fields, Israel would gain NIS 7.5 billion over a decade. In other words, the state loses approximately NIS 2 million in potential revenue every single day due to the failure to integrate these professionals into their fields.
These figures are particularly troubling when compared to the opposite trend: According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, about 84,300 Israelis left the country in the past year, 48.6% of whom were foreign-born. This means that some are native-born Israelis belonging to the same educated and highly skilled demographic while others are immigrants who are leaving – a clear indication of the failure to absorb many of them successfully.
These immigrants could have served as a shock absorber for the Israeli economy, preventing an economic downturn and immediate recession. However, according to the latest 2024 research by One Million Lobby, only 16.5% of immigrants are employed in their professional fields.
Just like in the 1990s, Israel has failed to open doors for immigrant academics. No on-the-job training programs were launched, no wage subsidies were offered to employers in high-demand sectors during their language studies, and, in general, those who managed to integrate did so on their own, while those who did not were left behind.
Immigration continues: This year alone, 32,161 immigrants arrived in Israel, with 22,469 of them coming from former Soviet Union countries. But with such a low ability to continue working in their fields, it is uncertain how many will stay.
The Aliyah and Absorption Ministry, led by Ofir Sofer, has implemented some correct measures, but most were too little, too late. The Af Al Pi Chen (Despite Everything) program, aimed at encouraging immigration after October 7, 2023, included rent assistance for young families but was geographically limited, poorly publicized, and irrelevant for many immigrants. The Olim L’Academia (Immigrants to Academia) program provided scholarships for the first year of studies.
Still, it was restricted to a small number of fields, such as mathematics, physics, and business administration. The launch of a much-needed digital language-learning platform for immigrants occurred only two years after the war began. At the same time, state-funded Hebrew learning centers continued using outdated pedagogical tools due to budget shortages, and most subsidies for private Hebrew courses – critical for working immigrants – were cut.
A special task force for integrating immigrant doctors was established only a year ago in collaboration with the Health Ministry, yet until a few months ago, it focused on assisting doctors who had not yet immigrated rather than those already in Israel.
A crucial reform in professional licensing for immigrants, which allows the licensing process to begin before arrival, has just been launched. However, once again, it prioritizes future immigrants over the 10,000 professionals already in Israel, who have been waiting over two years for degree recognition from the Education Ministry, preventing them from working in their professions.
Overall, the government has yet to grasp the immense potential of this wave of immigration and has not allocated sufficient resources to create employment programs that would allow these professionals to be absorbed into their fields – an enormous economic and social loss that Israel will regret for generations.
The irony is that just as the state failed to realize the potential of the major immigration waves of the 1990s, it continues to miss the mark today. Imagine what could have happened if all those professionals who arrived in the 1990s had immediately been integrated into their fields rather than working in cleaning or security.
The missed opportunity of the past three years is still reversible, but if we fail to act now, we risk losing a tremendous growth engine for the economy, and we may no longer be able to claim that immigration absorption remains a core value upon which the State of Israel was built.
The writer is the CEO of One Million Lobby and an expert on the former USSR.