December 19, 2008

by Cnaan Liphshiz

Haifa City Hall was quick to announce last week that it triumphed over the Jewish Agency over the latter's plan to close the city's only immigrant absorption center. Perhaps too quick, as the agency maintains that all options are still on the table.

"As soon as Mayor Yona Yahav heard about the closure, he picked up the phone and fought it. The issue of immigrant absorption is dear to him, and he can get angry if he needs to," municipal spokesman Roni Grossmann said. Grossmann said the city announced the "successful prevention" of the closure after Yahav received an official promise that the center will remain open. "We know the agency is downsizing, but they can't close our only center here." But Jewish Agency spokesman Michael Jankelovitz said that regardless of what Haifa officials say, "the future of the Abba Hushi Jewish Agency facility will be decided in an executive meeting at the Jewish Agency on December 17."

The center, named after the legendary Haifa mayors, is housed in an old building at 131 Hameginim Blvd., near Kiryat Eliezer.

Yoline Goldberg, a city worker in charge of the absorption of Western immigrants, says the center is crucial for Haifa's ability to attract new immigrants from the West.

"It's not easy bringing people from the U.S. and Western Europe to Haifa," Goldberg said. "They seem to prefer the center of their country, where all their friends and relatives tend to be. But when we do get an inquiry from someone from the States who is considering immigrating to Haifa, one of the first questions is whether the city has an absorption center."

Goldberg, who immigrated many years ago from Marseilles, says that without at least one absorption center Haifa "will be unable to compete with other cities for Western immigrants." She called the mooted closure an "irrational" move.

About 100 people currently live in the center, Most are immigrants from Ethiopia or the former Soviet Union, with a smaller number from the U.S. and from France. There are also about a dozen U.S. college students on study-abroad programs.

Telfed, the South African Zionist Federation Israel, refrains from sending new immigrants to the center. "We sent a family there earlier this year, but only for a short while," said Dorron Kline, Telfed's director of project development. "It's noisy there, and the students party at night. It's not a place for a family. I wouldn't recommend it to any of our olim."

Goldberg says that in addition to the noise and the center's drab appearance, there are frequent electricity and heating problems