Special representatives of the Interior Ministry will be assigned to determine the legal status of foreign yeshiva students wishing to remain in the country. The decision is a direct result of efforts from Deputy Education Minister R’ Meir Porush, who has been meeting with ministry officials, aware of the difficulties encountered by yeshiva students from abroad who seek to renew their visas.
Yeshiva directors add the “foot-dragging” by the ministry hurts their pocketbook, explaining it takes months for students to achieve legal recognition at times, and as a result, they do not receive budgets for them until that time.
Interior Minister R’ Eli Yishai convened a special forum, including his director-general David Sheetrit, and other ministry top officials, along with R’ Porush and Elad mayor Shlomo Brilliant, establishing a system to expedite addressing visa extension requests from visiting yeshiva students.
It was decided that 8-10 representatives of the yeshivas will centralize all the requests and present them directly to the ministry officials responsible for addressing them. Jerusalem yeshivos with a large number of foreign students will be assigned a ministry agent who will be responsible for that yeshiva, all towards facilitating the process and eliminating delay.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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4 Responses
They could issue multi-year visas? The US is much more liberal about student visas,which is ironic since American students pump a huge amount of money into the Israeli economy.
This is not realistic at all. The VISA problem is with the women that run the department in the Interior Ministry. The system used to be a walk in and be served like the rest of the Interior ministry services. They changed that to be appointments only by phone that are six weeks later to a specific person and room. If you miss that appointment by fifteen minutes, you have to reapply for another appointment by phone for another six week wait. I worked for a well known seminary and have spent major blocks of time only to be thrown out without so much as an appointment or hope for student VISA’s for our students. The system must be changed, not bringing in more political players.
The picture is the yeshiva gedolah of the five towns
hey #4, and what sugya are they learning?