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Hello All,

First and foremost, for those who have not heard, JmatH has asked me to serve as the Minister of Immigration, and I have humble accepted. I can only hope to meet the lofty expectations that come with the Ministry.

Immigration is indeed a universal concern. I believe each Israeli citizen recognizes the importance of growing our population effectively, efficiently, and quickly. Increasing our active population serves all aspect of our small nation - be it economically, militarily, or in taking our place on the world stage. There are many threads spread across the forums on immigration topics, and many interested voices with great ideas. My first hope is to centralize the Immigration conversation here, building on the momentum of the progress we've already made and streamlining our efforts.

I've spoken with Speaker of the House Elianna regarding her efforts to create the committee format setup. Once the Immigration Committee is in place, we'll have much more manpower to move forward with ideas. While she finalizes this, I will be setting up separate threads here to maintain some semblance of organization: Citizen Requests / Approvals ; Israeli Aid For Immigrants Program; and eIsrael Welcoming Committee.

Citizen Requests/Approvals:
This thread, picking up where Seeroy and Leroy Bloodshed left off, I'd hope this thread becomes the clearinghouse and centralized information point for all Knesset Members to discuss, vet, and approve new applications. I'm asking all Knesset members NOT to act independently on application approvals. We simply need to exercise a small degree of caution when approving applications, and I want to make sure we do our due diligence in finding out who these people are as efficiently as possible.

Israeli Aid For Immigrants Program (IAFI):
The IAFI was launched a week ago, to a tepid, but hopeful, response. The idea was this would serve as the ORG that spearheaded new citizen advertising and recruitment abroad. I'd also hoped that, in the spirit of a truly nationalized program and bi-partisan consensus, that those in the fledgling Immigration Advisory Committee would be more pro-active in getting the message out. There is a draft of an article awaiting discussion in the previous IAFI thread, with limited responses. I will continue to be proactive on this front, as I believe in the idea. Please participate.

eIsrael Welcoming Committee:
It was suggested a week or so ago to create a Welcoming Committee to work in conjunction with our recruitment efforts. I am very much in favor of this idea. A collective effort between the University of Israel, Seeroy's Information Israeli Article, and active outreach, we can assimilate new citizen effectively.

Again, I think we all agree that growing our population stands as one of our greatest domestic challenges. I hope we can all work together towards this common goal. Yay.

Hyman Roth
Israel Minister of Immigration