PRESIDENT TANCREDO WOULD GLADLY SHIP THEM OUR MEXICANS:

Kibbutz Is Haven for Fleeing Sudanese (BEN HUBBARD, 6/12/07, Associated Press )

Five years after he fled his razed Darfur village, and after jail spells in three countries, Ibrahim has found refuge in an unlikely place: a kibbutz in Israel.

The 24-year-old Muslim is one of about 440 Sudanese refugees working in Israeli hotels and on farms while the government seeks to place them in a third country.

Most have fled southern Sudan, where a 22-year conflict left 2.5 million people dead. Others, like Ibrahim, are from Darfur, where a rebellion has cost more than 200,000 civilian lives and made 2.5 million people homeless.

Ibrahim, 24, paused while weeding an avocado orchard on this kibbutz, or communal farm, in northern Israel and told his story. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees barred publication of his surname to protect his relatives in Darfur.

He said he fled five years ago to Khartoum, Sudan's capital, where the government imprisoned him for allegedly conspiring against it. After his release, he bribed his way into neighboring Egypt, and was arrested in Cairo. Once free again, he fled eastward with five others who paid a Bedouin to smuggle them into Israel. They feared police would shoot them.

"Then, thank God, we entered Israel and they welcomed us," he said. [...]

After a year in Israeli prisons, Ibrahim was moved in March to Yad Hannah, a kibbutz of 300 people which has taken in 36 Sudanese. They earn about $37 a day for farm work and shop and cook for themselves, but are still considered prisoners and cannot leave without written permission.

Ibrahim said he still feels isolated, because he speaks only Arabic and can't communicate with his kibbutz employers. But he does feel safe.

"Israel is nice," he said. "No one will hit you in the street or yell at you. I had to come all this way before I could find someone to treat me this way."

Kobi Danzon, who manages Yad Hannah's Sudanese, said the newcomers spent their first paychecks on cell phones to talk with Sudanese friends in Israel and overseas.

Over the years, the Palestinian uprising has deprived Israel of a source of cheap Arab labor, and migrants from Third World countries have flocked here to replace them.