Israel has expanded its $3,500 voluntary departure grant to cover nationals from every country in Africa. The policy change aims to reverse a recent decline in the number of migrants leaving the country with state financial assistance, according to reports from Haaretz. Previously, the payment was restricted primarily to citizens of a limited number of states.
The new rules took effect on Monday, November 9, and will remain active until the end of the year. Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority stated that applications must be submitted by December 31 to qualify for the benefit.
The expanded grant applies to African nationals who have resided in Israel for more than two years without a valid visa, as well as those holding temporary residency permits. A significant addition to the criteria is that it now includes individuals who entered the country legally but subsequently overstayed their visas, a category that was not previously covered.
The authority anticipates that several thousand additional people will become eligible under the new guidelines. This expansion specifically includes citizens from nations such as Nigeria, South Africa, and Togo, who were largely excluded from the scheme in the past.
Before this update, the grant was mostly available to people who entered Israel through unofficial border points. This group typically included nationals from Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, and Guinea, along with citizens from countries lacking diplomatic relations with Israel.
Data from the authority indicates that 3,511 African nationals left with assistance from the Voluntary Departure Unit in 2024. This number dropped to 2,815 in 2025, representing a decline of approximately 20 percent. In its 2025 annual report, the authority attributed this decrease to smaller asylum quotas in Canada, the closure of US borders to asylum seekers, and war-related airspace closures that disrupted air travel.
Eritreans accounted for 89 percent of African departures through the scheme in the previous year. According to the data, about 90 percent of Eritreans and Sudanese who left the country traveled to destinations outside of Africa. Only around two percent returned to their home nations.
The current grant amount is identical to the one offered in 2018. At that time, the government led by then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered approximately 38,000 mostly Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers a choice. They could leave for an unnamed third country with a plane ticket and $3,500, or face imprisonment. The plan was discontinued in April 2018 after Netanyahu canceled a UN resettlement deal.
Israel’s refugee recognition rate remains under 0.1 percent, according to a December 2025 report by the Forum of Refugee and Asylum Seeker Organizations in Israel. The forum estimates that about 13,000 Eritreans and 6,700 Sudanese are currently in Israel under group protection from deportation. In August, the interior ministry announced it would grant temporary residency to Sudanese asylum seekers who had applied by June 2025. The aid group HIAS described this decision as a direct result of relentless legal pressure.
The situation for Ethiopian asylum seekers has become more precarious. After Israel’s high court upheld the government’s decision to withdraw their group protection in December 2025, authorities began arresting Ethiopian asylum seekers in March. Deportations were planned to begin in April. The aid group Assaf estimated that about 8,000 Ethiopians faced deportation, including around 1,000 from the Tigray region. Additionally, in June, police arrested Eritreans in Tel Aviv under a 2025 law that allows for the deportation of people identified as supporters of the Eritrean government.
