Sri Lankan and Indian workers will no longer be eligible for private recruitment into Israel’s construction sector from 1 January 2027, under an official notification issued by Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority, the Daily Mirror reported.
From that date, corporations holding permits to employ foreign workers in construction will be allowed to recruit only from countries approved under a new framework. The notification, issued on 5 October, names 22 approved countries: the United States, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Italy, Albania, Ecuador, Brazil, Guatemala, Georgia, Hungary, Vietnam, Montenegro, Mexico, Portugal, Thailand, the Philippines, Panama, Kosovo, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey.
Sri Lanka and India are not on that list. The notice deals with them separately and explicitly, saying that in accordance with existing bilateral agreements and the established framework, private recruitment of workers from the two countries will be halted with effect from 1 January 2027.
The mechanism is the bilateral agreement, not exclusion
The reasoning set out in the notification matters for how this should be read. The authority says that once an additional bilateral agreement or arrangement is established to bring workers from a given country into Israeli construction, private recruitment from that country is discontinued one month after that agreement takes effect, and workers are thereafter recruited only under the bilateral arrangement.
Sri Lanka and India already have such government-to-government arrangements with Israel. On the face of the notice, the two countries are being moved out of the private channel because the state-to-state channel exists — not shut out of the sector altogether. Romania, by contrast, remains on the approved list and can still be recruited from privately.
What the notification does not say is how large the bilateral channel will be from 2027, which is the figure that determines whether this is a change of route or a reduction in opportunity for Sri Lankan workers.
Sri Lanka has had no answer from Israel
An official of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment said the bureau had not received a response from the Population and Immigration Authority regarding the recruitment of Sri Lankan workers for Israel’s construction sector.
That is the most immediately consequential detail in the filing: the notice is dated 5 October and takes effect in under three months, and the Sri Lankan agency responsible for placing those workers says it is still waiting to hear from the Israeli authority that issued it.
Employers wanting workers from countries rated Tier 1 or Tier 2 in the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report but absent from the approved list will have to submit a reasoned written request to the authority’s Construction Division.
Context
Israel expanded recruitment from Sri Lanka and India after the 2023 war sharply reduced the number of Palestinian workers on its construction sites, and Sri Lanka has treated the sector as a significant source of foreign employment and remittances.
Not reported
LankaNewz found no other verified newsroom filing on this notification, and publishes it single-source accordingly. The Daily Mirror does not give the number of Sri Lankans currently working in Israeli construction, how many are in the private-recruitment pipeline, or what happens to applications already lodged when the change takes effect. There is no comment from the Ministry of Labour and Foreign Employment, no Israeli-side comment beyond the notification text, and no indication of whether Sri Lanka intends to seek clarification or renegotiation.
Readers should note that an earlier and separate Israeli decision — a blanket freeze in August 2026 on the fast-track private recruitment route after a 40,000-worker quota was exhausted — is a different measure from the country-specific framework described here, and ranks highly in searches on this subject. This report covers only the notification issued on 5 October 2026.
