Soviet Emigre Estimate Slashed by Israel : Immigration: Shortfall of 100,000 blamed on job shortage, poor planning.

Israel’s chief immigration agency has sharply lowered its estimates of new Soviet arrivals this year and blamed the expected shortfall on insufficient job opportunities and botched planning by the government.

More than 300,000 Jewish immigrants had been expected to arrive in 1991, but the Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental body that arranges travel for the newcomers, scaled down the expectation to about 200,000.

The decrease is a major embarrassment to the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir; absorption of immigrants is the basic rationale behind establishment of the state of Israel, and successful reception of Jews from abroad is considered a prime duty of any Israeli government.

Shamir put pressure on the Bush Administration to limit the number of Soviet Jews who could emigrate to the United States to ensure that the bulk of them would come to Israel. Until late 1989, most Soviet Jews preferred America as a destination, but Washington adopted a quota of 50,000 Soviet Jewish immigrants a year just as the wave grew to epic size.

Soviet Jewry is driven to emigrate by signs of growing anti-Semitism, nationalist unrest and economic hardship in the Soviet Union. At the same time, Moscow has eased emigration rules, setting off a rush.

Israel greeted the huge migration with a burst of welcoming rhetoric and business-as-usual inefficiency.

During the past few months, newcomers’ difficulties in finding jobs have led to discontent, and the word of hardship is reaching back to Moscow, Minsk, Leningrad and other centers of Jewish population. “There’s no doubt, letters are going home and describe the situation as unfavorable,” said Yehuda Weinraub, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency.

Weinraub blasted the Shamir government for inaction. “This is an emergency situation. The government must step in energetically and take the problem in hand,” he said.

Criticism reached a crescendo early last week when the Bank of Israel released a report predicting mass unemployment unless the government takes steps to rapidly reform Israel’s bureaucracy-burdened economy. The report warned that up to 20% of the newcomers could leave Israel if jobs are not found for them soon.

Aides to Shamir responded defensively. “Do you think the government was unaware until now that it has a problem on its hands?” Amos Rubin, Shamir’s economic adviser asked Israeli newspapers.

But a government plan to pay the salaries of 50,000 workers if private industry finds a place for them was ridiculed out of existence by both the opposition and members of Shamir’s own Likud Party.

Likud member Ariel Weinstein said the make-work plan would resemble Soviet-style economic planning and condition the newcomers to expect handouts. “Let us not permit the immigrants, who were used to going to work and not working, do the same thing here in Israel,” he told the pro-government Jerusalem Post.

The Bank of Israel also said that housing construction will fail to match needs by 90,000 units by the end of this year. Bank head Michael Bruno said that Israelis must gear up for higher taxes and a lower standard of living to pay for the mass influx.

The government has been looking to Washington to help bail it out; Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai, author of the stillborn jobs plan, has asked for $10 billion over the next three years in aid for immigration.

Signs of discomfort among the new Soviet population are increasing. Ads in Russian-language newspapers offer emigration services, and Absorption Minister Yitzhak Peretz complained that lawyers have opened offices especially to serve new immigrants.

There are reports of Soviet parents scouring trash bins in marketplaces on the lookout for discarded vegetables. Some newcomers fret that meat is a luxury and that finding a decent place to live at a reasonable rent is becoming impossible.