 Israeli historian Devorah Hacohen describes the opposition against this immigration policy within the new Israeli government, such as those who argued that there was "no justification for organizing large-scale emigration among Jews whose lives were not in danger, particularly when the desire and motivation were not their own" as well as those who argued that the absorption process caused "undue hardship".However, the force of Ben-Gurion's influence and insistence ensured that unrestricted immigration continued.The plan has been described as "a pivotal event in ‘imagining’ the Jewish state" and "the moment when the category of Mizrahi Jews in the current sense of this term, as an ethnic group distinct from European-born Jews, was invented."