People from many political backgrounds are expressing opposition to “rewarding” Hispanic workers who have broken U.S. immigration laws with anything that smells like “amnesty.” Their assumption is that this lawbreaking should be punished not overlooked. But lost from view in this perspective is the fact that we are talking about a set of very inappropriate laws. And the breakers of these laws are not only South-of-the-border workers, but those who hire them. All sorts of firms are glad to have these industrious workers dedicated to a better life for their families and willing to go the second mile to get it. Many families, including prominent politicians, hire “illegal” Hispanics to clean their houses and stay with their children. The lawbreaking, if that is what we must call it, is pandemic. And it has been going on for so long that these so-called laws are engulfed within a vast need to start over with a whole new set of laws.

We also need to provide a widespread forgiveness for everyone involved. And this “everyone” includes every U.S. citizen. All of us have tolerated this situation for decades. It is too late for us to be pious and righteous about lawbreaking. We, all of us, are the lawbreakers. And even worse, all of us are the passive, thoughtless irresponsible people who have tolerated these bad laws. So let us allow the past to be past and the future to be open to something fresh.

The notion that we should enforce more strongly these bad laws before we repent for having these bad laws is surely unethical thinking. From my perspective, it is unChristian thinking. Too many people ignore the plain truth that Jesus spent his entire ministry fighting such moralism.

Many of us are mistakenly worried about threats to the jobs currently held by African-American and Euro-American workers. The truth is that the threat to these jobs comes from a different direction; it comes from the typical attitudes of current employers toward all workers. Rather than support the rise of wages and respect for hardworking people throughout all the Americas, these employers work overtime to find the most destitute people to work for them and thereby drive down wages for everyone as well as export jobs to the cheapest places. This is the enemy, not Hispanic families that are so desperate that they send family members away from home through dangerous passages to foreign lands to put bread on their tables.

Also, we need to confess that along with self-righteous piety about lawbreaking, there exists an admixture of racial intolerance. Too many of us are too worried about seeing our English-speaking, coolly-rational culture invaded by Spanish-speaking hot-emotional, passionate people who might challenge our status-quo styles of living. In addition to having our new neighbors learn English, let us ask our children and grandchildren to learn Spanish. That would be the friendly thing to do.

If we want to actually resolve all these problems rather than massage our legalistic piety and unacknowledged prejudices, we have to open ourselves to making new laws and forging new attitudes, including a general forgiveness toward all the stupidity that has been operating for so many decades. So let’s not call this “amnesty,” let’s call it “Love.”