The High Court of Justice and public organizations don't have a lot to say on the territories. But in response to a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights, the Hotline for Migrant Workers, and attorney Dov Kerner, the High Court in effect forced the government to change the tough line it and its predecessors took against thousands of foreign workers and their families.

Why are John Suarez, a 16-year-old 11th-grader at the Rogozin High School in Tel Aviv, and his 15-year-old brother Richard, who studies at the middle school there, inferior to their Israeli-born friends? They attend together Scouts meetings in the Shapira neighborhood, and want to serve in the army to complete their identity as Israelis, even though they were born in Colombia, and therefore are not included in Resolution 3807, passed by the previous government. That unjust and primarily unwise decree about foreign workers' families stated that only children born in Israel who turned 10 by the end of last year and whose parents came here legally are allowed to remain in Israel. All the others are threatened with deportation. The government decision and the interior minister's directives somewhat ameliorated the problem, promising civil status to a small segment.

That decision is insufficient. Such status must be granted to all who have come here, stayed for years, had families, and want to tie their fate to that of this country. But a government that until now has treated the small minority in a shameful way was able to somewhat wean itself from the xenophobic instinct. By doing so, the government overcame Shas racists and their ilk, who are concerned about Jewish identity as though they are not among those who have led the distortion of this identity through a coercive regime against the secular majority.

One can say that the 460 Israeli families in question have passed the test of Israeliness not less successfully, and perhaps more, than citizens who are here not by their own choice. If these families have survived, in a cruel and alienating neighborhood, then their representative is worthy of lighting a torch on the next Independence Day.

Between 16,000 and 20,000 foreigners in our midst recently have been defined by an American report as working under slave conditions, putting us in the company of Bahrain, Algeria, Bolivia and only one Western nation -- South Africa, which has yet to cast off the remains of slavery. Why should the fate of these foreigners be any worse than that of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who had once grasped the apron of their half-Jewish grandmother? The Russian immigration, including non-Jews, made an excellent contribution to the vibrancy of the economy and society, as well as to the cleanliness of your homes. For hundreds of years, the strength of world Jewry has relied on the ability of immigrants to hold tightly onto their countries, a right purchased with tribulations. The Torah protects those who live among us, as does the Declaration of Independence and every top legal precedent. And have we mentioned Ruth the Moabite and her descendant, King David?

We are not doing anyone a favor in amending the legislation. A blessing will settle on a society that understands that ethnic isolationism will only harm it. The Jewish majority will be strengthened by its diversity, not by the xenophobia nesting within it ad nauseam.

And why imitate all kinds of America's nonsense more than the wisdom that has served it so well in its absorption of large waves of immigration? Without that, they would not have had there an enriching Jewry, and we would not have had a lobby, huge fund-raising -- or even Ronald Lauder.