Most CPAs, journalists, engineers and the like don’t shingle roofs or mop floors after losing jobs. They draw wages from the collective until they get a job of their liking.

That’s why Western Slope farmer John Harold found himself in the New York Times during the summer of 2011.

Harold wanted to help reduce unemployment. So he stopped hiring most of the migrant workers he had relied on for years to pick produce. He hired locally and found that American workers would not do the work. Most quit within six hours, deciding unemployment was better. Stories are common of farmers who have let food rot in fields after finding that Americans won’t do farm labor at almost any wage.

The “Gang of Eight” — a bipartisan group of senators — proposed sweeping immigration reforms last week that would bring order to chaos and allow more immigrants to live and work legally in our country. It would establish intense border security while creating guest-worker programs for low-skilled and high-skilled workers. It would establish rigorous criteria for immigrants to earn permanent residence or citizenship. Anyone in the country as a guest-worker would not qualify for federal benefits, including all forms of welfare and Obamacare.

Opponents have invoked zero-sum arguments, such as this:

“We have 20 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job,” said Roy Beck, head of NumbersUSA, which wants less immigration. “It’s as if the Gang of Eight lives in alternate universe.”

No, Mr. Beck. It’s as if the senators know that more people working, producing, earning and spending will grow our economy and help fund the 20 million Americans who have chosen government aid over unpleasant work.

We have become an entitlement society with too few producing relative to those who consume. That’s part of the reason we are mired in debt.

Conservatives would be smart to support this bill while ensuring that it creates more prosperity than dependence. Let’s invite people to the table who will produce more than they consume. It may be our economy’s last great hope.

— Colorado Springs Gazette