When it comes to immigration, conservatives employ the same fallacious zero-sum-game ideology that President Barack Obama and other liberals use to create division between rich and poor.

Critics contend Obama wants poor Americans to believe the wealthy succeed at the expense of everyone else. One person’s gain comes at another person’s loss. There is only so much to go around. The message creates anxiety and a need for government to mandate that we all share wealth by overtaxing those who create it.

It’s easy to promote this concept to anyone who mistakes wealth as a product of government. If government gives a man a phone, he could forget that phones are created and produced by individuals motivated by wages and profits who can produce almost endless numbers of phones. If government gives a man food, he may forget that farmers produce food by planting and nurturing seeds. The phone producer may be rich, but he didn’t get that way by taking Androids from the poor. The farmer didn’t get ahead by stealing fruit from other Americans.

This country became stupendously wealthy by expecting individuals to produce slightly more than they consume. We would never be left with a pie to divide among us. We would function like a potluck dinner. Each family of four would cook up enough for a family of eight. The more who arrived, the bigger the bounty. None would fear another man’s arrival. The excess would easily feed the few who hadn’t the means to arrive with a dish.

The arrangement breaks down when those without a dish outnumber the rest. The American economy becomes dysfunctional when too many consume relative to those who produce.

Our government buys ads that promote food stamp dependence. It pays wages to those who have lost jobs — not just for emergency assistance, but to provide passive wages for years. It provides phones, computers and housing to those who don’t work. Workers spend $124 billion a year to pay for 9 million on disability. They consist of everyone from blind Americans — some of whom cannot work — to those with sore muscles and mood disorders. Eligibility has become more lenient, and recipients have tripled in three decades. Food stamps, once an emergency provision, are promoted as a means for college students to avoid part-time work.

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. Politicians promote dependence to get elected and stay in power.

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 this 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  guestworker 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 guestworker 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 largess 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. The Gang of Eight, which includes Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, wants us to benefit from a class of people who desire hard work and cannot choose federal assistance over hot, tiresome days in the sun. They also want to facilitate those with talents that we’d be wise to import. And they want to fix our border.

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.