Who wants wasted food?

Perhaps lawyers, engineers, state representatives, or radio talk-show hosts should pluck potatoes and cabbage from the field, so food doesn’t rot this year as it did in 2007. Or maybe American teenagers should work farm labor this summer and fall.

Perhaps they should, but they won’t. Colorado farmers already tried getting just plain American folks, young and old, to wander fields and load crops into trucks. It didn’t go well. Nobody took the jobs. Nobody took them even when wages rose to levels so high the farmers would lose money. Finally, when American citizens refused all reasonable wages for farm labor last year, scores of Colorado farmers resorted to leaving crops in the field. As growing numbers of families were finding groceries harder to buy, perfectly good food went to waste.

That’s because a law took effect Jan. 1, 2007, that required Colorado farmers to verify the Social Security numbers of all laborers, and to keep on file proof that each worker is legal. As a result of the law, and hostility toward immigrants, farm workers avoided Colorado in droves.

Outdated immigration laws allow about 35,000 farm workers temporary access to the United States each year, but farmers need some 700,000. Legislators, concerned about the plight of farmers, want to change local law to make it easier for temporary farm workers to reach Colorado lawfully. That should please most, because the people who are so concerned about immigration keep saying they’re not against immigrants. Rather, they explain, they’re against illegal immigrants. We need more immigrants to harvest food. If they come legally, no harm, no foul. Right?

Apparently that’s not the case with state Rep. Douglas Bruce, R-Colorado Springs.

“I would like to have the opportunity to state at the microphone why I don’t think we need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in Colorado,” Bruce said on the House floor Monday. The House chairwoman cut him off. That’s too bad. Bruce should have been allowed to explain why we don’t need 5,000 more immigrants to harvest crops that otherwise rot.

It’s time for both sides of the immigration debate to suspend the emotional zeal. Immigrants come here when we need them and pay them; always have, always will. Rotting food in the fields, which Americans refuse to harvest, means we continue to need immigrant labor. At stake are the needs of American farmers and consumers, who can ill-afford another season of wasted food.