In the Washington Post, Ramesh Ponnuru praises the “Higher Wages for American Workers Act,” which would couple a minimum-wage increase with universal E-Verify. He writes that this bill, which is sponsored by a range of Republican senators, “is a sign that Republicans might be recovering their ability to engage in creative and constructive policymaking.”

I might add that the internal logic of this bill is a reversal of the thinking behind many immigration proposals during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama years. Back then, the general architecture of “comprehensive immigration reform” was about expanding legal migration pathways in order to compensate for the promise of enforcement that — theoretically, at least — would curtail future illegal immigration. Thus guest-worker proposals as well as expansive amnesty provisions characterized the failed “grand bargains” on immigration of 2006, 2007, and 2013.

This fusion of promised enforcement, amnesty, and expanded legal immigration (and guest-worker programs) ultimately proved dissatisfying to many people. The first iteration of that paradigm (the 1986 amnesty paired with 1990’s expansion of legal immigration) was followed by an explosion of illegal immigration in the 1990s and 2000s. No version of “comprehensive immigration reform” ever passed, and grassroots frustration with immigration issues helped power Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The Higher Wages for American Workers Act reverses that dynamic. Rather than trying to prioritize high rates of migration, it instead focuses on tightening the labor market. Its two prongs work in tandem: Implementing universal E-Verify helps ensure that a federal minimum wage is actually a floor (employers can’t evade it by recruiting illegal labor). Moreover, E-Verify also helps tighten the labor market up the chain by restricting employment only to those with legal authorization. Universal E-Verify might be a tool for managing illegal immigration and controlling the border, but it also has economic effects. This is immigration policy as labor policy.

Tom Cotton, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Shelley Moore Capito, and Rob Portman rolled out the initial version of this proposal in 2021. Portman has left the Senate, but his successor J. D. Vance has signed on, and the latest version of this bill has also picked up Bill Cassidy as a co-sponsor. The political dynamics of this proposal might be different from what they were in 2021. While this bill has originated in the Senate, Republicans do actually control the House. If the House were to pass some version of this proposal, that might put more pressure on the Senate to take it up. And, even if a House-passed bill died in the Senate, the GOP could still enter the 2024 election cycle saying that the Republican House had passed a minimum-wage increase.

As Ramesh notes, the idea of the GOP as a “party of workers” has often been more honored in the talking point than in concrete policies. The Higher Wages for American Workers Act could be a chance to change that. And policy-makers could extend the principle of this bill to other issues. For instance, a “Skilled American Workforce” bill could simultaneously cut guest-worker programs and invest in vocational education, science and technology, and medical training. Here again, both sides of this proposal would be complementary: The investment provisions would help prepare workers for the demands of the 21st-century economy, and slashing guest-worker programs would provide an incentive for American workers to enter those in-demand fields.