Clever. GOP senators propose $11 minimum wage coupled with immigration restriction Republican senators announced legislation Wednesday to gradually raise the national minimum wage to $11, but tied it to requiring businesses to use E-Verify, a tool that would help prevent illegal immigrants from taking jobs. Led by Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Utah, the proposal explicitly links illegal immigration and U.S. wages, a touchy issue for many in Washington. “American workers today compete against millions of illegal immigrants for too few jobs with wages that are too low — that’s unfair,” Mr. Cotton said. “Ending the black market for illegal labor will open up jobs for Americans. Raising the minimum wage will allow Americans filling those jobs to better support their families. Our bill does both.” Naturally the Democrats would rather have no raise than a minimum wage increase tied to E-Verify. They have their own bill that would simply increase the minimum wage to $17.00 an hour, but having an alternative GOP bill gives stray Congressional Republicans a reason not to move over and vote for the Democratic bill.
Since such a bill would never pass, and Democrats would never approve immigration restrictions, the Republicans really should have proposed raising the minimum wage to $13 or $14, just to try to make the Democrats look more bad for refusing it. Most of the those on the Left are going to view $11 as a pittance, like a deal that's not really going to be worth taking.
