Whisper it softly, but signs of sanity are breaking out in the G.O.P. Ten days after John Boehner wisely backed down on the threat of refusing to raise the debt ceiling, four Republican senators, led by Marco Rubio and John McCain, have joined four Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, to propose a framework for immigration reform. By containing principles that have bipartisan support from the start, the framework—or at least some version of it—has a good chance of eventually becoming law.

Inevitably, most of the focus will be on the proposal to provide an estimated eleven million illegal immigrants with a “pathway to citizenship.” Some conservative Republicans, and many of their constituents, favor rounding up these same people and deporting them. Mitt Romney’s bright idea was to make things so tough for them that they would choose to “self-deport.” Under the bipartisan plan, illegal immigrants would be able to stay where they are. As long as they register with the government, undergo a background check, and agree to pay any back taxes they owe, they will be granted “probationary legal status,” which will allow them to live and work legally in the United States. At some unspecified future date, after border security has been beefed up to the satisfaction of a newly appointed panel of pooh-bahs, they will be able to obtain a green card.

From the standpoints of politics, economics, and ethics, this all seems broadly sensible. (Securing the borders completely is virtually impossible; presumably that will have to be fudged.) Politically, the framework presents the G.O.P. with an opportunity to remove—or, at least, lessen—the perception that it is anti-immigrant, which has cost it heavily among Latino and Asian voters. (It also gives Rubio’s 2016 hopes a big boost.) Economically, it recognizes reality. Everybody knows that industries like construction, domestic care, and food preparation rely heavily on illegal aliens. Morally, it is the right thing to do—although that may prove difficult to explain to the Minutemen and their supporters.

The debate about illegal immigration has been recounted exhaustively. Reading through the plan, what struck me most was another of the proposals: to grant a green card to anybody who completes a postgraduate degree in science, math, or engineering from an American university. “The United States must do a better job of attracting and keeping the world’s best and brightest,” the framework says. “It makes no sense to educate the world’s future innovators and entrepreneurs only to ultimately force them to leave our country at the moment they are most able to contribute to our economy.”

Strategically speaking, supplementing America’s scientific talent pool with some of the brightest scientists and programmers from places like China, India, and Brazil holds obvious appeal. As international comparisons make clear, our own education system does a pretty dismal job of teaching math and science. With economic innovation and growth based increasingly on human capital rather than physical capital, the idea of pinning green cards to the degree certificates earned by science graduates has garnered the support of many people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in corporate America. In addition to helping companies like Google and Microsoft, which claim they are having difficulty finding enough qualified employees, snagging more of the global talent pool might well give a boost to entrepreneurship. According to the Partnership for a New American Economy, the pro-immigration lobby group set up by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch, immigrants are twice as likely as native-born Americans to start a business, and they now account for one in four start-ups.

On the face of things, there wouldn’t be many losers from the green-card proposal, but that’s a bit misleading. Among the groups that could suffer are American-born science graduates and foreign graduates who already have green cards. If the supply of technically proficient workers gets a big boost, wages would likely fall, at least modestly. The other set of potential losers would be foreigners who want to immigrate to America but don’t have a science degree. In passing the so-called “STEM Jobs Act” in November, the G.O.P.-controlled House approved another fifty-five thousand immigrant visas a year for foreign science graduates, but insisted on eliminating an equivalent number of visas granted under other programs, particularly a diversity program that grants visas to countries with little representation in the United States. That bill didn’t pass the Senate and become law, but it’s an indication of where Republicans may position themselves. Presumably, the Democrats and the White House will open negotiations insisting that the new green-card program expand the overall number of visas, rather than reallocate them, but this may be something they would be willing to concede in order to get a bill passed.

A more serious objection to the green-card proposal is that it might be difficult to implement. With some master’s programs lasting as little as a year, I can imagine a big influx of foreigners wanting to do, say, a master’s in math and statistics at N.Y.U., and a huge influx of applications for such courses at cheaper colleges. For a well-to-do engineering graduate in, say, Chile, spending fifty thousand dollars on a one-year master’s at Arizona State, or somewhere similar, in exchange for a relatively easy green card could be an irresistible option.

There would surely be abuses. Many foreign-born math whizzes would take their graduate degrees and their green cards, and go to work on Wall Street rather than in Silicon Valley or Detroit. (Do we really need more financial engineers?) Moreover, without extensive regulation and supervision, the fast-growing and scandal-plagued for-profit education sector would quickly find a way to cater to the needs of wealthy but less technically gifted foreigners who like the idea of decamping to New York or Los Angeles. (Worried that your multivariable calculus isn’t up to scratch for graduate studies? Never fear. Just spend another five grand on our summer-school remedial course, and we can virtually assure you a passing grade.)

The advantage of the current system, under which most foreign-born science graduates have to apply for an immigration visa through their employer, is that it amounts to a screening mechanism. To land a decent job at Google or Facebook, or any other reputable U.S. company, you have to navigate a rigorous application process. Even if you do manage to get hired as a foreign applicant, which sometimes requires the company to prove it can’t find an equivalent American candidate, it will almost certainly be on a temporary visa. Once you’ve worked for a few years and shown you are a valuable employee, you can apply for a green card.

Some free-market economists and business types would argue that this is all an unnecessary restraint on American growth—just give all the science nerds a visa and be done with it. I’m not so sure. As a foreign-born graduate who came to the United States on a student visa, then got a temporary work visa, then a green card, and, finally, U.S. citizenship, I can see the advantages of reforming the current system rather than replacing it.

To be sure, we should raise the number of visas for science and engineering employees. Let’s do it now! But does a foreign-born chemist really deserve completely different treatment than a foreign-born historian, or a lawyer—or a bricklayer or nanny, for that matter? Surely not. The only defensible argument is the economic one, which has been oversold. Until somebody explains why we can’t obtain almost all the benefits of the green-card plan simply by increasing the number of job-related visas, you can count me as a skeptic.

Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty