President Donald Trump should “calm” the escalating Minneapolis battle over migration by allowing states to import a new sub-citizen category of cheap foreign workers for U.S. jobs, says Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.
“We have to stop politicizing this [fight over immigration], we need real solutions on immigration reform,” Stitt told CNN on Sunday, adding: “And I believe that I’ve got a great solution that we should give the states the authority to do workforce permits.”
He seemed to argue state-run immigration would end partisan fights over illegal migration:
We have to enforce federal laws, but we need to know what is the end game, and I don’t think it’s to deport every single non-U.S. citizen … We need to allow an employer to match up with that [existing illegal migrant] workforce. Maybe charge that employer $5,000 that can pay down the national debt and to incentivize them to hire Americans, but if they need that [migrant] labor, we’re over complicating this. [Also] don’t give them U.S. citizenship.
But if you’re going to have an employer-employee relationship, we should be fixing that instead of politicizing this. And right now, tempers are just going crazy, and we need to calm this down.
But state-run migration programs would further escalate the massive economic damage to ordinary Americans caused by federal migration, and would ensure more state-level fights over migration.
CNN host Dana Bash did not ask Stitt about the civic or pocketbook impact of his plan to create a new subordinate category of U.S. residents, which is modeled on President George W. Bush’s “Any Willing Worker” scheme. That scheme would have allowed CEOs to hire foreign workers at very low wages whenever U.S. workers declined the CEOs’ wage offers.
“Other countries have figured this out,” Stitt insisted, without naming Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other nations that rely heavily on a subservient class of non-citizen visa workers.
However, Stitt’s plan is a direct attack on Trump’s low-migration national economic strategy and his 2026 policy on affordability. Under Trump’s low-migration policies, Americans’ wages are up, housing costs are down, inflation is declining, transport costs are shrinking, crime is dropping, and corporations are spending heavily to help Americans become more productive and earn more wages for each working hour.
In contrast, Stitt’s pro-migration plan is also a giveaway to corporate interests and donors who have long backed establishment Democrats and Republicans. For example, RestaurantBusinessOnline.com reported on January 23 that Trump’s deputies are raising voters’ wages by deporting illegal migrants:
Fewer workers mean restaurants will once again have to compete for employees the only way they can, by paying higher wages. Wages over the next two years are expected to accelerate, according to Oxford Economics, from 3.7% this year to 5.6% by 2027.
…
Median pretax income for restaurants has declined by more than 30% since 2019, according to the National Restaurant Association. That has hurt [Wall Street] valuations: The median restaurant company stock declined 16% last year.
Stitt owns a mortgage company and a bank.
Many CEOs who gained wealth from the government’s secret welcome for illegal-migrant workers and consumers are now angry because Trump is helping Americans by bursting the government’s cheap-labor bubble. For example, on June 21, U.C. Irvine reported the results of a business survey in Orange County, Calif.:
“We are finding a clear negative impact on neighborhood economies,” said [T. William] Lester, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, who led the research. “From our preliminary results, Orange County lost $58.9 million over just an eight-week period following the May 2025 ICE raids. That translates to $4.5 million less in sales tax revenue for our local governments. When you combine that with the uncertainty created by tariff policies, many businesses are facing an economic crisis they say is worse than what they experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
If the federal government gives states the power to import foreign workers, governors and legislators will face enormous lobbying and personal pressure to provide many cheap-labor permits to favored companies. That new power would likely create a nationwide race to the bottom as governors competed with each other to lower Americans’ wages for the benefit of donors, CEOs, and investors.
The resulting poverty and squalor would help Democrats win elections by offering taxpayer aid to poor Americans. For example, California’s unions are now using the state’s huge population of poor migrants to justify a dramatic wealth tax on tech investors and billionaires who have supported the massive migrant inflows.
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That visa-enabled race to the bottom would wreck the U.S. middle class, while boosting the clout of progressives and big-government Democrats. For example, the existence of the various federal white-collar visa programs — such as the H-1B visas — pushes millions of college graduates towards the Democratic Party, partly because fewer young Americans can afford to get married, buy homes, and raise families.
The existence of state visas would also allow Democrats to punish uncooperative CEOs by denying them access to cheap visa workers.
Stitt’s plan would also promote President Barack Obama’s “experiment” to convert the coherent American society into a chaotic diversity of rival ethnic groups. That diversity experiment would demote U.S.-born citizens to just one interest group in fragmented society overseen by a self-serving alliance of progressives and Wall Street. For example, Stitt is already describing illegal migrants as admirable Oklahomans: “If the feds are not going to do it and they’re not going to get involved and do this the right way, we know there are great, hard-working [migrants] Oklahomans that just can’t get through the [legal immigration] system,” he declared in May 2024.
Other governors are pushing the same demand, including Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah and Indian Gov. Eric Holcomb. “We believe that states should be able to sponsor whatever immigrants serve the needs of their communities,” the two GOP governors write in a 2023 op-ed for the Washington Post.
The idea is backed by Democratic Governors, including Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, who joined with Cox to call for state-issued work permits in 2025.
Stitt is also the co-chair of the National Governors’ Association, which urged Trump on January 29 to give up the fight against Democrats’ sanctuary state of Minnesota. In a message approved by co-chair Wes Moore, the Democratic Gov. of Maryland, Stitt said:
America’s strength has long rested on a system if cooperative federalism. Governors are closest to conditions on on the ground and are best positioned to response to challenges within their states … We believe that strong leadership at every level — federal, state, and local — requires collaboration, communication, and respect for each other’s roles.
