As violence and unrest continue to simmer in Minneapolis over immigration enforcement, an unexpected voice has entered the debate from the Republican side. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt is urging President Donald Trump to “calm” the situation—not by enforcing the law more decisively, but by surrendering a core federal power and allowing states to import a new class of cheap foreign labor.
In a Sunday interview with CNN, Stitt argued that the escalating conflict over immigration could be defused if states were granted authority to issue what he called “workforce permits.” Under his proposal, employers could match up with existing illegal migrant workers, pay a fee—suggested at $5,000 per worker—and continue employing them indefinitely, without offering citizenship. Stitt framed the idea as pragmatic and depoliticizing, insisting the country should abandon the idea of deporting large numbers of non-citizens and instead formalize their presence in the labor market.
What Stitt did not address is that his proposal would institutionalize a permanent sub-citizen labor class, one deliberately excluded from citizenship and political equality, yet embedded deeply in the economy. The model closely resembles President George W. Bush’s failed “Any Willing Worker” plan, which would have allowed employers to import foreign labor whenever Americans rejected low wages.
Other countries, Stitt claimed, have “figured this out,” though he did not name nations like Qatar or Saudi Arabia, whose economies rely heavily on disenfranchised foreign workers with few rights and little leverage.
The plan stands in direct opposition to Trump’s low-migration economic strategy. Under Trump’s renewed enforcement of immigration law, wages have risen, housing costs have eased, inflation has cooled, crime has declined, and companies have been forced to invest in productivity rather than cheap labor. Entire industries, particularly restaurants and service businesses, are once again competing for workers by raising pay. Wall Street has noticed—and it is unhappy.
Corporate profits built on a decades-long cheap-labor bubble are under pressure, and Stitt’s proposal would restore that pipeline at the state level. It would also unleash an unprecedented lobbying frenzy, as governors and legislators faced intense pressure from donors and CEOs to issue ever more permits. The result would be a race to the bottom, with states competing to undercut each other on wages and labor standards, all at the expense of American workers.
Politically, the consequences would be just as severe. A growing population of low-wage, dependent residents would expand the constituency for government aid, empowering progressive politicians and big-government Democrats. State-issued visas would also give political leaders leverage over employers, rewarding compliant companies with access to labor and punishing dissenters by cutting it off.
In effect, Stitt’s plan advances the same social experiment championed by Barack Obama: transforming a unified civic nation into a fragmented society of competing interest groups, where U.S.-born citizens are merely one faction among many. It is a vision that benefits corporate donors and political elites, but steadily erodes the middle class.
NGA Chair Oklahoma @GovStitt and Vice Chair Maryland @GovWesMoore issued the following statement. https://t.co/hx5IeFYv3b pic.twitter.com/08oLFRWF18
— NGA (@NatlGovsAssoc) January 25, 2026
