It is commonly believed that Democrats are the main supporters of increasing the number of migrants from poor countries (including those that Trump figuratively called shit holes), while Republicans, to a man, oppose it. This is not entirely true — there are also ardent supporters of replacing Americans with migrants among Republicans. One such Republican is Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt. Last week, before the long Labor Day weekend, he said that he wants to “create opportunities to attract the best talent to Oklahoma.”
There would be nothing criminal in this, if Stitt had not commented on the report of the “Oklahoma Work Permit and Visa Task Force,” in which this shady organization, funded by the US government, recommended that the state legislature pass a law helping employers hire migrants instead of American citizens. “We need the best nurses, the best engineers, the best accountants, the best construction workers, and the best teachers. If they’re willing to come here and work hard, let’s match them with workers,” the governor wrote. He’s talking about immigrants, which is something that residents of the state, who reacted angrily to Stitt’s initiative, understand well.
“Have you considered the possibility that the best talent — the best nurses, engineers, accountants, construction workers, and teachers — are already American citizens in Oklahoma? That these jobs should go to Oklahomans instead of foreigners? Has that ever occurred to you?” one X user asks Stitt. “Americans can do any of the jobs you’re talking about, and we don’t need people from outside this country to fill those positions. Corporations love cheap labor so they can outsource American jobs,” another argues.
Oklahoma has no shortage of labor, not least because of its large influx of immigrants. This is one of the main reasons why wages are growing so slowly here – the average wage in Oklahoma’s three largest counties in the second quarter of 2023 was below the national average of $1,332. The dependence is direct — even a small number of migrants reduces the average wage, since employers no longer have to compete for new employees. In addition, migrants will work longer than citizens, for low wages, and will meekly follow all the orders of the employer – under the threat of returning with their children to poor countries.
But the number of deaths from fentanyl overdoses in Oklahoma increased 12 times from 2019 to 2022. And here the dependence is direct — fentanyl is a drug that Mexican cartels distribute in the United States through networks of migrant dealers. “Oklahoma can be a leader in providing employers and foreign-trained talent with tools and resources to help navigate visa types, legal requirements, costs, and the accreditation process,” the Task Force report says. In other words, become another sanctuary state, like New York or California.
That wouldn’t be surprising if Oklahoma were a Democratic state. But Stitt is a Republican, and a pretty conservative one at that — he’s banned critical race theory from being taught in Oklahoma’s public schools, signed a bill banning non-binary gender designations on birth certificates, and even claimed that humans are created by God to be male or female and that there is no other gender. A seemingly good traditionalist, if you don’t count his extremely liberal approach to the immigration issue.
Perhaps it’s because Oklahoma Governor Stitt is a businessman first and a politician second. An influx of cheap labor into Oklahoma is good for big business owners and investors because it will expand the size of the state’s economy and increase their profits. Stitt, for example, owns a mortgage company that would benefit from more renters and home buyers in Oklahoma.
In fact, many Republican politicians favor more migrant workers, consumers, and renters because they provide a food supply for employers, retailers, and landlords. Thus, Republicans’ primary reasons for supporting migration are economic, and sometimes (as in Stitt’s case) personal business interests. This is where they differ from Democrats, who view the “great replacement” primarily in ideological terms.
Democrats, especially the so-called “Obama progressives,” advocate more immigration because migrants bring the chaotic diversity needed to fragment the political and cultural influence of the American middle class — the same traditional old America that Trump and his fellow MAGA activists are trying to protect. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, former President B.H. Obama made a point of emphasizing the innovative nature of the system he had worked so hard to create between 2008 and 2016.
“No country, no society has ever tried to build a democracy as large and as diverse as ours, one that includes people who have come from every corner of the globe over decades… The rest of the world is watching to see if we can do it,” he said, without, however, adding that the price of building such a diverse democracy would be the destruction of all the traditional values of white civilization.
This process was successfully continued by the team of Joe Biden (which gave reason to claim that the real master of America for the last four years was still the same B.H. Obama). Since January 2021, the United States has sheltered about 10 million legal, semi-legal and illegal migrants “for economic purposes“. This policy was one of the pillars of the notorious “Bidenomics“, which helps large corporations and investors by inflating real estate prices and reducing American wages. Big business welcomed it, since it reduces wage costs for both blue and white collar workers.
The influx of migrants also reduces market pressure on investment in productivity-enhancing technologies. The flip side of all this was an increase in homelessness, a decrease in the standard of living, a shrinking middle class, a slowdown in innovation, a reduction in the life expectancy of blue collar workers, the spread of poverty, an increase in drug deaths and many other social problems.
It’s worth noting that the Task Force report Stitt cites was compiled with the help of organizations like the American Immigration Council. The council is an offshoot of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and works closely with FWD.us, a West Coast consumer economy lobby group founded by Mark Zuckerberg and other big investors. Thus, “new money,” including Big Digital tech companies, is seeking to erode the traditional structure of American society based on the middle class, replacing it with new structures based on DEI (Diversity, equity, and inclusion).
We are talking about a real social revolution, in which wokeism ideologists play the role of new Bolsheviks, and migrants – new proletarians. We will talk about how all this affects Russia in the second part of the essay.