DeWine Calls Ohio Citizens “Other People” While Championing Foreign Workers Over Americans

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine just told CBS News that American citizens are “other people” — and he wasn’t misspeaking.

In a revealing interview, the Republican governor lavished praise on Springfield’s roughly 20,000 Haitian migrants, declaring they “came there to work” because “there were jobs that were not being filled by other people.” Those “other people”? American citizens.

This isn’t a gaffe. It’s a worldview.

DeWine, who served as a conventional GOP Senator from 1995 to 2006, doubled down on his priorities. He told the network’s Colombian-born migration reporter that losing these foreign workers “is frankly a blow to Springfield and it’s a blow to the state of Ohio.”

The Chamber of Commerce Republicans Have Spoken

DeWine’s message to Ohio employers came through crystal clear: Don’t worry about hiring Americans. We’ve imported a workforce for you.

“If you talk to the employers in Springfield who are employing Haitians, they will tell you that these are people who have opened restaurants, they’ve opened other businesses, they’ve rehabbed houses,” DeWine gushed. He went on to credit immigrants with 60 percent of Ohio’s economic growth.

Notice what’s missing from this calculation? Any concern whatsoever for American workers.

Americans Don’t Even Enter the Equation

Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, cut straight to the bone: “He’s not talking about Americans at all.”

She’s absolutely right. DeWine is making the case “for the employers of the Haitians who were imported into the state so that those employers could avoid having to try to hire Americans, so that employers could bypass Americans and ignore Americans.”

The term Vaughan suggests for politicians like DeWine? “Opportunity Zone Republicans” — those who view America as nothing more than an economic zone rather than a home for its citizens.

“Americans don’t enter the equation for him,” Vaughan said flatly.

The “Coalition of Haiti First”

Joshua Lisec, author of a book documenting the migrant influx’s damage to Springfield citizens, reports that locals have their own terminology.

“I refer to them as the ‘Coalition of Haiti First,'” Lisec explained. “Those of us here, the locals, we are ‘Ohio First.'”

The response from actual Ohioans? They’re making “Ohio First” hats and T-shirts in direct defiance of their own governor’s priorities.

Lisec identified exactly who benefits from this arrangement: “The Republicans and the country club people and the landowners, real estate owners, and businessmen who profit off the Haitians.”

Globalist Republicans and the Extraction Economy

Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, prefers the term “Globalist Republicans.” His assessment is even more damning.

“All they care about is extraction, what they can take financially from America’s working classes,” Lynn said. “That’s their priorities.”

This extraction economy has a price tag. On July 30, DeWine announced another $1 billion tax rebate to Ohio businesses. If approved, that brings the total paid to employers during his administration to $10.2 billion.

Meanwhile, Americans in Springfield can’t afford rent.

The Human Cost Politicians Ignore

While DeWine courts CBS News with migration success stories, actual Springfield residents tell a different tale — one the governor refuses to hear.

“Our rents [are] better than double,” said Bruce Clay, an advocate for the city’s homeless Americans. “It takes $1,030 to get in — plus first and last month’s rent — to get in what I call a dump.”

Clay described families with “two and three, four people living in a house trying to make a living now.”

For three years, Springfield residents have testified at council meetings, telling their stories on the record. The political class ignored them. The media ignored them. DeWine certainly ignored them.

Trump Forces the Conversation

President Trump’s push to deport illegal migrants is finally forcing even pro-migration media outlets to acknowledge what they’ve dismissed for years.

Local publisher Jack Windsor told a Springfield meeting: “For three years, people in this city have been telling their story at council podiums on the record, and for two years, the country talked about [you] instead of listening to you.”

DeWine didn’t attend that meeting. He was too busy praising “other people” on national television.

Americans Are Watching

Vaughan notes a fundamental shift in public awareness: “There’s definitely a lot more awareness of the scale — not only guest worker programs — but immigration more generally, and especially because of the experience of the last four years when we took in 9 million new illegal workers.”

That’s a shock to the labor market that ordinary Americans understand perfectly well, even if their elected representatives pretend not to.

The political calculation that worked for decades — prioritize cheap labor for donors while Americans weren’t paying attention — has collapsed.

The Real Question

DeWine claims losing Haitian workers would hurt Ohio. But he never asks the obvious question: What about the damage already done to Ohioans?

What about the Americans priced out of housing? What about the workers employers won’t hire because imported labor is cheaper and more compliant? What about the communities transformed without their consent?

DeWine looks at “one side of the balance sheet,” as Vaughan puts it. The side that matters to his donor class.

The other side — the American side — doesn’t even register as a variable in his calculations.

America Is Not an Economic Zone

“America is not an economic zone, but our home,” as Springfield residents have declared.

That’s the fundamental disagreement laid bare. For globalist Republicans like DeWine, America is indeed just an economic zone — a place where labor can be imported to maximize profits and GDP growth, where communities are merely inputs in a spreadsheet.

For actual Americans, it’s home. And they’re tired of politicians who treat them as “other people” in their own country.

The choice couldn’t be clearer. Americans can have leaders who prioritize citizens, or they can have leaders like Mike DeWine who celebrate their displacement.

Trump’s election and re-election answered that question. The political class simply refuses to accept the answer.