Just a year after increasing Minnesota’s statewide minimum wage from one of the nation’s lowest to one of the highest, DFL Gov. Mark Dayton is pushing for another hike.

Dayton told a group visiting St. Paul for a Muslim American Society in Minnesota event that he believes the minimum wage for Twin Cities airport workers should become $10 an hour immediately.

“I’m going to urge the Metropolitan Airports Commission myself to raise the minimum wage at the airport to $10 an hour, starting immediately, because they earned it, they deserve it, the airline industry can afford it,” Dayton said.

The governor, who has long backed living-wage campaigns, said the airport wage hike would not threaten the state.

“One thing about raising the minimum wage at the airport is because there’s not going to be a threat to pick it up and move it to anywhere else,” Dayton said. “It’s our airport.”

Minnesota’s current minimum wage is $8 an hour. The wage statewide will be $9.50, in phased-in increases, by 2016.

Dayton told the visiting group that he will ask his newest appointee to the Metropolitan Airports Commission to push the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to adopt the $10-an-hour wage. Ibrahim Mohamed, an East African immigrant, is an airport cart driver who earns the minimum wage.

“We will set the tone (and) we will set the leadership for the rest of Minnesota, in doing so,” Dayton said.

MSP workers and unions have pushed for a higher, $15-an-hour minimum wage at the airport in past campaigns. In his public remarks, the governor did not back raising airport wages that high.