It’s a super great idea to crack down on immigrant labor during a time of full employment and a building boom in a big agriculture state. So smart. And that’s what Ron DeSantis has done so that he can pretend he’s a tough hombre in a border state (which he isn’t.)
He’s already getting some great results:
Florida’s agricultural and construction industries say they are experiencing a labor shortage because a new immigration law that took effect July 1 is leading migrant workers to leave the state.
The law, signed in May by Florida Gov. and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, seeks to further criminalize undocumented immigration in the state. It makes it a third-degree felony for unauthorized people to knowingly use a false identification to obtain employment. Businesses that knowingly employ unauthorized workers could have their licenses suspended, and those with 25 or more employees that repeatedly fail to use the E-Verify system to check their immigration status can face daily fines.
Business owners and workers alike say the ranks of laborers in Florida have grown noticeably thinner.
“The employee who wants to work on the farm is not available anymore,” said Hitesh Kotecha, owner of a produce packaging facility in South Florida who leases land to farmers. “How are we going to run the farms?”
At downtown Miami’s construction sites, the story is the same: Workers have fled. Others are waiting to see what happens.
In Miami’s booming construction market, developers, construction companies and construction workers say the change happened as soon as DeSantis signed the legislation this spring. Workers at several construction sites in South Florida say a quarter to half of their teams are gone, exacerbating an already challenging labor shortage across the industry.
“We’ve seen some fallout on job sites, particularly as it relates to hourly labor as a result of this new law,” said Tom C. Murphy, co-president of Coastal Construction, which has more than 30 active projects across the state of Florida.
In addition to increasing penalties on employers and workers, the new law requires hospitals that accept Medicaid to question a patient’s immigration status, and invalidates out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to people unauthorized to be in the U.S. It makes it a third-degree felony to knowingly transport into Florida a person who is undocumented and illegally entered the U.S. The law also adds $12 million to the amount of money the state has earmarked for its migrant-relocation program, bringing the total to $22 million this year.
A spokesman for DeSantis said the law counteracts the effects of illegal immigration on Florida. “Any business that exploits this crisis by employing illegal aliens instead of Floridians will be held accountable,” he said.
On Saturday, the day the law went into effect, hundreds of people gathered in Homestead, Fla., to march in protest. At the march, the Farmworker Association of Florida announced that it and several advocacy and watchdog groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, were exploring how they might challenge the law in federal court.
In 2019 there were an estimated 772,000 undocumented immigrants living in Florida, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Since then, there has been a massive influx of immigrants into the country, and last year Florida’s population grew more than any other state, according to census data.
Lawyers in Florida are rushing to figure out how best to advise their clients regarding their hiring practices to comply with the law.
“It’s kind of extreme that Florida passed a law like this,” said Daniela Barshel, an immigration lawyer based in Miami. Typically, immigration is a federal area of law, and figuring out how to interpret these new statewide rules alongside federal law will be complicated, she said. Blanket advice, such as telling clients to avoid hiring noncitizens altogether, isn’t an option since that could constitute discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.
Pushing Disney to cancel thousands of new jobs was an excellent move too. But he’s showing woke what’s what and that’s all that matters.