A sweeping law that took effect Saturday is having a ripple effect on Florida’s illegal immigrant population.
“We are hearing people are starting to leave,” Yvette Cruz with the Farmworkers Association of Florida told CBS News last week prior to the implementation of state Senate Bill 1718.
“We’re just gonna keep seeing that more as the law will take effect,” she said.
The legislation was signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 10, two weeks before he announced his campaign for president.
“The Biden Border Crisis has wreaked havoc across the United States and has put Americans in danger,” he said in a statement at the time. “In Florida, we will not stand idly by while the federal government abandons its lawful duties to protect our country.
“The legislation I signed today gives Florida the most ambitious anti-illegal immigration laws in the country, fighting back against reckless federal government policies and ensuring the Florida taxpayers are not footing the bill for illegal immigration.”
SB 1718 has multiple provisions aimed at illegal immigration. Anyone who knowingly transports undocumented immigrants into Florida could face a felony charge. Out-of-state driver’s licenses given to undocumented immigrants are no longer good in the state, according to ABC News.
The new law also expands worker verification requirements, according to WTVJ-TV.
A company with 25 or more employees must use E-Verify to document new hires’ eligibility. If not, the business could lose its license and faces fines of $1,000 per day per employee.
“Any business that exploits this crisis by employing illegal aliens instead of Floridians will be held accountable,” DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern said.
According to NBC News, as a result of the law, one illegal immigrant plans to stay until he has to leave the country and return to Mexico.
On Instagram, NBC News correspondent Guad Venegas posted a warning Thursday.
“Florida’s new immigration law takes effect in just a few hours on July 1st,” he said. “It’s meant to crack down on companies that hire undocumented workers. It will also make life much harder for the undocumented in the state.
“These are workers who are ESSENTIAL to the Construction, Service and Agriculture industry. Many wonder if Ron DeSantis and state officials will be able to enforce the law. There have been many reports saying some undocumented workers are leaving the state, but today I spoke to a few who told me they’re ‘gonna stay and figure it out, as they always do.’”
A post shared by Guad Venegas (@guadvenegas)
Some employers are concerned about vacancies, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“The employee who wants to work on the farm is not available anymore,” said Hitesh Kotecha, who owns a produce packaging facility. “How are we going to run the farms?”
“We’ve seen some fallout on job sites, particularly as it relates to hourly labor as a result of this new law,” said Tom Murphy, co-president of Coastal Construction.
“While we fully support documentation of the immigrant workforce, the new law is aggravating an already trying situation,” he said.
During a recent news conference, DeSantis said the people who created the illegal immigrant problem are the ones to blame — and it was clear he included President Joe Biden and his administration among them.
Standing in front of a sign that read “Biden’s Border Crisis,” the governor said, “At the end of the day, you wouldn’t have the illegal immigration problem if you didn’t have a lot of people that were facilitating this in our country. And so in Florida, that’s not a good bet for you to do that here.”
As of 2019, the Pew Research Center estimated there were 775,000 illegal immigrants in Florida.
via westernjournal
