Florida, a Latino state, will have one of the harshest immigration laws

Florida, a US state where around 20% of the population is an immigrant, will have a tough immigration law as of July 1 that, according to its critics, “dehumanizes” the undocumented and harms the local economy .

The voices against the law, which have been heard throughout the entire legislative process, increased this Wednesday with the arrival of the text at the office of Governor Ron DeSantis for his signature, which no one doubts will stamp, since he is the promoter .

This legislation seeks to create a false border between Florida and the rest of the United States. It is intended to criminalize people still going through the complicated immigration process and their families and friends visiting the state.said the executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, Tessa Petit.

Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, lamented that “a bill with so many problems and incredible potential for damage has been rushed and all amendments rejected”.

“This is not a red (Republican) or blue (Democrat) problem, it is a human problemBozzetto stressed.

Criticism of the law also comes from the economic side.

Samuel Vilchez Santiago, Florida director of the American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC), warned in a statement to EFE when the bill was still in Congress that it “will severely exacerbate the acute labor shortage in Florida” and that will harm immigrants. businesses and consumers.

“Our businesses are in dire need of workers in key industries like construction, hospitality, healthcare, and agriculture, which rely heavily on the labor of undocumented immigrants to keep their doors open.”, he added.

As an example, Vilchez said that in Florida for every 100 open jobs, only 70 candidates apply.

THE LAW IN BRIEF

The key points of the law that will enter into force on July 1 are the following:

– Requires companies with more than 25 employees to use the E-verify program to determine their immigration status when hiring workers and establishes fines for violators.

– Requires hospitals that accept public Medicaid and emergency departments to collect data on patients’ immigration status.

– Makes transporting people to the state of Florida without immigration status a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

– Prohibits funding city and county programs to provide identification cards to migrants.

– Does not recognize driver’s licenses legally issued by 16 states and the District of Columbia to drivers without regulated immigration status.

– Eliminates tuition fee waivers for undocumented immigrant students.

– Repeals the law that allows lawyers who are still regulating their immigration status to practice law.

– Requires law enforcement agencies to collect DNA samples from people who do not possess regulated immigration status and are detained under a federal detainer request.

– Allocates 12 million dollars for the transfer of immigrants to other states of the country.

THE WORKHORSE OF DESANTIS

Many of the criticisms leveled against this project promoted by DeSantis, which has made irregular immigration or “illegal”, as he describes it, his electoral workhorse, are precisely because of the electoralist component that they attribute to him.

In DeSantis’s campaign for re-election in 2022, his complaints against the “open border” which, he says, has created the immigration policy of President Joe Biden.

That was precisely the argument he used to justify his controversial measure of airlifting some 50 Venezuelan asylum seekers who arrived in Texas by land to the Martha’s Vineyard (Massachusetts) resort last September.

Now that, according to various sources, he is apparently about to officially announce his entry into the race for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential elections, he is accentuating his strong-arm stance against the undocumented.

Randy Fine, one of the 83 Republicans who voted in favor of the law, said that the immigration problem cannot be solved from Florida, since that corresponds to Washington, but a message can be sent: “we are tired”.

Source: EFE