Florida businesses and the Florida agriculture industry are bracing for a new major labor law to take effect this weekend, potentially stripping an unknown number of illegal immigrants from the workforce and creating chaos for employers.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) signed a sweeping anti-illegal immigration bill into law in May that is scheduled for implementation Saturday. The GOP-majority Florida legislature moved swiftly this spring to rein in the benefits it had previously bestowed upon illegal immigrants in an effort to make the state less attractive to noncitizens without permission to be in the country.
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Some of the biggest changes to existing state laws include requiring employers with 25 or more workers to verify each new employee against the federal database E-Verify to ensure that person is legally in the country and permitted to work; invalidating out-of-state driver’s licenses that illegal immigrants have obtained elsewhere; mandating that hospitals that collect Medicaid dollars include a question on patient forms inquiring if the patient is an illegal immigrant; and more.
Under GOP state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia’s proposal S.B. 1718, job applicants who use a fake identification card to get a job could face felony charges if caught, and employers will get hit with a $1,000 fine for every day that they do not run potential hires through the E-Verify system.
Democratic state Rep. Dotie Joseph predicted that the E-Verify mandate will cause food prices to increase because industries, particularly agriculture, will not be able to hire new workers unless they meet federal guidelines.
“Floridians will see higher costs for our groceries due to worker shortages, longer waits at restaurants, struggles to keep employees, less housing options as construction workforces flee Florida, and it will be harder to find people to care for our children and our aging population,” Joseph said during a conference call this week.
The policy will not lead to already-hired workers getting fired, of which 390,000 people in the state work in the top six industries and are believed to be illegal immigrants, according to the Florida Policy Institute.
Rep. Darren Soto (D-FL) said business owners visited him in Washington this month and said they were worried because employees were quitting.
“Our restaurateurs have seen many of their workers leave when they came up to visit me just last week. Our hoteliers came to Washington last week and talked about how they’re losing employees,” Soto said, according to the Florida Phoenix. “These are Florida’s top industries: tourism and agriculture in particular. And then the construction industry. This is going to affect affordable housing in a key way, and it will also affect infrastructure.”
The bill enhances penalties for smuggling people anywhere in the state, including severe penalties for smugglers who are minors.
It also makes $22 million available for the state to transport illegal immigrants in Florida to other states under its Unauthorized Alien Transport Program — $10 million for 2023 and $12 million for next year.
Florida made national headlines last summer when it chartered a plane and flew several dozen immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
The act of transporting immigrants from the border to Democratic-run cities and states pulled a page from Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) playbook after he began busing people to New York City, Chicago, and Washington. He has continued to expand the Texas program and dispatched 500 buses north as of late June.
Democratic state Rep. Marie Woodson said illegal immigrants are already looking for the exits.
“They are afraid, and that’s what I’m hearing. A lot of people are afraid, and they want to leave the state of Florida,” Woodson said this week, according to WPLG Local 10.
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Some Floridians have staged protests across the state this week, with more to come at the end of the week as the law takes effect.
The timing of the bill’s passage and enactment marks a major achievement for DeSantis, who has billed the proposal as the nation’s strongest crackdown on illegal immigration that any state has undertaken. The achievement came days ahead of his 2024 presidential announcement in May.
