The state of Florida, in the southern United States, approved on Wednesday, May 10, a law with harsh measures against irregular migration, promoted by the Republican governor Ron DeSantis, whose candidacy for the White House in 2024 seems imminent.
Text: RFI / AFP
The governor of the state of Florida, Ron DeSantis, signed the text during an event in Jacksonville, in the northeast of the state, under the slogan “The border crisis of (Joe) Biden”, the Democratic president whom he accuses of not attending to the illegal immigration.
“The Mexican drug cartels have more to say about what happens on the southern border than our own US government,” said the governor, justifying the need for the new Florida law.
The text will enter into force on July 1. Among its most prominent measures, it will require companies with more than 25 employees to use E-Verify, a federal system to verify the immigration status of the people they want to hire.
The law will also force hospitals that accept public Medicaid insurance to collect data on the immigration status of their patients, and will make it a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison to transport people in an irregular immigration situation from another state to Florida.
The authorities will also stop recognizing driver’s licenses issued out of state to migrants who entered the country illegally, in addition to prohibiting the financing of local programs to grant them identity documents.
*Read also: What are the new immigration measures in the US that will apply as of #11May?
“Florida is fighting back”
Some 660,000 foreigners resided in Florida in an irregular situation in 2018, according to the latest estimate published by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2021.
DeSantis, 44, a rising figure on the American right, has promoted a very conservative agenda in recent months on issues related to education, immigration or the right to abortion.
The governor defended this Wednesday the immigration law as a necessary measure to reduce crime caused, according to him, by the “enormous negligence” of the Biden administration.
Before signing the text, he gave as an example several violent crimes committed in Florida by “illegal aliens” and the deaths caused by the trafficking of fentanyl – an opioid up to 50 times more powerful than heroin – from Mexico.
This situation “has hit our country hard and Florida is fighting back,” he said.
The Republican majority in both state houses has given DeSantis their full support to pass legislation that has earned him a lot of media attention.
Last year, the governor had two groups of undocumented Venezuelans flown from the Texas border to Democratic strongholds in the northeastern United States aboard two private planes.
This migrant transfer program will receive 12 million dollars in fiscal year 2013/2014 after the entry into force of the law approved this Wednesday.
DeSantis’ initiatives have been challenged by human rights advocates.
“Florida penalizes immigrants for having the misfortune to be born in troubled countries and having the courage to seek peace and prosperity here,” Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigration Coalition, said in a statement sent this Sunday. Wednesday.
Critics from detractors focus mainly on the consequences of using E-Verify and the obligation for hospitals to collect data from their patients.
According to the NGO Florida Policy Institute, the imposition of using E-Verify could cost the Florida economy $12.6 billion in one year, where many foreigners in an irregular immigration situation work in sectors such as construction, agriculture, catering and the leisure.
Regarding the rule on hospitals, “it will cause many people to give up medical care or delay it, creating a climate of fear if they believe that going to the hospital could lead to deportation or family separation,” denounced Aurelie Colon Larrauri, in a statement. policy advocate in Florida at the NGO Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice.
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