Republicans urge immigrants to stay in Florida, fearing new law’s impact

A handful of Florida Republicans have implored immigrants to stay in the state in the wake of recent laws signed by Governor Ron DeSantis.

Last month, Florida enacted a new bill, SB 1718, that is set to introduce strict new anti-immigration rules once it goes into full effect on July 1. Among its provision are requirements that businesses with 25 employees or more utilize E-Verify, a program that tracks whether individuals are legally able to work in the U.S., and that hospitals collect certain information on undocumented patients.

The E-Verify requirement has caused alarm among Republicans with constituencies close to the border or that use considerable migrant labor. With the system in place, there is worry about businesses not being able to tap into the immigrant labor force to which they are accustomed, resulting in mass labor shortages.

On Monday morning, GOP Florida State Representatives Alina Garcia, Rick Roth and Juan Fernandez Barquin spoke at an event in Hialeah, Florida, about the impending implications of SB 1718. At one point, Roth, as captured in a video shared by political activist Thomas Kennedy, said that the bill is meant “to scare” immigrants and urged those in attendance to convince their immigrant acquaintances to stay.

“This bill is 100 percent supposed to scare you,” Roth said. “I’m a farmer and the farmers are mad as hell. We are losing employees that are already starting to move to Georgia and other states. It’s urgent that you talk to all your other people and convince them that you have resources, state representatives, other people that can explain the bill to you.”

Roth also at one point said that SB 1718 was more of a “political bill.”

Newsweek has reached out via email to the press team of DeSantis for comment.

In another video shared by Kennedy, Representative Garcia also says that SB 1718 is meant to scare people away from coming to Florida, adding that the new rules have “no teeth.”

“This is a bill basically to scare people from coming to the state of Florida,” Garcia said. “And I think it’s done its purpose … This bill really doesn’t have any teeth.”

“There you have it,” Kennedy wrote in another tweet. “The same scumbag politicians who voted for this anti-immigrant crap admit they did so to scare people from coming to Florida while also begging immigrants in a church to talk to their community so they don’t leave and keep working here. It’s all so disgusting.”

The bill has already caused a stir in Florida and beyond. Latin American truckers on social media encouraged each other on social media, shortly after the bill was signed into law, to boycott the state and refuse to make deliveries there.