And now, what?
Monday, July 3, 2023
Victor Martell
A few days ago, the governor of Florida and candidate for the Republican nomination for president, Ron DeSantis, signed a new state immigration law, which establishes a series of severe penalties and punishments for those who favor illegal immigration in Florida. At the Jacksonville meeting, DeSantis said two lines that worry me: “We’re bracing for some turbulent times ahead”; and the other: "... you’re likely to see [the situation at the border] get a lot worse."
Consider some details of the law:
It toughens the penalties for companies that hire undocumented immigrants, and imposes penalties of up to 15 years in prison, with fines of up to $10,000, for drivers who transport undocumented immigrants to Florida, regardless of whether it is for tourism, business meetings, friends, and even family.
The law also requires hospitals to ask for patients’ immigration status.
It prohibits cities and counties in the state from issuing community IDs, as well as voids driver's licenses issued by 16 states.
It sets aside $12 million to transfer undocumented immigrants from any state to other places in the United States. Let us remember that our governor already did this in September 2022 when he transferred a group of Venezuelans from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts [and more recently when he sent two groups from Texas to Sacramento, California].
It orders all employers with more than 25 workers to use the E-Verify program to determine employee eligibility, and contemplates random audits for these companies, increasing their fines for hiring irregularly documented personnel.
It threatens a lifetime withdrawal of the operating licenses of companies that repeatedly hire undocumented immigrants.
It repeals the law that allows lawyers to practice while regulating their immigration status.
It requires law enforcement agencies to obtain DNA samples from undocumented immigrants who are detained via a federal warrant.
We also have to think about the consequences that this law entails, for many sectors of our society, and that we will detail here:
The lack of laborers is the biggest challenge for Florida farmers. In recent years, the U.S. government has lagged when it comes to opening a way to legally bring laborers to this country. Something that should be essential is to offer this path to countries in Central and South America. Most Holstein dairy farms produce up to 12,000 gallons of milk a day, and have employees sometimes numbering as many as 50, most of them undocumented Latin Americans.
We are on the brink of a great mango harvest. In Florida, mangoes are grown commercially in Miami-Dade, Lee, and Palm Beach counties; they can be found even in the backyards of houses in Miami. Talking with some producers of this delicious fruit, they explained to me that the lack of personnel for the harvest is going to give them a great headache, in addition to the sadness of having to throw the unharvested fruit into landfills.
This not only happens in America: Europe is also suffering from this lack of labor for the harvest. For example, Spain has been unable to curb food waste, which is why they throw away 1,300 million kilograms a year (nearly 3 billion pounds).
The entire process that food goes through from harvesting, capture or slaughter until reaching the retailer, is part of the so-called food loss, and worldwide, 13.8% of the food produced is lost due to lack of personnel and inefficiencies in the supply chain. Its economic value is about 363,000 million euros (around $396 billion), according to the latest report from the World State of Agriculture and Food.
In all parts of the world, different organizations are fighting to avoid the loss of food, to avoid the possibility of soon having a great famine, but Florida decides to pass this immigration law, which is going to leave food lying on the ground instead of reaching the population. If it is not possible to sell it, at least they should deliver it to the poor, because there are many institutions that help the poor that will be greatly affected. Our St. Vincent de Paul volunteers cannot even visit an undocumented person because they would commit a crime under the new law.
If in our hearts there is a minimum of consideration to help those who have nothing, to see in them the image of Christ, we must discard this law and accept at least a portion of these undocumented immigrants. Then, we will all see that they are not criminals, but brothers and sisters who are looking for "the American dream."
This blog originally appeared as a column in the June 2023 edition of La Voz Católica.
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