Immigration Reality: E-Verify & Florida Immigration Law
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I want to talk a little bit about one of the biggest hot button issues, if you will, for this country. It’s a concern for all Americans. Immigration. Immigration and I from the get-go have been an immigration realist. I think both sides, left and right, are bonkers when it comes to this. And there needs to be some sort of, I know, some intelligent folk when it comes to the meeting of the minds and solving this problem. We see what’s taking place. We…
border, it disgusts me, it disgusts you, it’s an absolute disaster. People say build that wall, okay, build that wall, but you know what? We also got to deal with the fact that we need immigrants. We need immigrants, we need to assimilate them to our society. That’s the reality of the situation, okay? You take a look at the jobs market. Yeah, weakened a little bit today.
Okay, but overall, we still got, take a look at the Joltz report, 1.6 job openings for every single person looking for work. Still difficult, right? Well, for years I talked about utilizing e-Verify and making it national and forcing businesses to make sure who they were hiring actually had paperwork and it would solve the problem, but it wouldn’t solve the other side of the equation, right? Two sides to it. The fact that we need these workers.
Need them, need them. Again, when I used to live in Southwest Florida, every week, every week, my church, we would bring in clothes, food, and all these things for all of the migrant workers that were picking all the crops in the middle of the state. If we were to snap our fingers, we were gonna blip this thing, thano this thing, and make all of the migrant workers go away, who’s gonna go out there and do that?
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Again, a bit of a problem, don’t you think? Anyway, there’s a op-ed today I wanted to discuss. And this was in the Wall Street Journal and it’s regarding Florida. And Ron DeSantis basically in the Florida legislature passed an e-verify law. It requires employers with 25 or more workers to use the US government’s e-verify system to confirm the legal status of new hires.
Those who don’t can be fined $1,000 a day. Businesses that knowingly employ undocumented immigrants can have their state licenses and permits revoked. Many employers may lay off workers they suspect are illegal to protect themselves. There’s an estimated 772,000 undocumented immigrants that lived in Florida 2019, many of whom for been there for years and contribute to the economy.
Construction, agriculture, hospitality depend heavily on undocumented workforce, not least because of the shortage of US workers for such lower wage and skilled jobs. Again, I agree with that. I agree with that. Yeah, you couple that with the fact that we got 100,000 people plus younger people dying every single year due to drug overdoses. My
Just went through a major hurricane down there in Southwest Florida. Work needed to be done on my brother’s house and my mother’s condo. And yeah, people came and did the painting. Do you think that they were documented? I don’t think so. So again, this is where the right and the left and the various different positions, you’ve got to come to something here.
You gotta come to something. We have to find a way. We need more. We need, I like to see these workers documented, okay? But we need them, okay? I’m sorry you can’t tell me otherwise. Oh yeah, no, then Americans that are sitting on their asses are gonna get up and they’re gonna start picking tomatoes. No, they’re not. I’ve explained this before because that’s a whole nother ball of wax.
Okay? We just went through this for crying out loud. Republicans is part of the debt ceiling deal. Able-bodied people, you know, having their food stamps cut after a certain period of time. You see that battle?
Okay, we’re taking on too much here. And I think quite frankly, it would be easier to bring in some of these workers. Employers, this is from the column, employers in these industries are reporting that they have been losing long time employees and can’t find new ones to replace them. Many workers who are here illegally are worried they will be found out. And some are moving to other states. A quarter to half of workers have reportedly gone missing from some construction sites in Florida.
Florida’s a top producer tomatoes, oranges and avocados, yet about half of crop farm workers lack legal immigration status. One grower in Homestead told Telemundo that she has struggled to find workers since the new law passed. South Florida’s economy here in Homestead is agriculture. Most of them know we are undocumented. Who’s going to harvest? That’s the question I am asking. That’s the question I’m asking a lot of the Republicans.
Okay, who’s gonna do this work? Yeah, I wanna solve the problem too. I wanna tight border as well. But we need the damn workers, okay? We need, you’re living in freaking fantasy land, okay? You’re living in fantasy land. If you’re gonna think you’re gonna get lazy ass Americans that have been sitting on their ass watching Netflix, living off the government, you’re gonna force them out there. And if you actually think that’s even politically,
feasible here in 2023. It’s not, okay? You might not like the solution, but it’s a solution. You’re saying you either wanna solve the problem or do you just wanna, you know, I’m straight, nope. All right, we’re gonna stop all of this immigration. No, no, we need legal immigration and we need a lot of it. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
