Ron DeSantis got the Florida legislature to pass strong legislation that puts undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation and puts anyone who helps them at risk of arrest.
Meanwhile, the agriculture industry—a key driver of the state’s economy—is worried about finding enough workers to harvest the crops.
Immigrant advocates warned them to stay home.
But farmers are pleading with immigrants not to leave the state. Even Republican legislators worry that the anti-immigrant law was a mistake.
Republican lawmakers in Florida concerned about the state’s new anti-immigration law and its possible economic consequences begged Latinos to not leave the state in clips from a Monday morning meeting.
The footage, which provides evidence of the law’s “downstream impacts on the state economy” according to MSNBC, shows two conservative Florida legislators attempting to minimize the harm that the law, Senate Bill 1718, could cause, with one asking attendees to advise Latinos against leaving Florida.
“This bill is 100% supposed to scare you,” Republican state Rep. Rick Roth said in a clip shared on Twitter by Democratic activist Tom Kennedy. “I’m a farmer, and the farmers are mad as hell. We are losing employees. They’re already starting to move to Georgia and other states. It’s urgent that you talk to all your people and convince them that you have resources — state representatives and other people — that can explain the bill to you.”
But no one blames DeSantis, who needed to prove his contempt for immigrants.
Agriculture is a big part of Florida’s economy. Who will bring in the crops?
Before the bill passed, the Farmworkers Association warned that about 300,000 of the state’s 500,000 farmworkers are likely undocumented.
Here’s a chance for DeSantis to create jobs for his fervent white supporters. They can pick oranges and grapefruit and other crops in the blazing sun. At minimum wage.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
These laws are an example of DeSantis attempting to shore up his ‘strong man’ image. There’s a video floating around on the web with a county commissioner in central Florida talking to a concerned group of day laborers. He basically says that while the law is on the books, they will not be enforcing it. DeSantis is a manipulative demagogue that chases media attention.
BTW anyone that has Showtime should watch Vice’s current episode called ‘Lone Star Justice.’ Texas with assistance of Florida is using the national guard and civil trespass laws to circumvent federal immigration laws. They are scooping up migrants and shipping them to Texas’ prisons. These right wing extremists believe they are above the law.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhpgXXnwTkE
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They can pick oranges and grapefruit and other crops in the blazing sun. At minimum wage.“
Minimum wage for undocumented workers?
Would that be 50 cents an hour?
Or 40?
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Sounds close to advocating for slavery to me?
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I know that you were joking, SomDAM. However, supposedly, undocumented workers are entitled to the same protections as documented workers are and must be paid minimum wages and overtime in accordance with federal and state labor law.
Undocumented workers also pay taxes–a fact often denied by lowlife racist politicians like Trump and by lowlife racist pundits like _ucker Carlson, using ITIN numbers instead of Social Security Numbers. They pay some 11.74 a year in taxes, according to The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
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11.74 billion a year
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You are right.
I was thinking of what workers get per hour in Apple iPhone factories.
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Yeah. Horrific.
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But they are Chinese, so who cares right?
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Have you ever tried to repair an iPhone, by the way?
The screws and connectors are so small you need a magnifying glass to see them and it is therefore incredibly tedious to work on iPhones.
And people working in the iPhone factories work long hours on such tedious jobs for such low pay, it is no surprise that they often choose to end their lives.
And it’s not so that Apple can sell their phones at low prices because Apple still charges an arm and a leg for them and pulls down huge profits year after year so that they can pay their investors, ceO and other execs billions,
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It’s an evil company. Always has been.
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It’s as though the company motto were, “Do not good.”
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“Do no good.”
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DeSantis immigrate flight to California via charter aircraft is interesting.
The immigrates were picked up in El Paso, TX and told they would be taken to a place where they would have jobs. Two women talked 36 immigrates in making the trip. The immigrates did not know where they were going only the promise of a job.
They were loaded on vehicles and driven across the TX and NM state line to the town of Deming, NM. A relative small community out in the middle of nowhere in western NM, which has a small airport.
To make the trip from El Paso to Deming the vehicle had to pass through at least one Border Patrol check on I-10 west of Las Cruces or on the back road from El Paso to Deming. There is not way around these check points except by dirt roads.
It would be very interesting to know how DeSantis people talked their way past the check points so they could take the immigrates to California. What role did the Border Patrol play in helping DeSantis carry out another one of “immigrate flights”?
These immigrate may or may not find jobs in California but DeSantis really does not care.
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DeSantis is known for his CRUELTY.
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DeSantis uses desperate people as props and pawns in his campaign to appeal to right wing extremists.
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Conspiracy to commit kidnapping
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“The bill is 100 percent to scare you,” says the idiot legislator, and yet cannot seem to see that scaring people will make them be in fear and leave the state??? Are these Legislators idiots??!!
Never mind, answered my own question.
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Exactly. My kids had gerbils with more intelligence.
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My gerbils had kids with more intelligence,
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Follow the money.
Who will profit?
The farm labor contracting companies.
Bringing in large numbers of workers into the US on H-2A visas, they can now demand higher fees. Recently in Florida, a company was convicted on RICO charges for basically providing “slave” labor and profiting off their abuse of their workers.
Who will lose?
The migrant workers that depend on these jobs and anyone that purchases the produce since this will lead to higher prices.
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I used to spend a week in Florida in the winter. I will not return to Florida until DeFascist is out of office. I pledge to buy produce from anywhere but Florida. It’s become a dangerous state.
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Stories like this give me a warm, fuzzy feeling of Schadenfreude. I have driven many times thorough the center of Florida peninsula, south of Lake Okeefenokee through Sebring up to Winter Haven. It is a drive that illuminates so many of America’s hypocrisies. Starting with the lake. You can’t see the damn thing, not that there’s much to see. The thing the locals are most proud of, which brought in a lot of federal and state money, is the levee that encompasses it. So you have to park and climb up. And it’s not worth the effort. Depending on the wind direction and temperature, the smell is either bad, awful, or unbearable. And it’s ugly. Filled with chemical runoff from the agro-business that surround it — sugar cane, oranges, lemons, limes, some exotic fruits. Towns like Clewiston don’t exude diversity or economic prosperity.
As you drive north, places north and south of Sebring form an odd mix of mostly white defiance of government and a deeply held, faux religiosity tailored to their views and advantage — this was, I believe where George Wallace got his most presidential votes and has seemingly always voted more than two-thirds republican. During the pandemic, masks were ridiculed. There’s also a hidden population of migrant workers who pick the trees and transport the produce to places like Florida’s Natural orange juice plant. And there’s an odd mix trailer-trash-ish “resorts” in the area — cheap hotels on lakes, camper parking sites, and small shacks for rest and relaxation. Oh, and they can see NASA rockets take off, so there’s a way to see American superiority on a regular basis. Taxpayer money where it should be.
The you drive through Polk County, with oddly named “universities” you’ve never heard about that teach the fundamental word of the gospel as it’s understood in radically conservative central Florida in the era of the Idiot. Surrounded by scrubland that was seemingly made to hide bodies forever. When you drive off the main road, you can find occasional mansions, hidden by walls, lines of bushes, and distance from the street. They have space to exercise their 2nd amendment rights, great weather, hardly any minorities, and no real need to go into town much. What more could they want?
Will be interesting to the folks who live and visit here actually have to do some of the hard work that makes their “paradise” possible.
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That was quite the tour, Greg!
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If there were hills and denser pine trees, I would’ve expected to hear the Deliverance banjos soon.
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The Flor-uh-duh I know and love!
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But there are many Flor-uh-duhs:
It is sometimes said that the good lord created Florida to prove the maxim that the truth is stranger than is fiction. Migrants from Mexico and Colombia and Honduras and every other place in North and South America. Rich and merely well-to-do retired Jewish New Yorkers. Tenth-generation swamp dwellers. I mean, literally, people who live in and off the swamps. Russian gangsters and their orange pal. Seminoles. Magats. Good ole boys. The world’s largest herds of Scientologists and feral teenagers. Bouffant-haired preachers and congregants (of both sexes). Roaming bands of mulleted, unemployed male part-time meth dealers. Strippers. Massage-parlor workers. “Modeling agency” workers. Retired mafiosi. Spies–lots and lots of these. Nudists–lots and lots of these as well. We’re an interesting lot down here in the Dangle.
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It strikes me that the potential double whammy of climate change and a shrinking, less efficient, more expensive workforce (if they can find one) might price Florida orange juice out of the reach for most. Musk is probably trying to figure out ways to innovate and disrupt the oj market to make it more exclusive.
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YUP. Who knows, perhaps one day someone will earn good money running dive trips to visit the former Mar-a-lago.
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And alas, fresh fruit is so expensive that in lots of neighborhoods in the US today, it’s a rare treat.
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One pint of blueberries at Whole Foods: $5.99/lb
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cx: blueberries at Whole Foods, $5.99/pint
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That might not seem like a lot to some folks, but it’s almost an hour’s wage to a lot of minimum wage workers.
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Yay for fresh fruit. One of the things I like about where I live is that I walk to work, and every morning I buy a banana and a couple plums from my favorite fruit guy. The transaction takes about 30 seconds.
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That’s wonderful. Totally agree, Flerp!
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Carnival workers. Alligator wrestlers. Televangelists. Late-night infomercial and home shopping channel studio workers. Weeki Wachi mermaids. Lots and lots and lots of generic blue-haired elderly. Lots and lots and lots of grifters and con men (orange and otherwise) and con women to prey upon the aforesaid elderly (which might seems sad, but it’s nature’s way). Criminals and gun nuts of every stripe, including ones who aren’t state legislators or representatives. But why so many spies? Well, because we have lots and lots and lots of defense and intelligence operations, and their personnel, here, too.
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Oops. Left out the tort lawyers (a state specialty) and the aging one-hit-wonder music stars in their dilapidated mansions and all the hudnreds of thousands of folks employed by the various drug cartels from various parts of the globe (Colombia, Mexico, Israel).
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Not to mention the few nuts down there who know about the value of public education. They’re considered to be weird in most parts of the state.
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cx: Central and South America, ofc
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Greg: you left out my cousins, who still live there. They were teachers and active in school politics in the sixties to now. They abhor the move to the right happening around them, and are among those of us in red states who are victims of the hostility in modern extremist politics.
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I’m pretty sure I can relate. One of my best friends lives around there, also a teacher. They’re the only reason I would venture there when I can visit. One day when they’ve retired, I’ll share some stories.
Tried to get them to share some here, but they’re more threatened back east.
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Governor DeSantis is already working on that labor problem by advocating an end to the child labor laws. He isn’t alone. Other RED states are moving in that direction too.
Without that protection, children that live in poverty will be allowed to work for poverty wages so they can contribute to their families survival just like the way it was before 1938.
It was not until 1938, that Congress finally passed a child labor law (Fair Labor Standards Act, or FLSA) that would later be upheld by the Court.
Before 1938, in some states, children as young as 7 could be sold by their parents into indentured servitude until they aged out as statutory adults. They worked in factories, coal mines, whore house, et al.
The fascist MAGA limb of the Repulibican Party wants to replace immigrant farm labor with our children and pay them less than they do the immigrants that is also poverty wages.
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You are so ‘right on’ Lloyd.
The fascist MAGA limb of the Republican Party is SICK, SICK, SICK and CORRUPT, CORRUPT, CORRUPT.
Call me crazy, but I DO WORRY about these fascist MAGA folks. I don’t think even therapy would help them.
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They can pick oranges and grapefruit and other crops in the blazing sun. At minimum wage.
29 USC 206 (a)(4) “if such employee is employed in agriculture, not less than the minimum wage rate in effect under paragraph (1) after December 31, 1977.”
$2.30/hour.
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Just like U.S. citizens, any non-citizen whose job is covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act has the right to be paid overtime after 40 hours and the minimum hourly wage. But it’s not unusual for immigrant workers, documented or not, to face employer intimidation — which is illegal — when they assert their rights.
–PBS Newshour
The law is clear: undocumented immigrants working in the United States have the same rights to minimum wages and overtime as U.S. citizens, and that they may pursue lawsuits to collect unpaid wages and overtime. The FLSA protects all individuals, without regard to their immigration status.
The FLSA’s protection for illegal immigrants also protects U.S. citizens. If minimum wage and overtime laws did not apply to illegal immigrants, employers would be incentivized to hire them and pay them subminimum wages, rather than hire U.S. citizens for full wages. By recognizing that the FLSA applies to illegal immigrants, the law disincentivizes employers from hiring illegal immigrants to the disadvantage of U.S. citizens
–Shavitz Law Group, Florida
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There are a few states that have the federal minimum, which is $7.25 (insanely low). And yes, such wages for the kinds of work that undocumented immigrants do is insane. Undocumented workers are also much more likely than documented workers are to be victims of wage theft.
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The pigs who supported this inhumane, inhuman, anti-immigrant legislation call themselves Christians. The hypocrisy is blindingly obvious.
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This legislation is what pure, unadulterated evil looks like.
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I favor adulterated evil. Keeps the qanons at bay.
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Moses came down from the mountain. He said, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news? I got Him down to 10. The bad news? Adultery is still in.”
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The Qanonzees like their evil with bouffant hairdos, mullets, or mountain man beards.
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Geez, Greg. I saw the satire badge.
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You sparked a thought. A 2023 version of Quo Vadis would put the Christians in the stands. The lions and bulls would be having fun with libruls, the gays, the blacks, and the illegals. Cross dressers and Gators for the encore.
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Greg, there is a place for you in a DeSantis administration!
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Forgot to add the satire badge. I think Mel Gibson is more qualified.
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