It was entirely predictable that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would create a labor shortage by driving immigrants away. Whether documented or not, immigrants are the backbone of the tourist industry and agriculture, two of the basic elements in the state’s economy. Once they were gone, who would replace them? Children. DeSantis is now promoting a reduction in child labor laws to replace the immigrant labor he criminalized. Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell describes the new Florida economy, balanced on the backs of children. Not the rich kids, but the poor kids.

Maxwell writes:

The Newsweek headline looked like satire: “Florida May Replace Immigrant Workers With Child Labor.”

Savvy Floridians know, though, that you can’t fictionalize stories more absurd than this state’s reality. And Florida lawmakers are, in fact, trying to roll back the state’s child-labor laws.

Basically, if employers in this state can’t exploit immigrants, the governor and Legislature want them to be able to legally exploit your children.

The latest proposal would allow teens to work longer hours, without breaks and even overnight shifts on school nights. Take that, Myanmar.

Up next, maybe we can emulate Burkina Faso where more than half the kids are in the labor force, some as young as 7. Now there’s a country with values.

What you’re witnessing is a real-life version of the dog that chased cars without thinking about what he’d do if he actually caught one. In this case, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s GOP legislators have fumed for years about undocumented workers without having the slightest clue about how they’d respond if those workers actually walked off Florida job sites.

So now they’re panicking and want your kids to fill the bill.

Normally, in a free-market economy, if an employer can’t find workers, it would just raise wages until people start applying. That’s how supply and demand works.

But Florida’s GOP politicians don’t want to ask their campaign donors to raise wages. They’d rather flood the market with another class of exploitable workers — teenagers.

Maybe you used to dream of your teen becoming an engineer or architect. Well, forget that Ivy League, ivory-tower fiddle-faddle. Florida’s economy needs them harvesting tomatoes and cleaning motel rooms.

In some ways, it makes sense to put our kids to work. We’re sure not educating them. Florida’s SAT scores have dropped to 47th in America. And our state’s eighth-graders just posted the lowest math and reading scores in 20 years.

So, if we’re not preparing them for higher education or high-paying jobs, we might as well get them primed for the low-wage tourism and agriculture jobs that make this state hum.

Senate Bill 918, would eliminate restrictions on how many hours 16- and 17-year-olds can work. It would end guaranteed meal breaks and also lift restrictions for kids as young as 14 who are home schooled or enrolled in virtual school. (So if you want your rugrat pulling down a paycheck, just yank ’em out of traditional school.)

The Florida Policy Institute summarized the bill by saying it would allow Florida to work teens “for unlimited hours, any time day or night, seven days per week and without breaks.”Welcome to childhood in Florida.

Not all Republicans think this is a boffo idea. Sen. Joe Gruters, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, joined Democrats in opposing the bill, saying: “I think we need to let kids be kids.”

Gruters chose his words carefully: “Let kids be kids” is a line DeSantis uses a lot, usually when he’s pushing censorship laws.

Apparently, in DeSantis’ worldview, teens aren’t mature enough to see certain drag performers, even alongside their parents — but are mature enough to work right through the night until school starts at 7 am. That’s just kids being kids.

As I’ve said before, I’m a fan of teens having jobs. I had a paper route in middle school and landed my first real job at a drugstore when I was 14 — old enough to legally sell condoms and tampons, but still immature enough to giggle about it. (Basically, if you ever entered a Revco in the 1980s,  nervous about making a purchase, I was your worst nightmare.)

But here’s the thing: I believe teens should get jobs when they and their parents want them to get jobs — not because we need to plug labor holes in our low-wage economy.

Keep in mind: DeSantis didn’t promote his roll-back-child-labor-laws ideas at a panel discussion on building teen character. He did it at panel discussion on immigration. After noting that undocumented workers provided “dirt cheap labor,” DeSantis asked: “Why do we say why we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when you know teenagers used to work at these resorts?”

This is just about swapping one exploitable labor class for another … in a state that already turns a blind eye to companies that break labor laws.

Remember Florida’s “mandatory” E-Verify law? It explicitly said that the state couldn’t even fine companies caught breaking the law until they’re caught three times. And that law-breaking employers must be given 30 days to stop breaking the law before they’re punished. What other laws work like that?

This is a state that gives companies a pass on labor-law violations and now wants to give them a younger workforce. What a dangerous combo. Even moreso when you consider GOP lawmakers also want to let businesses subvert minimum wage laws for some workers “younger than 18 years of age.”

Kids in Florida who say they have financial “hardships” can surrender even more workplace protections. Basically, the poorer you are, the more you can be exploited. So it ain’t gonna be the private, prep-school kids working farm fields and cleaning motel rooms at 3 in the morning.

DeSantis seemed particularly interested in using kids to fill the theme parks’ job needs. But the proposed rollbacks would also allow teens to work longer hours waxing floors, painting houses, stocking shelves, doing landscaping and working in fast food. Kids would still be banned from doing particularly dangerous jobs like mining or tarring roofs higher than six feet.

So teens could be asked to work overnight shifts right up until the start of a school day. That’s just “kids being kids.” But we’d draw the line at putting kids in boiler rooms and phosphate mines. A state has to have standards, after all.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com