Consider This from NPR - How DeSantis' immigration laws may be backfiring

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a strict immigration law making it harder to hire undocumented workers. But like much of the country, Florida is dealing with a tight labor market and some employers are struggling to find workers. NPR's Jasmine Garsd reports on how the law is affecting the state's economy, from construction sites, to strawberry fields.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Manuel Vazquez says he remembers when it started. His regular customers at his ice cream parlor in Fort Myers, Florida, one by one, they were vanishing. People started leaving the state about a year ago, and the cause was pretty clear. Senate Bill 1718. Even the New York Times admitted this is the strongest legislation against illegal immigration anywhere in the country.

Governor Ron DeSantis signed it into law last May. The bill cracks down on undocumented labor. It requires hospitals to include questions about immigration status. Makes it a felony to knowingly transport someone with undocumented status into the state. DeSantis said the idea was to eliminate, quote, carrots that encourage people to come to the U.S. illegally. People are going to come if they get benefits. And so what you want to do is say there's not benefits for coming illegally. You're either here as a native or you come legally. And those are two fine things. But

to come across the border and end up getting benefits in Florida, you know, does not make sense. The thing is, there are a lot of undocumented immigrants already living in Florida, close to a million, including some of Vasquez's customers at the ice cream parlor. He says about 30 percent of his customers have left, and the ones who stayed are afraid. A veces les tocaba manejar y ellos con el pendiente. They told him they had no choice but to drive to get to work. What if I don't make it back home? What happens to my family, my children?

Mostly, he says, people went north, to the Carolinas or Georgia. Vasquez is one of many people that NPR's Jasmine Garz met in Florida last month. She went there to see, nearly a year on, how that strict immigration law is playing out. Consider this. Ron DeSantis' immigration law was designed to steer immigrants away from Florida. That may be backfiring on the state's economy. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.

It's Consider This from NPR. One of the key elements in Florida's strict immigration law is a provision that makes it much harder to hire undocumented workers. Like much of the country, Florida is already dealing with a tight labor market. So the new law has made things very tough for employers. NPR's Jasmine Garz went to see firsthand how that is playing out in the state's economy, from construction sites to a strawberry field. It's early morning in Plant City, a small agricultural town in southwest Florida. The pickers are already hunched over the bushes, plucking strawberries. Fidel Sanchez instructs his workers to get rid of the fruit that fell and rotted on the ground. There's a lot of it.

Like other farmers I speak to out here, he's worried about how long he'll be able to keep going. The federal government estimates that nationwide, over 40 percent of farm workers are undocumented. Sanchez says the effect of the law was immediate. Families he'd worked with for 20 or 30 years headed north from one day to the next. The government doesn't care, he says. Maybe they think the crops are going to pick themselves. The Florida Policy Institute estimates that this immigration law could cost the state economy $12.6 billion in its first year. A spokesperson for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told NPR,

quote, Governor DeSantis signed the most ambitious anti-illegal immigration law in the country to protect Floridians, and that Florida can still maintain a robust economy. But Ron Hetrick, a senior economist at Lightcast, a labor market analytics company, says the state already has a serious labor shortage, even if just a fraction of the estimated nearly one million undocumented immigrants are forced to leave. We have a lot of fast-growing cities here. How do these cities get built? How do the houses get built? We all know very well how these things are being built. Hetrick says what Florida is facing is symbolic

of the larger reality in the country. An aging population and politicians framing immigration as a threat rather than a potential asset. The future, if you look at census projections for the growth of this country, once this boomer population goes through in the next 15 years without immigration, we shrink. A spokesperson for Ron DeSantis told NPR that businesses are still free to hire immigrants as long as it's legally. In 2023, Florida hired thousands more H-2A guest workers than the year before. That's a temporary agricultural visa. But farmers NPR spoke to said the bureaucracy of H-2A and cost is crippling. There have also been widespread reports of H-2A worker exploitation by farmers attempting to make up for those costs.

The H-2A system is absolutely broken. It's our only means of getting workers at the farm right now, but it's totally outdated. That's Gary Wischnacki, the head of Wish Farms, also based in Plant City, one of the largest strawberry growers in the nation. His field harvesters in Florida are all on H-2A visas. Even for a company as large as them,

the cost has become crushing. He has to pay a labor recruitment company, visa application fees, house workers, pay for meals and transportation. Berries are going to become an item that's going to be a luxury, not something people buy every time they go to the grocery store like they do now. In the end, he pays 23 percent more than the Florida minimum wage. The farmers NPR spoke to out here say despite that, American workers simply aren't showing up for these jobs. It's not just agriculture.

NPR spoke to hoteliers, construction business, and restaurant owners who said Florida's labor shortage, combined with arthritic national immigration policies, is hurting the bottom line. Years ago, you put an ad in the newspaper, you'd have a bunch of applications filled out or, you know, you'd have people lined up outside your door, right? That's David Crowther, one of the owners of CFS Roofing Services in Fort Myers. Because Florida is in the path of hurricanes, roofing is in high demand here. And Crowther says people are no longer lining up for job openings. That doesn't happen. It just doesn't. About 10% of his workers left after Florida passed its immigration bill. They were scared for the safety of their undocumented family members.

At the end of the day, Crowther says if he could hire more immigrant labor, it would trickle down into more jobs for American workers. If I knew I could get an unlimited supply of labor, I then would start hiring estimators and salesmen over to start promoting more work. It's a domino effect. Crowther says business is good, but it could be so much better if only he could find more workers. For others in Florida, it's not business as usual. It's been unraveling. A few miles north at a fruit market, I meet a woman sitting in the cool shade of her fruit stand. Her name is Ana Maria Perez. She got to Florida 20 years ago. It's real, she says. Farms don't have the workforce they used to.

So now the cost of fruit rose for us. Betis herself started as a fruit picker when she came from Mexico. It was physically grueling. This fruit stand was supposed to be a step up. But once the law went into effect, you should have seen it, she says. Last year, the mangoes and mameys falling on the ground. No one to pick. Pérez says she's leaving Florida soon. She's done. She shakes her head and gets back to packing some lines. We all lost out here, she says.

We all lost. That was NPR's Jasmine Garst in Florida. This episode was produced by Connor Donovan, Noah Caldwell, and Christine Arismith, with audio engineering by Tiffany Vera Castro. It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Alfredo Carbajal. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. One more thing before we go. If you haven't heard, you can now enjoy the Consider This newsletter.

We still help you break down a major news story of the day, but you'll also get to know our producers and hosts and some moments of joy from the All Things Considered team. You can sign up at npr.org slash consider this newsletter. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.