TALLAHASSEE – At Gov. Ron DeSantis’s behest, the Florida state Legislature has proposed a $12 million budget allocation to round up and transport Florida immigrants out of the state, including to President Biden’s home state of Delaware, Florida Politics reported Monday. The move effectively would turn the Florida Department of Transportation into Florida ICE.
The following is a statement by ABIC ACTION ABIC Action Co-Chair Mike Fernandez, who also is Chairman of MBF Healthcare:
“Governor DeSantis is wasting Florida taxpayer dollars to advance his political career by targeting immigrants.
“The bullying and cruelty toward Florida’s children and immigrant families by Gov. DeSantis knows no bounds. One out of four Floridians is an immigrant. Florida employers are facing extreme labor shortages from tourism to agriculture. Governor DeSantis will go down in history as one of the most abusive toward businesses and immigrants including children.
“We also need to stop and think about how these legislative actions impact Florida’s reputation and economic climate. Two of our strongest industries are tourism and agriculture, and both are heavily sustained by hard-working immigrants. Immigration has always made Florida better and stronger, as immigrants have contributed to our economy, and it is baffling that the governor would so wantonly waste millions of dollars this way.
“Florida welcomed the Cuban children who stepped off airplanes fleeing the Castro regime, now DeSantis wants to shove children they don’t like into buses and airplanes to get them out of Florida. Shame on them for dishonoring our history as a state that welcomes immigrants.”
Background:
One in five Florida residents is an immigrant. Almost 400,000 are entrepreneurs, with $8.1 billion per year in business income. Immigrant households earn $138.6 billion per year, pay $33.2 billion in federal, state, and local taxes, and have a total spending power of $105.4 billion.
This proposed budget allocation to remove immigrants from Florida is the latest attack by the governor and his allies on immigrant communities. The House is poised to send to the governor for his signature HB 1355 (Snyder), which purports to ban all state and local government contracts with transportation companies that transport undocumented immigrants into the state. In practice, this bill would cause great harm to children, families and businesses. Earlier this year, Governor DeSantis issued an executive order to deny state licenses to institutions caring for unaccompanied minors.”
About ABIC Action
ABIC Action is the political arm of the American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC), a bipartisan coalition of over 1,200+ CEOs, business owners, and trade associations across 16 mostly red and purple states. ABIC Action promotes common sense immigration reform that advances economic competitiveness, provides companies with both the high-skilled and low-skilled talent they need, and allows the integration of immigrants into our economy as consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, and citizens. ABIC Action works to win bipartisan solutions at the state and federal levels on the way to winning a path to citizenship for as many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants as possible.