The battle between DeSantis and Abbott on who can be the biggest jackass in appealing to the Republican base continues. After Abbott appeared to take the lead by promising to pardon a convicted murderer, DeSantis is now vollying back with some truly extreme legislation targeting undocumented migrants. From the NYT by way of Yahoo News (I’m using this link because it isn’t paywalled, unlike the original NYT article):
The bills would expose people to felony charges for sheltering, hiring and transporting immigrants who are in the country without legal permission; require hospitals to ask patients their immigration status and report to the state; invalidate out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to immigrants in the country without legal permission; and direct the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to provide assistance to federal authorities in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.
There’s more, with DeSantis pushing separate legislation to repeal in state tuition for undocumented migrants and DREAMERs. In one respect, this legislation is reminiscent of the anti-abortion legislation recently passed in Idaho:
Under the proposed new bills, a person could be charged with a third-degree felony for knowingly transporting, concealing or harboring immigrants in the country illegally, punishable by up to five years in prison.
In other words, a U.S. citizen whose parents are here illegally could face five years in prison for driving one of their parents to a doctor’s appointment (to give an example of the behavior that this legislation would criminalize).
Enforcing these measures would open the door to racial profiling, critics said, as police officers are charged with determining who is documented and who is not.
Racial profiling? For DeSantis and the Republican state legislature, I’m guessing that is a feature, not a drawback.
Aside from that, the provisions targeting hospitals seem like a whole new level of cruelty — after all, how comfortable is someone going to be in seeking treatment at a hospital if they know that the hospital is legally required to report their presence to a hostile state government? Undocumented immigrants already tend to be wary of seeking medical treatment, and this will make that situation much worse. Obviously, this is bad for the health of the individuals directly impacted, but really it is also incredibly bad from a public health position. After all, untreated infectious diseases will spread to others without regard for one’s migrant status.
The article doesn’t specify what the penalties would be for hiring undocumented immigrants, other than noting that it would become a felony. Not surprisingly, that is making business interests unhappy:
The legislation calls for new state penalties to be imposed on employers who hire immigrants without work authorization, and it is drawing opposition from the business community in a state struggling with a labor shortage and where the unemployment rate was 2.6% in February.
Considering the tendency of the Florida legislature to serve as a rubber stamp for whatever DeSantis wants, I’m guessing that the business opposition to this legislation is going to prove inconsequential and meaningless unless businesses are willing to start showing their opposition by withholding financial support to Republican candidates and giving support to their Democratic opponents. Sadly, I’m not holding my breath for that to happen right away.
However, this does point to one possible silver lining if this awful bill passes. While in the short run, I don’t really expect business support for the GOP to change, when business people get tossed in jail in Florida for hiring undocumented immigrants their attitudes may start changing. And considering the number of undocumented immigrants that are employed everywhere, that seems like a very real risk to businesses.
Unfortunately, I fully expect this bill in all of its insanely evil glory to pass the Florida legislature — and so the escalation of extreme and insane legislation in red states will continue