DeSantis, a Trump MAGA supporter and the MAGA-GOP controlled State legislature just triggered Florida's economic road to bankruptcy with the HB 1617 and SB 1718 Immigration Bills, which makes it a State felony to hire undocumented workers, especially when a private employer has more than 25 employees.
By H. Nelson Goodson
Hispanic News Network U.S.A.
May 12, 2023
Florida - On May 10, 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed State Senate Bill (SB1718/HB1617), which will take effect on July 1, 2023. The SB 1718/HB1617, will definitely cost Florida millions of dollars to enforce and it will definitely trigger a Florida economic tsunami title wave into a projected bankruptcy after July.
Reports that undocumented workers at construction sites and Florida produce field workers have left their jobs including other essential jobs. Florida is headed into an economic crisis this Summer, because it doesn't have enough legal status workers to replace most of the undocumented workers that have kept Florida economically afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, in addiction, legal status workers don't want to do the jobs that the undocumented essential workers do.
The HB 1617 Bill was passed by the State House on a vote of 83-36, on May 2, 2023 and State Senate on a vote of 27-10 passed the SB 1718 bill on April 28, 2023.
According to the Florida Policy dot org, both bills, HB1617 and SB1718, make it unlawful for anyone to knowingly employ, hire or recruit a person for public or private employment who is authorized to work under federal immigration law-either fir oneself or someone else under Section 6 (Employment of Undocumented workers in FL) on either bill. Noncompliance carries several penalties for employers.
• Repayment of any economic development incentives,
• One-year probation period with quarterly reports to the Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO), and
• Added penalties if an employer has a second violation within two years, tiered based on the number of workers without documentation.
State enforcement of the E-Verify for private employers would cost Florida's economy more than $12.6 billion in one year and costing an major impact throughout the state.
The six industries that would be most impacted represent the top industries for employment for undocumented workers in Florida: (1) Construction; (2) Professional, Scientific, Management, Administrative, and Waste Management Services; (3) Accommodation and Food Services, Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation; (4) Retail Trade; (5) Other Services; and (6) Agriculture.
• The industries above employ 391,000 undocumented workers, who make up nearly 10 percent of employment in these industries.
• Undocumented workers made $12.6 billion in wages in these industries in 2019 (which provides the most robust recent data, due to collection issues during COVID-19).
• Estimates show that immigrants without a documented status spend 7.3% of their income paying taxes, contributing close to $923 million to state and local taxes in 2019 alone.
The six industries accounted for 25 percent of Florida's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019, producing $275 billion.
• Without undocumented workers, employers in these industries would lose 10 percent of their workforce and the wages they contribute along with them. As a result, Florida's GDP could drop by $12.6 billion in a single year, or 1.1 percent. Cutting these workers' spending power means state and local tax revenue would drop as well.
• This would significantly impact one of Florida's top industries — Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting — since it is estimated that undocumented workers make up 47 percent of its labor force. Florida's agricultural industry would face significant challenges in particular, as farmers must fill jobs quickly in geographically isolated areas, making them reliant on a high density of foreign-born migrant workers. After Georgia passed its E-Verify law in 2011, one farmer alone witnessed 300 field workers flee, which he anticipated would force him to "abandon about 25 percent of his 125 acres, at a projected loss of $250,000 [that] season."
Enforcement would cost the state between $152,000 and $481,000 per person convicted, depending on the felony type.
• Third degree felony– would cost the Department of Corrections up to $152,000 to incarcerate each person, or $129,000 if they serve 85 percent of their sentence.
• Second degree felony– would cost the Department of Corrections up to $481,000 to incarcerate each person, or $408,000 if they serve 85 percent of their sentence.
The "Unauthorized Alien" transport program of undocumented workers out of Florida will cost an additional $12 million, the Florida Policy dot org reported.
The American Migrant Council reported that Florida immigrants and undocumented immigrants do pay federal and states taxes.
• Immigrant-led households in the state paid $23.2 billion in federal taxes and $8.5 billion in state and local taxes in 2018.
• Undocumented immigrants in Florida paid an estimated $1.3 billion in federal taxes and $588.3 million in state and local taxes in 2018.
• Florida DACA recipients and DACA-eligible individuals paid an estimated $77.6 million in state and local taxes in 2018.
Will DeSantis seek federal recovery bailout funds from President Joe Biden's (D) administration after Florida goes belly up on bankruptcy debt? Also, will other Trump MAGA controlled State legislatures in the country copycat DeSantis' self economic destruction triggering a countrywide tsunami title wave of projected bankruptcy, which taxpayers will be forced to bail them (federal welfare) out of their own economic downfall (disaster) and state endured deficits caused by their own ignorance to acknowledged that undocumented workers are essential and the backbone of the U.S. economic.
A lack of congressional approval of a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill with a path to citizenship to more than 13M undocumented immigrants in the country is the result of a harsh and discriminatory state immigration bill that was passed in Florida.
For example: When U.S. President Barack Obama (D) was elected to office, he came in on a recession triggered by the outgoing President George W. Bush (R). There was no money for the U.S. to recover from the recession and the country was headed into a depression, but Congress and Obama were able to find the billions of dollars needed to bail out the country from a recession by using the billions of dollars from the IRS suspended account, which billions of dollars were kept after millions of undocumented workers contributed in federal taxes and never claimed a refund of taxes in decades, since former President Ronald Reagan's (R) approved amnesty.
In addiction, undocumented workers have contributed billions of dollars in automatic payroll taxes to the Social Security Trust fund, but are unable to collect after retiring. The U.S. Congress has taken out billions of dollars from the Social Security Trust Fund in the last 20 years and haven't returned the borrowed money, but instead Republican congressmen have attempted to revamp the Social Security so, they don't have to repay the money that was taken out of the Social Security by Congress.
Hispanic News Network U.S.A. (HNNUSA) reported that undocumented workers pay into the Social Security and are not eligible to collect after retiring.
• The Social Security Administration reported that in the Earning Suspense File has $1.3T in taxes in earn wages, which most of it was collected from undocumented immigrants. (The Atlantic)
• In 2014, Stephen Goss, the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration told Vice News that in the last decade, an estimated 11M undocumented immigrants reside in the U.S. and about 7M are unauthorized workers and 3.1M of those worked with fake or expired Social Security numbers and paid automatic payroll taxes to the federal government. In 2010, a $13B annual net contribution was made to the Social Security Trust Fund.
Here's the CS/CS/SB 1718: Immigration Bill's major enforcement breakdown requirements.
Immigration; Prohibiting counties and municipalities, respectively, from providing funds to any person, entity, or organization to issue identification documents to an individual who does not provide proof of lawful presence in the United States; specifying that certain driver licenses and permits issued by other states exclusively to unauthorized immigrants are not valid in this state; requiring certain hospitals to collect patient immigration status data information on admission or registration forms; requiring the Department of Economic Opportunity to enter a certain order and require repayment of certain economic development incentives if the department finds or is notified that an employer has knowingly employed an unauthorized alien without verifying the employment eligibility of such person, etc. APPROPRIATION: $12,000,000
CS/CS/SB 1718 amends various Florida statutes to address provisions related to individuals in this state who may be unauthorized aliens. Specifically the bill:
• Amends the crime of human smuggling to provide that a person commits a third degree felony when he or she knowingly and willfully transports into this state an individual whom the person knows or reasonably should know has entered the United States in violation of the law and has not been inspected by the Federal Government since his or her unlawful entry from another country;
• Enhances the crime of human smuggling when smuggling a minor, more than five people, or when the defendant has a prior conviction for human smuggling;
• Adds the crime of human smuggling to the list of crimes that allow for prosecution under the Florida RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) Act;
• Allows a law enforcement agency to send relevant information obtained pursuant to enforcement of s. 448.095, F.S., to a federal immigration agency;
• Amends the state's domestic security statutes to provide the necessary authority for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to coordinate with and provide assistance to the Federal Government in the enforcement of federal immigration laws, and responses to immigration enforcement incidents within or affecting Florida;
• Beginning July 1, 2023, requires private employers with 25 or more employees to use the E-Verify system for new employees (the bill retains the current law requirements for public employers and contractors and subcontractors thereof to use the E-Verify system);
• Alters the defenses for employers using the I-9 Form or E-Verify system; and, beginning July 1, 2024, amends the penalties for an employer's noncompliance to register and use the E-Verify system, including imposing a daily fine of $1,000 and allowing for the suspension of employer licenses after multiple findings of noncompliance;
• Creates penalties for employers who knowingly employ unauthorized aliens, effective July 1, 2024, including quarterly reporting and the suspension or revocation of employer licenses in certain circumstances;
• Creates a third degree felony for an unauthorized alien to knowingly use a false identification document or who fraudulently uses an identification document of another person, to obtain employment;
• Prohibits a county or municipality from providing funds to any person, entity, or organization for the purpose of issuing an identification card or other document to an individual who does not provide proof of lawful presence in the United States;
• Prohibits a person from operating a motor vehicle if his or her driver's license is issued by another state which exclusively provides such a license to undocumented immigrants who are unable to prove lawful presence in the United States when the licenses are issued;
• Provides that certain existing exemptions from obtaining a Florida driver license for nonresidents do not apply for undocumented immigrants;
• Repeals the statute that allows an applicant to the Florida Bar who is an unauthorized immigrant to be admitted to the Bar by the Florida Supreme Court if certain conditions are met effective November 1, 2028;
• Requires a person who is in the custody of a law enforcement agency and is subject to an immigration detainer to submit a DNA sample when he or she is booked into a jail, correctional, or juvenile facility;
• Requires any hospital that accepts Medicaid to include a question on its admission or registration forms inquiring about whether the patient is a United States citizen, is lawfully present in the United States, or is not lawfully present in the United States;
• Requires each hospital to provide a quarterly report to the Agency for Health Care Administration, detailing the number of emergency department visits or hospital admissions by patients who responded to the above question in each category; and
• Appropriates a nonrecurring sum of $12 million from the General Revenue Fund to the Division of Emergency Management for the 2023-2024 fiscal year for the Unauthorized Alien Transport Program created in ch. 2023-3, L.O.F.
