Racism drives most of our immigration policies. It hides in plain sight, often with the false "veneer of colorblindness," while exploiting marginalized communities.
Add Ron DeSantis to the equation and you're left with one of the most sweeping anti-immigration laws in some time. In addition to requiring private employers to use a federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of new hires, my colleague Isabela Dias reports that local governments will be prohibited from providing funds to issue identification documents for undocumented immigrants and immigrants will be barred from using legally issued driver licenses from other states.
And that's not all.
Hospitals that accept Medicaid now will be required to collect immigration data on their admission or registration forms and report costs associated with any treatment of patients. The transportation of undocumented immigrants across state lines into Florida becomes a felony—punishable by up to 15 years in prison if the immigrant is a minor. Meanwhile, $12 million will be allocated to the governor's so-called "Unauthorized Alien Transport Program" to move migrants to other states as a way to criticize the Biden administration's supposedly "open border" policies.
It's hard to overstate just how draconian and potentially devastating this will be for undocumented immigrants in a state where one in five residents are immigrants and an estimated 900,000 people lack lawful status. If the blatant racism isn't enough to horrify you, Isabela makes the case in a new piece today that all Floridians—not just immigrants—should be concerned right now. Every corner of Florida's economy to the price of vegetables is about to be affected. Entire communities, families that may live right next door, are living in sheer panic.
One of the things I love most about Isabela's reporting is how it reveals the deep human cost of DeSantis' awful policies as he tries to outbid Donald Trump with relentless cruelty. The law has yet to go into effect but children are already fearful of attending school. People are uprooting their lives and moving to different states. Mostly because a man who eats pudding with his hands wants to play an authoritarian American president.
—Inae Oh
No comments:
Post a Comment