New immigration law sparks fear and worker exodus from Florida

On a June afternoon in Quincy, Florida, hundreds of gloved hands move 3,000 pounds of green tomatoes by-the-minute from plastic bins to conveyor belts to boxes to be sold across the country.

In his packing plant, Graves Williams, a lifelong Republican, proudly explained the skill, labor and manpower needed to provide tomatoes across North America, a feat that he says wouldn’t be possible without immigrant laborers.

“We all love them to death,” said Williams, whose family has been farming tomatoes for decades. “We couldn’t run a business without them.”

But with one of the strictest laws in the nation taking effect July 1 aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration, Florida is being rocked by an exodus of migrant workers. The departures are sparking fear that a labor shortage will leave crops unpicked, tourist hotels short of staff and construction sites idle.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, now campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, pushed Senate Bill 1718 through the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature and signed it into law last month in Jacksonville.

At the bill signing, DeSantis condemned President Joe Biden’s border policies for causing a massive influx of illegal arrivals, and said, “We have to stop this nonsense, this is not good for our country,” adding, “this is no way to run a government.”

The new law imposes tough criminal penalties on human traffickers, restrictions on undocumented residents, and new employment requirements that will next year include random audits of businesses suspected of hiring illegal workers.

But amid signs that thousands of migrants and their families are now choosing to leave Florida, including many legally in the U.S., even some of the governor's supporters are questioning the new law.

'It's definitely chaos': How immigration law impacts Florida restaurants, construction

Many business owners, though, refuse to speak publicly about the measure, fearing it could antagonize DeSantis.

“How can one man pass one law and destroy all these businesses in Florida?” said Williams, owner of Quincy Tomato Company.

“It’s almost like he’s doing it on purpose. I know he’s doing it for politics, but the end results, it’s going to be hard.”

Economy could be rocked even if small share of workforce leaves

Florida employers in construction, restaurants, landscaping and many other service sectors already are struggling to fill jobs during what has been a post-pandemic, sustained stretch of low unemployment. The new immigration limits will compound that, many say.

But as he campaigns across the country, DeSantis cites the new law as proof of his tough record on immigration, casting himself as smartly and aggressively conservative in trying to distinguish himself from his top Republican rival, former President Donald Trump.

Florida businesses, though, are already losing a portion of the almost 800,000 undocumented workers estimated to be in the state.

“Even if, say 25% of undocumented workers were to leave, that’s 200,000 people,” said Samuel Vilchez, Florida director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, which is urging Congress to enact laws that expand legal immigration.

“The consequences of those departures are going to be clear to many in the business community,” he added. “This is creating incentives for people to leave Florida and find work in other states.”

Florida's food and agriculture businesses paid $53.76 billion in taxes, according to a 2023 report by Feeding the Economy.

USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida spoke to a dozen immigrant workers in the Florida Panhandle, some who have lived in the state for more than 20 years, others who recently migrated.

All said their community is worried. Many plan to leave, they added, if they haven’t already left.

But some are taking the risk, waiting to see if Florida actually enforces the law.

As for DeSantis, Williams said he’s not the only business owner in the state who say the new measure is steering them away from DeSantis in his bid for the GOP’s presidential nomination.

“He’s been good for Florida except for this insane bill,” he said. “He’s hurt himself.”

A spokesman for DeSantis pushed back against critics.

“The media has been deliberately inaccurate about this distinction between legal and illegal immigration to create this very sort of outrage based on a false premise,” said Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’ press secretary.

“Any business that exploits this (border) crisis by employing illegal aliens instead of Floridians will be held accountable,” he added.

DeSantis enacts law with swipe at Biden: DeSantis signs illegal immigration crackdown and rails against Biden

A closer look at the law: Florida House passes sweeping new immigration bill. Here's what's in SB 1718:

Employment practices change July 1

For three months out of the year, Williams runs a crew of 650 people to pick and package tomatoes on 758 acres in Florida and Georgia. Starting pay is $14.31, he said, but he pays as high as $25 an hour.

All of his employees must have the documents required to fill out an I-9, which include a driver’s license and a social security number. Current federal and state laws for most businesses only require an I-9 for employment.

Employers have been free to hire those applicants whose certificates appeared legitimate. But those in the industry say farm owners aren’t compelled to check the veracity of employment documents they’re given.

That’s going to change with Florida’s new immigration law, when businesses must begin using the federal database, E-Verify, if they have 25 or more employees to check the legal status of any new hire.

The law also invalidates out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to undocumented workers and makes it a felony to use false identity documents to get employment.

Local governments would be banned from contributing money to organizations that create identification cards for undocumented immigrants.

Sen. Keith Perry, a Gainesville Republican, said he had no problem supporting the immigration law and said it fits with the view he takes at Perry Roofing Contractors, the company he founded and runs.

“Don’t make a rule unless you’re going to enforce it,” Perry said of immigration policy, both at the federal and now, Florida state level.

Many directly affected by the new law defend it as long overdue in Florida. They say it’s a reckoning for the state’s biggest industries – agriculture, construction and tourism – which have profited from their use of immigrant labor, legal and not.

Perry, whose company has about 130 employees, said “it’s pretty simple for myself and my colleagues,” but he acknowledged that the fear immigrants are sensing, “is pretty unfortunate.”

Perry also said he downplays concerns when other business owners ask him what they should expect in coming months.

“I don’t think it’s going to be as draconian as some are expecting,” he added.

Many, though, fear the worst.

Law keeps hospitality exec up at night as supporters say fears are overblown

Eric Garvey, chief operating officer for the Cocoa Beach-based Baugher Hospitality Group, said his company's biggest concern with the new law is how it might affect the availability of outside service companies that perform tasks like carpet cleaning, pest control and roofing for its two hotels in Cocoa Beach and three in nearby Cape Canaveral.

"It's already a very difficult labor market that affects us directly and indirectly," said Garvey, a former executive director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism. "Labor markets are so tight. Everything is so difficult. These are extraordinary times."

Garvey said worrying about a labor crunch "keeps me up at night."

Rep. Rick Roth, a West Palm Beach Republican and third-generation farmer who grows vegetables, rice and sugar cane, said Florida’s worker problem could magnify in the fall, when crops become ready for harvest.

“There’s going to be workers who don’t come here because they don’t want the hassle,” Roth told USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida. “Maybe they usually work in New York for the summer and then come to Florida in the fall. Well, they may not come now.”

But he acknowledges that he’s already hearing from nursery growers and landscapers in his county who have lost laborers. Roth blames “disinformation.”

“The employees are leaving because they’re listening to the news and radio telling them that they’re going to get pulled over, you’re going to get deported and you’re not going to get health care,” Roth said. “That’s all a big lie, there’s nothing further from the truth.”

While these risks are likely more plausible than Roth admits, he says workers should feel confident to stay in Florida – if they currently have jobs.

“If you have a job... I guarantee you that your employer has documents. Maybe you didn’t go through the E-Verify process. But nobody is looking for you. E-Verify is only for new hires,” he said.

Roth earlier this month took part in a public meeting organized by the Hispanic Ministers Association of South Florida in Hialeah where he downplayed the law's impact as “more of a political bill than it is policy.”

Another lawmaker participating, Rep. Alina Garcia, R-Miami, told the pastors and community activists gathered that the law is “basically to scare people from coming into the state of Florida, and I think that it’s done its purpose.”

DeSantis has seized on immigration as an animating issue for GOP voters, gaining notice in May by dispatching more than 1,100 Florida state law enforcement agents and National Guard members to Texas’ border with Mexico.

He also used Florida taxpayer dollars earlier this month to send three-dozen migrants from Texas to California, an echo of last year’s attention-grabbing migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard.

Last year, after a group of migrants who were bused to Washington D.C. from the Texas border said they planned to settle in Miami, DeSantis gave them a warning.

“Do not come to Florida,” he stated. “Life will not be easy for you.”

Tough choices for immigrants without documents

At a convenience store on the Florida Panhandle, Antonia, 39, an undocumented immigrant who asked to be identified only by her first name, rips open brown cardboard boxes filled with tostadas.

She’s ready to place them on shelves for the many immigrant customers who frequent the store, which is on a busy roadway. Antonia has lived in Florida for 15 years, owns two homes and has 80-plus family members in the surrounding community.

She watched the meeting Garcia and Roth attended in Hialeah and heard Roth blame “disinformation” as the reason for immigrants leaving the state.

She doesn’t agree.

Antonia followed Senate Bill 1718 as it was fast-tracked through the Legislature during session this year. She knows what the law says about hospital admissions and about crossing the Florida state border with undocumented immigrants in the car.

On May 10, she watched DeSantis sign the bill behind a lectern that said “Border Crisis.”

Antonia has lived in Florida for 15 years, owns property and has 80-plus family members in the surrounding community.

But Antonia, her husband and their three children have talked about leaving Florida.

She and her husband brought their oldest daughter to the U.S. from Mexico when she was age 2. Antonia’s two youngest children were born in the U.S., but their citizenship, she said, doesn’t protect Antonia and the rest of her family from Florida’s new law.

“We’re mixed. Some have papers, others don’t,” she said.

The law taking effect next month makes it a felony to transport undocumented immigrants into Florida, which could affect mixed-status families or farm workers who travel together.

Antonia used to take her children to church every Sunday across the Georgia line, to Bainbridge. But she’s stopped driving across the state border since DeSantis signed the bill.

Meanwhile, she said another friend who is pregnant is afraid of going to the hospital to deliver her baby.

The new Florida law requires hospitals to track their spending on care for undocumented residents and to ask patients before treatment whether they are in the country legally, a standard opponents say will discourage many people from seeking health care.

“If I didn’t have my home, I would be thinking about leaving. But what am I going to do? It’s my life savings... how am I going to leave that?” Antonia concluded, saying she expects to remain and risk encountering trouble.

Advocates for Florida’s immigrant community say the new law has soured many on the state.

But they say that if businesses began criticizing a lack of workers, maybe that will draw the attention of the federal government and Congress, which has failed to reach any consensus on needed immigration changes.

“It’s now a problem for the business community, which has quietly relied on undocumented workers for so long,” said Yvette Cruz, with the Farmworker Association of Florida, in Homestead.

Cruz’s organization helped organize June 1 work stoppages around the theme “A Day Without Immigrants,” in protest of the new Florida law and part of a national campaign to urge Congress to act.

“People are now realizing, yes, they depend on immigrants. They need them. But they don’t want them,” Cruz said.

Daily demands getting harder to meet

On June 1, Juan Valdez didn’t go to work.

The owner of a Naples construction company, Valdez, who is also from Mexico, stayed home in solidarity with his Hispanic workers who boycotted Florida’s new immigration law.

Since DeSantis signed the immigration bill, Valdez has lost 15 of his best workers, who have moved to other states like Illinois and North Carolina.

Florida is already the state with the most H2A visas, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, with 12.3%, or 25,451 of the total number of visas going to the Sunshine State. The visas let employers bring foreign workers into the country for temporary agricultural jobs.

The majority of H2A visas in the U.S. – more than 80% – go to farmworkers for crops and plant nurseries.

The construction industry mostly relies on the H2B visa program, which according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, reached its cap of 33,000 nationwide for the second half of this fiscal year in March.

They also added an extra 64,716 visas to be awarded to businesses who can cite “irreparable harm,” if they cannot hire H2B workers, including an allocation of 20,000 visas reserved for workers from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

But Valdez still can’t find enough people to replace the crew members who left.

He used to pay painters $18-$20 an hour. Now, he’s paying $30-$35, which ended up increasing the costs for his work.

“I have to adapt,” he said.

Valdez already had a $300,000 drywall project fall through because he couldn’t find enough crew members to get the work done.

Before DeSantis signed the law, Valdez’s crew of 45 was a mix of undocumented workers and workers with visas, he said. But even some of his documented workers moved out of state because they had family members who didn’t have papers.

Valdez said his employees weren’t misinformed, like Roth said during this month’s meeting in Hialeah.

They didn’t want to take the risk when “they can find work anywhere,” Valdez said. “They’re amazing workers.”

Dave Berman, business editor of Florida Today, contributed to this report. John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport.  Ana Goñi-Lessan is the State Watchdog Reporter for USA TODAY- Florida and can b e reached at AGoniLessan@tallahassee.com. Follow her on Twitter @goni_lessan. 

This article originally appeared on USATNetwork: Florida immigration law: Business owners fear exodus of workers