Is deporting illegals who are employed stupid?

snitzoid
1 hour ago
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Yes

Mass Deportation and Florida Jobs

The state passed an E-Verify law. Job growth quickly declined.

By The Editorial Board, WSJ

Feb. 6, 2026

Florida’s economy has been one of the great success stories in recent decades with robust jobs growth. But in the last year employment has suddenly slowed. Could the cause be a misguided immigration enforcement policy?

The Sunshine State’s job growth was consistently among the highest in the U.S. during the pandemic and the prior decade thanks to low taxes and a pro-business environment. Covid lockdowns in progressive states supercharged Florida’s population and workforce growth. But in May 2023, Florida Republicans passed legislation aimed at countering Joe Biden’s porous border policies.

The law’s centerpiece requires private employers with 25 or more employees to use the federal government’s E-Verify system to confirm the work authorization of new hires. Violations could result in $1,000 daily fines and suspension of a business’s license. Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed to be “fighting back against reckless federal government policies.”

There’s no doubt the migrant surge burdened some communities. But the E-Verify mandate makes it harder for migrants to work to support themselves, and it adds a burden on employers. E-Verify can also be unreliable because it relies on federal records that aren’t always up to date. That means it can disqualify some immigrants with valid work permits.

U.S. Labor Department data suggest that Florida’s E-Verify law has harmed job growth. In the year before the law took effect, Florida led the country in job creation. But employment growth fell by half in 2024 and has been flat since last February.

The state ranked 26th in the country in job growth over the past 12 months, during which it lost 7,500 jobs in construction and 2,500 in leisure and hospitality, both of which rely heavily on migrant labor. Texas added 15,700 and 26,500 jobs in those industries, respectively, during the same period. What’s the matter with Florida?

Employers in the state say they are struggling to find workers they can employ legally. Noncitizens made up one-third of Florida’s construction workforce and nearly half of farmhands. A large share are undocumented. Two-thirds of contractors in the state report labor shortages. For every five construction workers who retire, only one new worker is entering the field.

Farmers say that many foreign workers left the state after the law passed. One farmer told Spectrum News in early 2024 that he needed more workers to pick strawberries but that he purposefully limited the size of his workforce to less than 25 workers to avoid having to use E-Verify. Talk about a perverse incentive for businesses not to expand.

But instead of repealing the E-Verify mandate, Florida Republicans now want to extend it to all employers. The bill passed the state House last month. This “will expose a lot of law-breakers that are harming Floridians, harming law-abiding people who want to get into the workforce,” House sponsor Berny Jacques said.

There’s little evidence that undocumented migrants are taking jobs from Americans. The reality is that employers can’t find enough Americans willing to work in the fields or hang drywall, even at attractive wages. Farm hands in Florida who work year-round earn roughly $47,000, which is more than what some young college graduates earn.

Republicans who want every illegal worker deported cite the rule of law, but they also decline to allow legal pathways to work in the U.S. There are human and economic costs to all this, and Florida’s campaign threatens to mar Mr. DeSantis’s impressive economic record. The lesson for President Trump is that businesses can’t grow if government takes away their workers.