What Happened After Florida Cracked Down on Undocumented Workers

It's pretty fricken simple. Deport the nogoodnicks...let the rest stay and provide needed labor.

What Happened After Florida Cracked Down on Undocumented Workers

State’s experience is instructive as Trump prepares to overhaul U.S. immigration system

By Ruth Simon and Arian Campo-Flores, WSJ

Jan. 18, 2025 9:00 am ET

Florida’s 2023 law cracking down on undocumented immigrants has prompted some workers to leave the state and made filling jobs harder for some small businesses.

Still, the law hasn’t resulted in huge disruptions to the state’s labor market, as some predicted. Certain provisions were watered down before the bill passed or in its implementation, and the state has done little to enforce the law.

“Initially, when the law came out, there were a lot of people that left,” said Tibor Torok, president of Bob Hilson & Co., a roofing company in Homestead. “I’ve since heard and seen that a lot of them have come back because there was no real enforcement.”

Torok said about five of his 35 employees departed suddenly after the law passed, some heading to North Carolina and Indiana. Three have since returned, seeking their old jobs, said Torok, who wasn’t able to hire them back because of concern about their paperwork.

The law, which took effect in July 2023, requires businesses and other private employers with 25 or more employees to use the federal government’s E-Verify system to check workers’ eligibility for employment, or face fines of up to $1,000 a day. It also invalidated out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to people unauthorized to be in the U.S. and toughened penalties for transporting undocumented immigrants.

“Florida’s economy continues to strengthen following the implementation of Florida’s historic E-Verify law,” said a spokeswoman for FloridaCommerce, a state agency.

The state’s experience is instructive, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to overhaul the U.S. immigration system. During his campaign, he promised the largest deportation campaign in American history and is likely to end programs focused on asylum-seeking migrants.

The Florida law carries some of the harshest penalties in the nation for companies that try to hire people who entered the U.S. illegally. When it passed, some said the measure would exacerbate existing labor shortages in such industries as construction, agriculture and tourism, damaging the state’s economy.

Early data suggests Florida hasn’t seen a significant drop in the number of workers compared with other states, said Madeline Zavodny, a University of North Florida economist. The state might have “made up” for some lost workers with immigrants arriving from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who were paroled into the U.S. and have temporary work permits, she said.

Immigration advocates and small-business owners said modifications to the initial legislation and legal challenges have blunted the law’s impact. “There is harm,” said Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, an advocacy group. “So much has changed that the impact ended up being different from what we expected.”

Labor shortages have been a longstanding problem in Florida, particularly in industries such as construction and agriculture, which depend heavily on immigrants to fill staffing gaps. Noncitizen immigrants accounted for 34% of Florida workers in construction and 47% of those in farming and fishing, according to an analysis of 2022 Census Bureau data by KFF, a health policy research organization.

As initially proposed, the Florida law required that all employers use the federal E-Verify system. Before the bill was passed, it was modified to cover only companies with 25 or more employees. The measure excludes independent contractors and applies only to new employees, not existing ones.

In Florida, 87% of businesses have fewer than 20 employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Brite Leaf Citrus Nursery, in Lake Panasoffkee, is exempt because it has 22 employees, said Nate Jameson, who owns the business with his wife, Anna Jameson, and obtains half of his workforce through the H-2A visa program for seasonal employment. “As long as we have a strong guest-worker program, it becomes almost a nonissue,” Jameson said.

Some business owners said the law has created a chilling effect that has made it difficult for them to grow. Mark Baker, who owns a nursery and a landscaping company in Boynton Beach, said he lost about 10% of his roughly 100-person workforce after the law took effect.

The E-Verify provision has affected his ability to hire people and expand, he said. This past week, a half-dozen people who were seeking work stopped in but couldn’t provide the documents to prove they could work legally. “E-Verify was the last nail in the coffin,” Baker said.

Anxiety among immigrants and their families has climbed. Sixty-three percent of non-U.S. citizens and one-third of U.S. citizens with immigrant parents reported increased financial stress because of the law’s passage, according to a survey last year of 466 people of various immigration statuses who had lived in Florida for at least one year.

“The distress levels were off the charts,” said the study’s lead author, Elizabeth Aranda, director of the University of South Florida’s Im/migrant Well-Being Research Center.

Former Republican state Rep. Rick Roth, who voted for the law and operates a family farm in Belle Glade, said the effects on many agricultural businesses have been minimal because farmers often rely on the federal government’s H-2A program for seasonal workers.

Roth said he believes the law has functioned as intended—sending a message that unauthorized migrants aren’t welcome in Florida and should stay away.

Rick Roth says the law conveys the message that unauthorized migrants should stay out of Florida.

Rick Roth says the law conveys the message that unauthorized migrants should stay out of Florida. Photo: GREG LOVETT/PALM BEACH POST/USA TODAY NETWORK/Reuters

He added that “there’s not much enforcement going on.”

The 2023 law included $12 million for Florida’s migrant transportation program, which drew national attention when the state flew migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. But it didn’t include any new money for enforcement.

Another part of the law invalidates out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to people unauthorized to be in the U.S. Florida originally applied the license ban to five states, then narrowed it to two: Connecticut and Delaware. Florida state officials said the listed states are ones where a driver’s license class or permit “is issued exclusively to unauthorized immigrants.”

John Horne of Oysters Rock Hospitality, which has seven restaurants and more than 420 employees in the Sarasota area, said that after the law the number of applicants for open positions fell by roughly 25% to 50%. That drop-off made it harder to hire staff for two new restaurants his company opened in the past 18 months.

“It’s a headache right now for us,” Horne said. But “it hasn’t created as big a challenge as we thought it would when the law passed.”

John Horne says the law presents hiring challenges but isn’t as difficult as he had anticipated.

John Horne says the law presents hiring challenges but isn’t as difficult as he had anticipated. Photo: Oysters Rock Hospitality

Write to Ruth Simon at Ruth.Simon@wsj.com and Arian Campo-Flores at arian.campo-flores@wsj.com