DeSantis' "Immigration Show" Backfires

Well, Ron DeSantis has done it, hasn't he? He's used political scare tactics to try to get a few votes. Now, what we see, Trump is even moving further ahead. Trump is killing him even in the state of Florida because he thought that this big immigration show that these cats in Tallahassee were putting on was really gonna help him. Just the opposite. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Well, Ron DeSantis has done it, hasn't he? He's used political scare tactics to try to get a few votes. Now, what we see, Trump is even moving further ahead. Trump is killing him even in the state of Florida because he thought that this big immigration show that these cats in Tallahassee were putting on was really gonna help him. Just the opposite, right?

Yeah. This is one of the most devastating moves to the Florida economy that Ron DeSantis could have done. I mean, we're talking about 8% of our workforce overall, by putting this law in place, you know, you can't hire any migrant workers. It's gonna be a $10,000 fine per worker that you hire. And business leaders are sounding the alarm. But more importantly, we are seeing videos emerge constantly of construction sites, entire neighborhoods being built.

Closed down.

It's a ghost town.

Yeah.

Truckers threatening boycotts in the state.

Well, now, you know, we're gonna get comments. Oh, that's nonsense. You're making that up. No, I have driven by sites that are dead in the water. People don't have, you're gonna have immigrants that, look, what is it about the immigrant worker that's so valuable to the entire GDP of this state? Okay, first of all is mobility. Right. When we have, when crops have to be handled in Central Florida, they're able to move to Central Florida and help us with that. When crops have to be handled in South Florida, they're able to move to South Florida and handle that. And all these cats are saying, well, they're taking my job. Nonsense. If they were taking anybody's job, those sites wouldn't be closed down.

Right.

If they were taking anybody's job, there'd be everybody out there picking strawberries and picking oranges. So the mobility factor alone, because of what Ron DeSantis has done, is going to, this is the projection. The GDP is going to drop by $13 billion. That's what they did in Tallahassee as they were playing games, as they were involved with scare tactics. So the mobility factor is important, but also the demographic factor. For every, I think what it is, for every 65 year old and older, there are only three people, three bodies that are gonna replace them in the workforce. So the idea of demographics becomes important because we have to have somebody moving into the state to replace and make those demographics solid to where we can have workers that are increasing our GDP. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think what people don't understand, there's great numbers here, you know, like I said, it makes, the migrants make up about 8% of our total workforce, but when you break it down by industry, it gets a lot worse. We're talking about 37% of our agricultural workers, 23% of our construction workers, 14% of our service workers in the state. And the service industry is one of the biggest industries here. But, so they make up a disproportionate amount of the three industries that keep this state running. And DeSantis is telling businesses, I'm gonna make you pay me $10,000 for every one of these people you hire.

Let's talk about what's happened here. People don't understand the ramifications of this. Let's start with the very basics. First of all, the genius says we're gonna put $12 million over to this special, this special group, and the special group is gonna make sure that this thing that we just passed is going to have teeth to it. So here's what you've got. You've got 1.8 million immigrants, undoc, excuse me, documented and undocumented working in Florida.