Florida Republican Admits He Goofed As Florida Witnesses Worker Exodus

A Republican state Representative in Florida, Rick Roth, admitted this week that passing Ron DeSantis' anti-immigrant legislation has had a negative effect on Florida, but he stopped short of saying that he regretted voting for the legislation. Instead, Roth said that the bill is having "unintended consequences" as workers flee the state, but the bill is doing EXACTLY what DeSantis and Republicans wanted it to do. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains that there are no "unintended consequences" and that these Republicans are just impossibly stupid.

Check out our merch by visiting our store

Subscribe to our podcast

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

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

So yesterday was a big day in the media because on multiple different websites that I check out every day, news websites, they're all running similar stories. And those similar stories happen to be the same stories that Pap and I have now been hitting on for over a month, which is Florida is experiencing a worker Exodus, thanks to Ron DeSantis anti-immigration bill that he signed into law in early May. The law goes into effect on July 1st. So we're just a week and a half away from that horrific thing happening. And Florida is experiencing a shortage of workers now, which is exactly what every person with a brain predicted was going to happen. But here's one person that I guess occasionally has a brain, occasionally doesn't, and it happens to be a state legislator here in Florida, Republican by the name of Rick Roth. And what Mr.

Roth recently told reporters was that, yeah, this piece of legislation, it's having unintended consequences of workers, migrant workers fleeing the state because they're not legal immigrants here in the state of Florida, but we got about 800,000 of them making up a little under 10% of our entire workforce. So that's a lot. And they're leaving because now they know that their employers are going to have to use the e-verify system that if they go to the doctor or a hospital, the hospital's going to have to report them as an undocumented immigrant. That's all part of DeSantis law that he signed, that Republicans, including Rick Roth, by the way, passed in the state legislature. But now they're like, ah, I mean, it's having some unintended consequences, but don't worry folks, because Republican Roth stopped short of saying he regrets passing the bill. Oh God, no, he's still, he'd still vote for it today.

What he says is the problem is that, uh, you know, the, the reality of it hasn't been well signed, posted, meaning people are misunderstanding yet, you know, these migrants don't really understand what it means. So that's why they're fleeing the state, because it only applies to people who get a job in the state illegally after July 1st, right? So if you're, if you're already here illegally, that's totally cool. We, we just don't want more illegal people coming in like that is, that is what they're saying the law says and, and, and it is technically that that's true. Yeah, sure. So if you're already here illegally, right, you get nothing to worry about unless you go to the hospital or unless you need a doctor's visit, in which case that July 1st deadline no longer applies to you. So Mr. Roth, you are in fact lying about these people's, uh, vulnerabilities here in the state of Florida. You are lying to them

By saying, oh, there's unintended consequences. This is not unintended. This is literally what you wanted the legislation to do. This is literally how it's written. So you can lie to the American public all you want about unintended consequences, but if you weren't a complete and total brain dead moron, you would've seen these consequences coming a mile away because everybody else did. Hell, we've been talking about it for a month here at Ring of Fire. So don't blame unintended consequences when every single person here was warning you about it.