Defending the Republic
1- We have talked often about the concept of the states being laboratories of democracy. That means that different parts of the country can test out different ideas, experiment with unusual economic and social concepts. Florida did an experiment and the results are great. This action can be rolled out across the country. Read about all the results at the link.
Trust E-Verify
QUOTE: Critics warned that Florida’s crackdown on illegal immigrants would crater the state’s economy. They were wrong.
Florida progressives made many dire predictions before the state’s tough new immigration law took effect on July 1, 2023. They claimed that critical industries would face massive labor shortfalls, bringing soaring prices and perhaps even food shortages. Left-wing think tanks warned that Florida’s workforce would plummet by as much as 10 percent, with fearful immigrants fleeing the state. Some predicted that Florida’s economy would crater by $13 billion per year. More than half a year later, none of these predictions has materialized. If anything, the results so far show the opposite.
Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 1718 into law in May 2023. Among other provisions, the new law invalidated out-of-state driver’s licenses given to illegal immigrants, required hospitals to quantify uncompensated care given to them, and, perhaps most controversially, compelled employers with at least 25 employees to use E-Verify to check new hires’ legal status.
Local and national media sowed panic about the law, which they almost uniformly labeled an “anti-immigration crackdown” rather than an illegal-immigration crackdown. Some outlets highlighted video clips of empty store shelves in Florida supermarkets, which went viral after truckers promised a boycott of the state that never materialized.
CBS fact-checkers confirmed that the empty shelves depicted were unrelated to the boycott or the law, but this hardly mattered to those in the media keen to condemn the law.
What happened after the law took effect on July 1? Well, Florida’s economy grew by 6.1 percent in the third quarter of 2023, seventh-best in the nation.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the state’s civilian labor force ticked up from about 11 million workers in July to 11.1 million in December. Despite all the hype about labor shortages, the state’s unemployment rate rose during that period, from 2.7 percent to 3 percent.
