The former Secretary of the Interior and presidential candidate for the pro-government National Regeneration Movement (Morena) Adán Augusto López, described Law SB 1718, promoted by the governor of the state of Florida, Ron DeSantis, as a fascist measure. The controversial Florida rule SB 1718, which, among other things, penalizes companies that hire undocumented immigrants, hospitals, and people who collaborate with migrants.
Before the candidate for the presidency of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexican president, asked not to vote for the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who is in the electoral race for the presidency of the United States. “And here I take advantage, here is a land of migrants; I take this opportunity to tell you, they are promoting a law in a neighboring country that criminalizes migrants, there in Florida, a Mr. DeSantis, they are fascists,” said the candidate and former secretary on Tuesday.
The new regulation in Florida requires companies with more than 25 employees to use a program to verify the immigration status of each of their employees, and makes it a crime to travel in a car across state lines with an undocumented person serious that can lead to a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
The SB 1718 law also makes it difficult for the undocumented to access medical care and ignores driver’s licenses issued by other states to people without legal immigration status. “They know what the Bible says about it, words more, words less: do not mistreat the foreigner, because remember that you were also a foreigner in the land of Egypt,” López said.
SB 1718 threatens almost 400,000 undocumented immigrants who work in six important sectors in Florida, which represents almost 10% of the state’s labor force. Florida’s new immigration measures will directly affect work for undocumented people, their children’s schooling, and their access to the public health system.
With information from EFE
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