Businesses across Florida are panicking as workers pack up and leave the state following Ron DeSantis’ anti-immigrant legislation that goes into effect on July 1st. Companies say that workers are growing scarce and they aren’t sure how much longer they can keep their doors open – and DeSantis is pretending that everything is going perfectly. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Businesses across Florida, well, they’re panicking as workers pack up and leave the state following Ron DeSantis’ anti-immigrant legislation that goes into effect July 1st. Companies say that workers are growing scarce. They aren’t even sure how much longer they can keep their doors open. And DeSantis is pretending like everything is perfectly normal. Well, you know, we’ve been doing this story soon as this started before it actually was signed, we started doing this story. We said all this is gonna happen. We made the prediction that businesses are gonna close, that they’re gonna leave the state. And sure enough, it’s happening. It’s being reported all over the state right now.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. We’re looking at, you know, some of the major, you know, hubs down there in South and Central Florida. We’ve got Bradenton. We’re seeing it in Miami. We’re seeing it down in the Florida Keys. We’re seeing it in Orlando. And it’s because these migrant workers who come to the state of Florida and bail out our economy, we’re dependent upon them and now they’re saying, I’m not coming. I can’t, I’ll be arrested.
Mike Papantonio: But isn’t the story, isn’t the story really this. I mean, we’ve done every iteration of this story. I don’t want to overkill this story. It’s a shame. It’s deplorable that this happened. But we’re not politicians. But when we did the, we first saw the legislation, we said this is gonna happen.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Surely somebody in Tallahassee said that they’re gonna be people that are writing in the Bradenton Herald after this starts. This story comes with Bradenton Herald, said, it’s not speculation anymore. It’s actually happening. But don’t you think those politicians had a duty to at least think about that? Think about what the impact was? I mean, what do you think?
Farron Cousins: Well, they do have a duty to do that. But look, you and I have had plenty of conversations with these lawmakers. We’ve seen how legitimately crazy some of them are. They are not smart people.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I think that’s part of the problem.
Farron Cousins: They’re people that have, you know, either family connections or they come from old family Florida money or Florida lineage in the House and they get elected. And so then you enable this creep here to do whatever the heck he wants to do and that’s what’s happened. And here’s the thing, you know, these businesses, these migrants that are leaving the businesses that are saying, we’ve got another week before we can, you know, stay alive. This is all before the law even goes into effect.
Mike Papantonio: Well, again, I don’t wanna beat this. I mean, we’ve done several stories now. We started doing stories before it ever really came into fruition and we made these predictions. And to think that over in Tallahassee, there weren’t politicians that were smart enough to understand what the net effect of this is. We’ve always said, look, immigration is about Chamber of Commerce, it’s about Wall Street. They wanna bring in cheap labor. Their idea is, hell, if we kill this worker, we’ll just ship them back to Mexico. That’s the ugly side of it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: But it’s all driven by Wall Street. This is all driven by Wall Street. It’s driven by the Chamber of Commerce bringing in cheap labor and everything’s gonna be good for Americans. That’s the ugly part of the story. The other side of the ugly story is most of these people come here because they want to do better. They want a good life for themselves and their family. They’re willing to do, handle jobs that nobody else will handle, and then people have the audacity to say, well, they’re taking my job. Really? It’s a ridiculous argument.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And the problem is too, we’ve now made our economy, not just here in Florida, but across the country, we’ve made it dependent upon them.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, exactly.
Farron Cousins: We’ve made it to where we can’t survive without them. And Florida by the end of this year, we are gonna see this horrendous negative effect.
Mike Papantonio:Yeah. This story that we just called on down in Bradenton, these stories are gonna be all over the state. I wanna see what the reaction is. Farron, thanks for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week, but all of these segments are gonna be available throughout next week. And make sure you follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t allow for it or their political connections simply don’t permit it. We’ll see you next time.
