Florida is no stranger to hurricanes, and the state has always been able to rely on migrant workers to help out after disaster strikes. But following the recent Hurricane, the migrant workers are nowhere to be found, thanks to a devastating law signed by governor Ron DeSantis earlier this year. 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: Florida is no stranger to hurricanes and the state has always been able to rely on migrant workers to help out after disaster strikes. But following the recent hurricane, the migrant workers are nowhere to be found thanks to the devastating law that was signed by Ron DeSantis. Now, do you remember when the law was signed how many times we did a story and said, Ron, crazy Ron, this is a problem? Because when the next hurricane comes, we’re not gonna have anybody to fix the houses. Crazy Ron, you might get control over those legislators in Tallahassee, because when that happens, nobody’s gonna be here to pick the fruit. Nobody’s gonna be here to fix the roofs. Nobody’s gonna be here to rebuild. This is a big problem for Florida. There’s an organization, I can’t think of the name of the organization, maybe you know, but they coordinate with migrant workers all over the country to where when something like this happens, a disaster, migrant workers come in and they do a spectacular job. I remember two hurricanes, they have helped rebuild my home. I mean, fixed the roof when nobody else could do it. And I think right now we’re seeing exactly what we were talking about. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, exactly. And that group has literally thousands of migrant workers. And they have now said, because of this law that DeSantis passed, if we even brought them into Florida, we would be facing class three felony charges. So we literally cannot bring our workers in. They wanna work, they want the money, they’re great at what they do. But if we even so much as drive that bus over the border in Florida, we’ve just now committed a felony, according to this law. Not to mention all of these people would be arrested on site.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s even worse than that. If they go to a hospital, the hospital has to report that there’s a migrant worker here in the emergency room. If they, we invalidate their driver’s license, if we find out they’re a migrant worker. We use the e-verify system to actually just harass ’em. And so that’s what they accomplished here. Now we have, after the last hurricane, which fortunately, well, it was a bad hurricane. People are out of homes. It was a terrible, terrible experience for some folks up in the panhandle of Florida. Idalia was the hurricane. And you got work sites that are abandoned. There’s nobody there. And that’s not the case. You remember when we had hurricanes here, they’d come in, they were great, great to work with. They were hard workers, man. I’m still friends with several of them that worked on my home. And I just don’t know what this actually, where this takes us. Do you? How bad does it get it?
Farron Cousins: Well, especially for the work, not the workers, the residents in those areas that were hit by the hurricane and ones that are gonna be hit in the future, because we’re gonna get a hurricane probably at least every year here in Florida.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah.
Farron Cousins: They’re gonna see that, hey, whereas a year ago, it would’ve taken two to three weeks to start to get our lives back to normal. It’s gonna be three to four months before anything resembling normal starts to pop up. Because we just simply do not have the manpower to do this.
Mike Papantonio: One problem, one problem is you’ve got the crazy right equating everybody that comes across the border with a cartel. Now cartel is a problem. The border states down around Texas, it’s a big, big problem. And it’s unfortunate that people that want to come here, and they just want to support their family. They wanna work here and send checks back home and have a better quality of life. That the cartel and the disgusting things the cartels doing with drugs, with human trafficking, you name it, it’s just an abomination. But it’s causing so much, it’s giving the crazy right so much material to say, hell, we’re not gonna let anybody in. Right?
Farron Cousins: Right, right. And because of that, we end up with laws like this because DeSantis was trying to pander to those people prior to his presidential run, which he’s now gone down in flames. I mean, he’s got Ramaswamy nipping at his heels, and his numbers are getting worse by the week. And we, we are the ones in Florida who are still gonna suffer under this guy. Luckily the country won’t, but we still have to deal with it.
Mike Papantonio: I’ll tell you one thing. I hope the country wakes up to Haley, to Nikki Haley, because she is a nutcase. She would drop a bomb on Iran tomorrow if Boeing told her we wanted to start a new war. That’s how owned she is by the weapons industry. She is an awful selection. Right now the public is not seeing that. So, you know, I don’t know. He’s not gonna make it. I don’t think he’s gonna make it. I thought there was a day he could until he started making public appearances. And they said, this guy doesn’t have any personality at all. I’d rather have sleepy Joe fall asleep at the podium than have to endure his personality.
