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Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has made immigration crackdown a central focus of his platform. The Florida governor passed a state law mandating certain businesses verify new employees’ immigration status through a database. This policy has reportedly led to the departure of migrant workers, sparking worries about its impact on Florida’s economy.
Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette argues that DeSantis’ extreme approach highlights the politician’s lack of expertise in handling complex issues. Navarrette asserts that these deficiencies make DeSantis a poor choice for president.
So last year, DeSantis helped himself to a couple of dozen Venezuelan refugees who were in a Texas holding facility. He then shipped them to Martha’s Vineyard, just for laughs, just to see how the white liberals on the island would react. Well, they didn’t react all that well, quickly making arrangements to reroute the migrants to Boston. So, DeSantis managed to expose the hypocrisy of those folks — good for him. But in the process, he also revealed himself to be a creep who isn’t above turning the downtrodden and desperate into political pawns.
He also pushed through the Florida legislature and then signed into law what many people are calling “the toughest immigration bill in the country.” The legislation takes every bad and unlawful idea about how to combat immigration proposed all across the country in the last 30 years and lumps them together in one place. The law is so bad that Florida’s business community is worried that it could scare off the same immigrant workers that keep the state’s economy humming along. Oops — DeSantis didn’t see that coming.
Another Republican governor, one who wasn’t obsessed with showing voters how tough he was on the U.S.-Mexico border, might have considered how a crackdown on immigrant workers might hurt the business community, whose political contributions keep the Republican Party afloat. But then again, that would have taken a serious person — and that leaves out Ron DeSantis.
