Benjamín Pérez makes a living cleaning houses in Miami. He works without legal permission, like the thousands of other foreigners who form an essential workforce for the state of Florida. The future of all of them now hangs by a thread due to a recently approved immigration law.
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The initiative promoted by the Republican governor ron desantis seeks, among other things, to prevent the hiring of undocumented people.
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From the 1st. July, companies with more than 25 employees will have to check a federal database for the legal status of the people they want to hire. Ignoring this obligation and hiring a foreigner in an irregular situation will entail large fines.
Pérez, 40, has lived and worked in the United States for two decades, but fears that he will no longer be able to do so. Like many, he left his native Mexico, seeking a better economic situation. He was a bricklayer until an injury forced him to change sectors.
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For those of us who come without any documents, rather than wanting to work, the paths to find a job become narrower.
He now lives in a downtown Miami apartment with his Nicaraguan wife and one of her nephews, Joel Altamirano. All three work. no one is allowed to do so.
«For those of us who come without documents, rather than wanting to work, the paths to find a job become narrower,» laments Pérez, who asks to use a pseudonym for fear of any immigration service.
«The American dream is nothing more than that, a dream,» he adds. «The government corners us more every day. This time the treatment is merciless. We are practically worthless».
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A group of Cuban migrants gather near a road on Duck Key Island in the Florida Keys.
The New Day (GDA)
‘devastating effects’
In Florida, a state of about 22.2 million people, 772,000 undocumented migrants live, according to an estimate by the Migration Policy Institute think tank.
Many of them work in essential sectors for the state economy such as agriculture, construction and hospitality.
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Stopping them from doing so will have serious economic consequences, warns Samuel Vilchez, Florida director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, a business association that advocates for better integration of migrants into the economy.
“It attacks our companies and prevents them from creating new jobs, generating income and providing the services they claim to offer,” warns Vilchez. «It goes against what we know is good for the economy and it will have devastating effects on Florida.»
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Some 2,000 migrants advanced to the middle of the Santa Fe International Bridge, the dividing line between Mexico and the United States
According to the NGO Florida Policy Institute, the new law could cause annual losses of $12.6 billion to the state’s economy by reducing labor, the expenses of undocumented migrants and the taxes they pay.
The uncertainty created by the legal change already has consequences in the workplace, despite the fact that it has not yet entered into force and that it does not require reporting the presence of foreigners in an irregular situation.
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«At the company where I work, many people have left, they have moved to another state. There is a lot of fear about the law,» says Altamirano (another pseudonym), a 38-year-old construction worker.
‘It is unfair’
Governor DeSantis, who seems ready to challenge former President Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries, has become a figure of the American right for promoting a very conservative agenda on issues such as education, abortion or illegal immigration.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Last week he accused the administration of Democrat Joe Biden of neglecting the southern border of the United States and defending the new law as a necessary measure to reduce crime and drug trafficking linked, according to him, to the arrival of undocumented migrants.
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Pérez and Altamirano deplore the fact that the authorities treat them as criminals and feel like victims of DeSantis’ personal ambitions.
«All the politicians want their share of the cake and we pay the piper,» says the Mexican. «We came to work, send money to our families, spend it here and pay taxes. This is unfair.»
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If the law prevents them from earning a living, they will have to leave Florida and start over elsewhere in the United States. Adapt once more.
At the moment do not think of returning to their countries. Several relatives depend on their remittances and, in the case of Altamirano, there is the fear of returning to live under the authoritarian government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
Pérez would like the country in which he has worked so many hours to recognize his presence one day.
«For the United States we don’t exist,» he says, but this country «was built by people from all over and I’m one of them.»
AFP AGENCY