Anti-immigrant fervor will do great harm
Over and over during Tuesday’s House floor debate in Tallahassee on two anti-immigrant bills, opposition lawmakers talked about fear.
It’s fear of making people afraid to seek access to health care. Making people afraid to drive. Making people afraid to carry out religious missions.
The fear is real, and it’s not just among the groups these two bills claim to target. In reality, this legislation will cast a spotlight on anyone who talks with an accent. Or wears clothes that reflect a different heritage. Or speaks a language other than English.
Or whose skin tone, accent or behavior suggests they were born someplace else, whether they are American citizens, legal permanent residents of the U.S., legal asylum seekers or undocumented immigrants.
They are all at risk — along with, in many cases, people who help them secure access to health care and other human services and the people who do business with them. What are Florida lawmakers thinking? Why do they spend so much time and effort in an attempt to hound people who have made the gut-wrenching decision to leave their homelands and everything they have known, to come to this country they have always regarded as the beacon of liberty and hope — including those who have gone through all the legal avenues and have done nothing wrong?
A less obvious threat
While much attention has been focused on broad-based anti-immigrant legislation (House Bill 1617) that passed the House Tuesday, a less-noticed bill (Senate Bill 264) targets the Asian-American community in ways that advocates say is blatantly unconstitutional and violates federal fair
housing and anti-discrimination laws. Regrettably, it passed the Senate 38-0, which means Democrats voted for it, too. We salute those 17 House members who voted no.
The anxiety, fear and bewilderment stoked by that legislation — purportedly targeting sinister Chinese investment in ways that threaten national security — was evident among more than 100 protestors who gathered last weekend in Miami and Orlando. They worry that the legislation could make them targets of those who might weaponize state laws to strip them of businesses they have toiled long and hard to build, block them from seeking health care or even seize their homes. The
risk is multiplied by the legislation’s threatened criminal penalties against financial institutions or businesses that conduct prohibited transactions.
After it’s signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, this legislation will cast an unconscionably broad net, banning transactions by several groups that realistically can only be identified by the shape of their faces and the color of their skin — including, as the bill says, Chinese Communist Party or other Chinese political party officials or members, Chinese business organizations and persons domiciled in China who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents of the U.S.
Realistically, how is a real estate agent in Boca Raton to know whether a client is a member of the Communist Party? They may not even be able to tell whether they are Chinese, Japanese or Korean.
Do they ‘look Asian’?
That makes it clear what the impact will be: Anyone who looks Asian will become much more likely to be questioned or turned away from financial transactions, and potentially have their homes or businesses seized. We can’t imagine anything in modern law that comes close to that.
This legislation did not get the attention it deserved, due to the righteous indignation over the massive anti-immigrant bill that passed the House earlier Tuesday and is on its way to Gov. Ron DeSantis — who will almost certainly gleefully sign it. He and other lawmakers have pointedly ignored public protests.
Among other measures, that legislation would require that health-care providers gather information on people they suspect are in the country illegally and make it a crime to transport illegal immigrants into the state. In a bizarrely hypocritical move, it would also replenish DeSantis’ $12 million slush fund that he used last year to transport legal asylum seekers from San Antonio, Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
There will come a day when these cruel, cynical and blatantly unconstitutional actions will be regarded as a shameful chapter in Florida’s history. That day can’t come soon enough.