What Florida would look like without immigrants

Iremember covering the first “Day Without an Immigrant” in May 2006. It was a national action that included strikes — which shut down meatpacking plants, food service companies, and other businesses — consumer boycotts, and protests that drew more than a million people to the streets. The mobilization was in response to the so-called Sensenbrenner bill, passed by the US House of Representatives, that would make it a felony for an unauthorized immigrant to be in the country or for anyone to help one.

As far as flexing the collective muscle of undocumented people in the United States, the action was a compelling statement to make. In Lawrence, most Latino businesses closed and about 1 in 3 students stayed home. In Chelsea, as The Boston Globe reported, 1 in 4 students did not go to school. Nationwide, Goya Foods reportedly suspended food deliveries — except in Florida, in what Goya called a gesture of solidarity with immigrants who are its main customers.

Fast-forward to 2023. Florida has become a laboratory for xenophobic and extreme measures. And last week, similar “A Day Without Immigrants” rallies were held in multiple cities to protest the anti-immigrant law signed by Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis last month. The sweeping law, among other provisions, restricts social services for undocumented residents and revokes their driver’s licenses, mandates hospitals that receive federal dollars to add a citizenship question to intake forms, and cracks down on companies that employ undocumented workers.

It’s clear that as far as efforts go to persuade anti-immigrant, far-right lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the cost of living without immigrants is too high, those campaigns haven’t been effective. While the 2006 Sensenbrenner legislation was ultimately killed, a countereffort in the US Senate that would have legalized the undocumented population met the same fate. A similar national Day Without Immigrants campaign returned in 2017, when former president Donald Trump, with his slew of xenophobic edicts, held the White House. Ditto last year, but the 2022 action was to pressure President Biden into doing more to protect undocumented immigrants.

Indeed, such protests feel all too familiar, a rinse-and-repeat cycle that follows the intractable politics of immigration the country seems to have been stuck in for the last two decades. The past is always present.

But the draconian law DeSantis signed may give us a glimpse of what it looks like to live without immigrants. Even though it goes into effect on July 1, the law is already pushing some immigrants to leave the state. There is no data yet, only anecdotes and posts on social media. Since early May, dozens of videos showing empty Florida worksites have been racking up views on TikTok and Twitter.

Nearly a million undocumented immigrants call Florida home. And more than 2 million Floridians have at least one immigrant parent. The new law will punish mixed-status families; undocumented parents who drive their US-born kids to school may be punished.

Meanwhile, in an entirely predictable turn of events, DeSantis seems to be caught in his own cycle — the one where Republican presidential hopefuls try to outdo each other on immigration policy. Over the weekend news broke that the DeSantis administration might have flown more than a dozen migrants to Sacramento without notice. The migrants were dropped off in front of a Catholic church Friday. (By the way, the Florida law DeSantis signed allocates more funds to his migrant relocation program for those types of stunts.)

I now regard Day Without Immigrants protests, strikes, and boycotts as a form of impotent resistance or pushback that galvanizes immigrants but not lawmakers. They ultimately underscore what should be evident to anyone who’s unbiased: Immigrants foster economic growth. No immigrants? No economic growth. But who’s listening?

Since early May, dozens of videos showing empty Florida worksites have been racking up views on TikTok and Twitter.

REBECCA BLACKWELL/AP Jonathan Martinez, 22, center, whose Mexican parents first worked on farms when they arrived in the US more than two decades ago, held a sign along with his sister Paola, right, a 19-year-old student, against Florida Senate bill 1718 on June 1 in Immokalee, Fla. Paola held a sign that read, in Spanish, “We are this country’s strength,” while another woman’s sign read, “We are here and we aren’t leaving.”