What do you do when you don't have any migrants to take low-paying jobs?
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Alarm as Florida Republicans move to fill deported workers’ jobs with children: ‘It’s insane, right?’
Governor Ron DeSantis leads push to loosen child labor laws as immigration crackdown leads to workforce shortage
Beneath the smugness of Ron DeSantis, at Florida leading the nation in immigration enforcement lies something of a conundrum: how to fill the essential jobs of the scores of immigrant workers targeted for deportation.
The answer, according to Florida lawmakers, is the state’s schoolchildren, who as young as 14 could soon be allowed to work overnight shifts without a break – even on school nights.
A bill that progressed this week through the Republican-dominated state senate seeks to remove numerous existing protections for teenage workers, and allow them, in the Florida governor’s words, to step into the shoes of immigrants who supply Florida’s tourism and agriculture industries with “dirt cheap labor”.
“What’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now? That’s how it used to be when I was growing up,” DeSantis said at an immigration forum with Donald Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, in Sarasota last week.
“Why do we say we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when teenagers used to work at these resorts, college students should be [doing] all this stuff.”
Unsurprisingly, the proposal has alarmed immigration advocates and watchdog groups concerned about child labor abuses and exploitation.
They point out that there is nothing “part-time” in the language of the companion senate and house bills currently before lawmakers, which instead will permit unlimited working hours without breaks for 14- and 15-year-olds who are schooled at home or online, and allow employers to require 16- and 17-year-olds to work for more than six days in a row.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/29/florida-republicans-immigrant-jobs-child-labor
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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Alarm as Florida Republicans move to fill deported workers’ jobs with children: ‘It’s insane, right?’
Governor Ron DeSantis leads push to loosen child labor laws as immigration crackdown leads to workforce shortage
Beneath the smugness of Ron DeSantis, at Florida leading the nation in immigration enforcement lies something of a conundrum: how to fill the essential jobs of the scores of immigrant workers targeted for deportation.
The answer, according to Florida lawmakers, is the state’s schoolchildren, who as young as 14 could soon be allowed to work overnight shifts without a break – even on school nights.
A bill that progressed this week through the Republican-dominated state senate seeks to remove numerous existing protections for teenage workers, and allow them, in the Florida governor’s words, to step into the shoes of immigrants who supply Florida’s tourism and agriculture industries with “dirt cheap labor”.
“What’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now? That’s how it used to be when I was growing up,” DeSantis said at an immigration forum with Donald Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, in Sarasota last week.
“Why do we say we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when teenagers used to work at these resorts, college students should be [doing] all this stuff.”
Unsurprisingly, the proposal has alarmed immigration advocates and watchdog groups concerned about child labor abuses and exploitation.
They point out that there is nothing “part-time” in the language of the companion senate and house bills currently before lawmakers, which instead will permit unlimited working hours without breaks for 14- and 15-year-olds who are schooled at home or online, and allow employers to require 16- and 17-year-olds to work for more than six days in a row.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/29/florida-republicans-immigrant-jobs-child-labor
@wtg said in What do you do when you don't have any migrants to take low-paying jobs?:
will permit unlimited working hours without breaks for 14- and 15-year-olds who are schooled at home or online, and allow employers to require 16- and 17-year-olds to work for more than six days in a row.
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Does Florida have mines?
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Imagine it. 5 year olds in tiny chains scrubbing the floors in the Florida capitol building.
The MAGTs rejoiced!
