Boycott begins against Florida, state criminalizing migrants

A group of community leaders in southern California announced a boycott of Florida products from Chula Vista, San Diego County, in response to that state’s anti-immigrant law SB1817.

“Ma’am, good morning, can I talk to you for a minute? Look, we are asking people to look at the labels of what they are going to buy and not to buy anything from the state of Florida,” lawyer Estela Jimenez told a client who was walking towards the supermarket entrance. .

“We ask you not to support the business of a state that pursues a policy that criminalizes us only because of the color of our skin,” the lawyer repeated.

“As we speak to you, there are Hispanic families in Florida who are abandoning everything, everything they have forged over the years, their homes, their families, their jobs, everything to escape that law that has suddenly turned workers into criminals. so that Gov. Ron DeSantis gets the votes,” La Opinión’s lawyer said.

From July 1, the law will oblige employers to check through the eVerify electronic system whether their employees have a work permit in the country, or threaten employers with sanctions and the transfer of employees to migration authorities.

The Florida Policy Institute warned that the legislation would accelerate the loss of ten percent of Florida’s jobs and cause the state’s gross domestic product (GDP) to fall by 1.1 percent, or about $12.6 billion. .

The impact will be mainly on agriculture, the construction sector, hotel and restaurant services, but may also affect related areas.

Lawyer Jimenez said of this impact that “yes, they can be penitent for sins because of the impact on their economy, but in any case, they have to answer for the racist law in 2023.”

Activist Luis Vega, who has led communities against Arizona’s SB1070 law, explained to La Opinión the action plan the leadership group intends to follow in the coming weeks.

First, he plans to urge residents in San Diego County and Southern California to refrain from buying anything made in Florida.

“Every time we stop buying oranges in this state, every time we don’t buy Florida sugar, the cars they make, their cotton, every time we do, we will protect families like ours.” Vega said.

Five to ten days before the law goes into effect, the group will begin marching to Florida. “This is a caravan that we call De la Dignidad,” the leader, Gloria Saucedo, also explained.

The march will start in San Diego, continue in Los Angeles by the end of June, then continue through Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona, and then continue through other states, according to Saucedo, a local leader for 35 years.

“We hope to promote the boycott and join others to be in Florida on July 1 to express our opposition when this anti-immigration law goes into effect in this state,” Saucedo explained.

So far, social media has been reporting on agricultural fields that have not yet been harvested, but abandoned, and lonely construction sites, as well as Hispanic families leaving this state.

Lawyer Jimenez believes that due to the pandemic, society still shows some apathy towards mobilization, but in that, as happened in California in response to anti-immigrant law number 187 in the nineties, anti-immigrant law can change the pro-democracy party bias in Florida .

The leaders chose a well-known supermarket to launch the boycott campaign after they were convinced it sold a variety of agricultural products made in Florida.

Saucedo said during a trip to Florida in late June, “we also want to raise awareness about the lack of comprehensive immigration reform.”

The leader stated that “anti-immigrant initiatives like this on behalf of a few electoral conservatives would not resonate if we had much-needed reform.”

Gloria Saucedo said that “30 years have passed since Proposition 187 was approved in California and three decades later we continue to commit the same abuses, it’s time to change.”