Ron DeSantis Gets Boost Over Florida Anti-Immigration Law

Almost half of Florida voters back a sweeping anti-immigration law enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to a poll conducted exclusively for Newsweek.

The Republican governor, who is seeking his party's presidential nomination, has made hardening the state's immigration laws a priority and is playing up his tough stance on the campaign trail.

He signed the legislation, Senate Bill 1718, into law in May. It took effect on July 1 and aims to limit social services and employment access for undocumented immigrants.

The law requires businesses with more than 25 employees to use E-Verify, a federal system that determines if staff can legally work in the U.S., or face having their license suspended and being fined $1,000 a day.

It also requires hospitals that accept Medicaid to include a citizenship question on intake forms before admitting patients, which health care providers have warned will deter people from seeking care until their condition is life-threatening.

Several civil rights groups have filed a federal lawsuit challenging provisions in the law that criminalize the transportation of undocumented immigrants into, within or out of Florida.

The law has also prompted concerns about Florida's economy and a labor shortage, as large industries such as agriculture and construction rely heavily on immigrant labor.

However, a poll by Redfield and Wilton Strategies, on behalf of Newsweek, has found that 48 percent of Florida voters support SB1718.

The poll, which surveyed 840 eligible voters in Florida between July 25 and 26, found 48 percent support the law—29 percentage points of those "strongly."

Less than a third of those surveyed—29 percent—said they opposed the law, 16 percentage points of them "strongly."

Another 17 percent said they neither supported nor opposed the law, while 5 percent said they didn't know.

Many of the survey respondents who support the bill are DeSantis voters. Of the 29 percent who opted for "strongly support," 55 percent had voted for DeSantis in the 2022 gubernatorial race.

Just 11 percent of those who said they "strongly support" the law voted for his Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist.

Supporters of the law came from all age groups. Some 57 percent of those aged 59 or over said they backed the law, while 52 percent of Gen Z (people aged 18 to 26) said the same.

Opponents to the law included similar numbers of people from all age groups. Almost a third (31 percent) of respondents who said they opposed the law were aged 59 or over, compared to 26 percent of Gen Z voters.

"These results are unsurprising," DeSantis spokesperson Jeremy Redfern told Newsweek. "As the governor said during his second inaugural address, 'We have refused to use polls and to put our finger in the wind—leaders do not follow, they lead.'

"We are grateful that the legislature got SB 1718 to the governor's desk for his signature. Florida will continue to fight illegal immigration and the evil predations of human smuggling."

Julia Maskivker, a professor of political science at Rollins College in Florida, also said the survey results were not surprising, because recent elections have shown the state is now solidly Republican.

She told Newsweek that another reason for the support could be that people do not know all the details of the law. "They associate any anti-immigrant rhetoric to a wider national fight by the Republicans against what they refer to as Biden's lack of control at the border," she said.

"Thus, when DeSantis publicly decries Biden's asylum policies as a complete nightmare and a failure to contain hordes of illegal aliens, the public immediately relates the latest Florida anti-immigration law to the situation at the border, or nationally."

However, the situation in Florida is different, according to Maskivker.

"The targets of this law are already inserted into the state economy, working in construction, hospitality industries, agriculture and others. They are not waiting at the border to be let in. They are not crossing rivers or deserts and being caught by border patrol. They are actually contributing to the economy via their labor.

"DeSantis knows that targeting them, however, will awaken images of immigrants invading the U.S. and 'taking away jobs and causing crime.' This is exactly what many uninformed Republican voters hear on TV and from their representatives—and this is the narrative that prevails in the party since Donald Trump brought it to the fore in 2016."

Maskivker added that many of the measures put forward by DeSantis, including SB1718, "have been designed without careful consideration of their consequences for the economy."

"People that support this law do not always understand these considerations, either. They do not put one and one together. They 'forget' that Florida relies on immigrant labor for its most important sectors—tourism, agriculture—and that most of these jobs are not filled out by American-born workers."

Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell Law School, told Newsweek that immigration had "been an emotional issue throughout U.S. history."

"People like immigrants they know, but worry about overall immigration levels," he said. "For that reason, it is easy for politicians to demonize immigrants by mouthing simple soundbites rather than tackling the complexity of the issue."

This is why SB1718 could help DeSantis in the race to clinch the 2024 nomination, according to Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science and director of the Center on U.S. Politics at University College London. Opinion polls show him trailing Trump by some distance.

"Any claim to pushing hardline immigration policies is going to help a candidate in the Republican primaries," Gift told Newsweek. "It's a red-meat issue for the GOP base and so DeSantis' passage of SB1718 will be a major selling point on the campaign trail. A big part of DeSantis' pitch against Trump is that Trump talks a good game but that, in Florida, he's actually walked the walk.

"On immigration, DeSantis can tout that he's actually passed legislation with real effects, whereas Trump has merely made (undelivered) promises of building the wall."