Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was eager to help President Donald Trump with his immigrant purge, passing laws at the state level to clear the workforce of unauthorized noncitizen labor — and its resulted in critical shortages in industries like construction and agriculture.
But Republicans in the state think they have the answer, wrote Ja'han Jones in an analysis for MSNBC — replace those workers with children.
The legislation in question, backed by DeSantis, would let school-age children work jobs overnight, something not currently allowed under child labor protections — and it also eliminates working time restrictions on 14 and 15-year-olds who are homeschooled, and eliminates a legal requirement that employers provide meal breaks to 16 and 17-year-olds.
Similar laws have been proposed or passed by a number of Republican-controlled states, including Arkansas, whose governor is former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders — but DeSantis much more explicitly tied these new changes to the fact that Florida needs to replace the migrant workers that were pushed out, Jones wrote.
"Speaking about the consequences of state verification laws at an event with border czar Tom Homan, the governor said, 'Yes, we had people that left because of those rules, but you’ve also been able to hire other people. And what’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now?'" he wrote.
Moreover, he argued, these legal changes are coming at a particularly bad moment.
In 2023, "The New York Times published a bombshell report about the exploitation of immigrant children in factories operated by some of the most well-known companies in the U.S.," wrote Jones. "That story should have spurred a nationwide push to strengthen child labor laws.
"Instead, states like Florida are going in the opposite direction, weakening such laws in part to deal with the fallout from the conservative movement’s demonization of immigrants. They’re essentially using child labor to paper over the gaps left by their draconian immigration policies."
Making matters worse, he wrote, Republicans are planning big cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and other programs lower-income kids rely on, to pay for Trump's planned tax cuts. These rollbacks of vital social services "may leave American families with few alternatives to sending their children to work to keep food on the table."
