DeSantis has victory in the bag, so why is he using the state budget to hurt migrants? | Opinion
The governor of Florida’s $99.7 billion budget — which he has dubbed the “Freedom First Budget” because its essence isn’t to address the needs of Floridians but to assist his reelection campaign — says a lot about who Ron DeSantis is.
Selfish. Entitled. Cruel.
DeSantis doesn’t just want to govern. He wants to annul, forgetting a crucial principle of democracy, made more profound in a nation founded by immigrants, and still a beacon of hope for refugees: respect for differences of opinion — and make room for “the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Yet that freedom, inspirational and transforming, isn’t reflected in DeSantis’ misnamed budget.
Armed with hefty coffers, including billions in federal funds from President Biden’s commitment to help states recover from COVID losses and stimulate the economy, DeSantis aims to further agitate and divide an already politically on-edge Florida.
Targeting immigrants
Nothing says this louder than DeSantis’ $8 million plan to buy one-way bus tickets out of Florida for the undocumented, some of the most vulnerable people among us. The new program would, of course, also benefit cronies, as the state would be paying contractors to transport immigrants to other states.
If this business of transporting undesirable people isn’t evoking a nauseating feeling it’s because you’ve forgotten history.
The governor announced this latest anti-immigrant concoction Friday at Jacksonville International Airport, surrounded by an all-white cast of men and one woman — one in police uniform to make the inaccurate and widely debunked link of immigrants to crime.
And so, the king of the veiled dog whistle in Florida strikes with the budget, too.
“Unauthorized aliens,” he calls immigrants, using the most pejorative term available to disparage humans who work hard and love and yearn for a better future like the rest of us.
Humans whose labor we use and abuse to keep our lawns tidy, to make affordable repairs to our homes, and to do the most physically and emotionally taxing work of all, provide essential daily care for the elderly.
His hate train will roll through the state even if business leaders are telling him that hotels and restaurants are understaffed because not enough Americans want to do dirty jobs like cleaning up our mess and cooking our food, shift after shift, holidays included.
His fight against the Biden administration’s immigration policy — which has included deporting thousands of Haitians and repatriating Cubans, something you won’t hear DeSantis telling Floridians — is all for show.
All the charged language and stumping for the sake of staging a blusterous campaign, a la Trump, when it is so unnecessary. I have yet to hear a single political operative of either party say that DeSantis can be unseated.
I ask one who’s a Democrat: Is there any chance at all?
“Same chance as you or I winning the Powerball this weekend — it’s possible but highly, highly unlikely,” said a South Florida pollster.
DeSantis and his people know this.
But he’s not really running against Nikki Fried, Charlie Crist or Annette Taddeo, his Democratic opponents. He’s aiming higher already, running against Biden, who has kept in place many of Trump’s restrictive border policies.
The show isn’t so much for the 2022 midterms as it is for 2024 as a possible back-up for a failed Donald Trump rerun — or, to become his mentor’s running mate? And he has a lot of competition in a crowded field of Republican governors pulling similar anti-immigration stunts at home.
Which border needs securing?
To complete his anti-immigrant pitch on Friday, DeSantis spoke from a podium bearing a red sign that demanded: “Secure Our Border. Secure Our States.”
He should have been asked: Which one, the Georgia-Florida one or the Alabama-Florida one ferrying an unprecedented number of Americans spurring rampant development and forever changing our fragile environment?
This, domestic migration, is driving the cost of a home out of the range of most Floridians and fueling an unprecedented affordable-housing crisis. This domestic onslaught of people will need those migrants, too, to tend their lawns. They’re already the ones building new homes.
Service vs. self-interest
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a man whom ignoble politicians like DeSantis pretend to honor once a year for political convenience, said: “Everyone has the power for greatness — not for fame, but greatness, because greatness is determined by service.”
Service isn’t in DeSantis’ DNA, only ambition to build his political career at whatever cost.
His superpower is an immense ability for self-promotion while pretending to deliver service and his privileged idea of monetary value — lowest tax burden in the nation, people! — to Floridians.
But he can’t help but show, time after time, that he’s a person capable of great meanness.
This story was originally published December 14, 2021 at 12:36 PM.
