Valentina Oropeza Colmenares @orovalenti
West Palm Beach, BBC News World
Alejandra is surrounded by boxes and suitcases that do not fit in the car.
This Saturday she will embark on a 20-hour journey to move from Florida to New York with her three children and she has not yet defined what is most important to them: which toys they will keep and which ones they will leave behind.
Away from her grandmother and the affections that remained in Bogotá, Alejandra managed to build a routine for the children in West Palm Beach, north of Miami, in South Florida over the last two years.
The 30-year-old Colombian girl got up early to make breakfast. She would then walk Dominik, the eldest of 11, to the school bus stop and then she would drive John and Samuel, the 7-year-old twins, to school.
Alejandra worked in a food store from 10:00 in the morning to 7:00 at night. She had finally found a babysitter who would pick up the boys in the afternoon and take care of them until she could come home.
However, when Florida passed SB 1718, sponsored by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, warehouse managers warned staff that their jobs were at risk.
The new regulation, also known as the “anti-immigrant law”, restricts the access of the undocumented to jobs, identity cards, health services and transportation. It will enter into force this first of July.
road to new york
Like Alejandra, most of the warehouse employees are undocumented.
“They are closing the doors on me and my children,” she says as she packs the last belongings that the children will take to New York, where Alejandra’s brother will give them lodging while he gets a new job.
Unlike her, her children already speak English. Dominik entered a special advanced math, science and computer program at the school. Her dream is to study finance at Harvard University.
“I feel belittled”, affirms Alejandra while separating a stuffed animal from Simba, the son of the Lion King, one of the few toys that will travel with the family to New York. “The only thing I want is for my children to have the opportunity to study and to be professionals.”
New York is a “sanctuary state”as localities are known where Democratic governors approved laws to protect the rights of the undocumented.
Republican governors like DeSantis have been sending migrants arriving in their jurisdictions after crossing the southern border to sanctuary states by bus or by plane.
Republican leaders argue that the immigration policy of President Joe Biden’s administration allowed the United States last year to reach the largest increase in the irregular migratory flow across the border with Mexico in the last two decades.
Alejandra and her children also entered through the border with Mexico. Now they apply for asylum.
The “strongest immigration law in the country”
DeSantis promotes SB 1718 as “the strongest anti-illegal immigration legislation in the country.”
The new regulation forces companies with 25 or more employees to use a system to verify the immigration status of workers (called E-Verify), imposes fines of $1,000 daily if they employ an undocumented immigrant and threatens employers with suspending their business licenses if they commit these offenses several times.
The law prohibits local authorities in Florida from issuing identification documents to foreigners who are in the United States illegally and invalidates identity cards issued by other states in such cases.
Also requires hospitals to collect immigration data from patients and present them to the authorities, to calculate the costs of providing medical care to undocumented people.
In addition, consider a felony for someone to transport an undocumented person in their car to enter the territory of Florida.
The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, estimates that 772,000 undocumented people reside in Florida.
live under the shade
Tadeo is 12 years old and wears diapers.
He still doesn’t speak, but he receives phonology and psychomotor therapy at a school in West Palm Beach, says his father Maikel Piriz.
When the doctors said that Tadeo had severe autism, his parents visited schools in Canelones, the city where they lived in southern Uruguay, which offered no better alternative than sit Tadeo in a corner and make him play with blocks of geometric figures.
Maikel and his wife decided to emigrate to the United States, hoping to find centers specializing in the treatment of autism. They arrived in the country in 2017 by plane, with tourist visas and the intention of becoming legal as soon as possible.
However, the Uruguayan nationality and the profile of the family did not seem to fit any visa that would open the way for a permanent stay in Florida.
They left and returned to the United States on two occasions, but they did not find the legal mechanism to obtain residency.
Under the new Florida law, Maikel and his wife decided to leave the United States permanently.
“I am not going to allow my children to live in the shadows, to be excluded for not having papers,” Maikel says from a farm where she cleans the horse stable.
“I’ll leave if a chase starts”
Carlos, a 53-year-old Mexican, has not yet made the decision to leave Florida.
The owner of the company where he works as a corn tortilla delivery boy for restaurants and supermarkets promised to do everything possible to keep him on the payroll, although Your driver’s license expired two years ago and from now on you will not be able to renew it while you are undocumented.
“I put down roots in Florida 13 years ago. It is very difficult to get up suddenly and make a new life in another place from one moment to the next, ”she says during a break in her daily route to distribute corn tortillas.
Every week she sends between $100 and $200 to her three children in Colima, the capital of the state of the same name, west of Mexico City.
Carlos says he will consider leaving Florida if a witch hunt is unleashed against the undocumented.
“We have to see if from now on the police are going to arrest people arbitrarily in the street, if they are going to persecute us because of the color of our skin.”
“If a chase starts, I’m leaving. I’m not willing to lose my peace for this law”.
The owners of the shops where Carlos delivers the merchandise comment that in recent weeks the consumption and sale of corn tortillas has fallen.
Many of his clients have already left Florida.
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See original article on BBC