Domingo García, LULAC PRESIDENT “DeSantis’ Nazi Policy in Florida”
by carlos matías
“Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is against migrants because he’s contesting Donald Trump for the GOP nomination for the White House. His agenda is more extreme right-wing than Trump’s. He has a Nazi policy,” Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, tells Sol de Medianoche. “DeSantis can be an example for other Republican governors.”
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the nation’s oldest and largest Hispanic civil rights advocacy organization. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with a presence in the United States and Puerto Rico, it addresses the issues of Latinos and meets their needs.
Ron DeSantis is an enthusiast of Trump’s MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) movement and has demonstrated xenophobic and racist attitudes, embodied in anti-immigration laws to make life miserable for immigrants in Florida. He supports a law requiring the use of electronic employment verification by businesses, and a statewide ban on what he calls “sanctuary city” protections for undocumented immigrants.
DeSantis’ three key anti-immigrant strands are embodied in his new “Immigration Act,” effective this July. It lays the foundations for three forms of discrimination reminiscent of “Apartheid” against blacks in South Africa and racial discrimination in the United States.
The first fundamental line of discrimination is that those who don’t have a residence permit are not entitled to health care. The second is that without valid work permits, immigrants have no right to employment, condemning them to marginalization and poverty. The third is that any citizen with valid documents who hires, helps, or even drives an undocumented immigrant is committing a crime.
Thus, Ron DeSantis’ new law criminalizes and penalizes not only the undocumented immigrant who dares to be in Florida, but also those who hire or help them in any way, even if it is a doctor who assists in compliance with the Hippocratic Oath. “DeSantis is doing today in Florida what the Nazis did in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s,” Garcia continues. “They blamed everything on the communists and the Jews. Now, DeSantis blames the economic situation, new diseases, crime, and drugs on immigrants.”
Against this anti-immigration policy that has always distinguished DeSantis, even though his parents were Italian immigrants, LULAC has filed a federal lawsuit, “to prevent other Republican governors from following his bad example,” Domingo García assures Sol de Medianoche. “Many people have fled out of fear,” he concludes. “In Florida there were about 800,000 immigrants and now the jobs they used to have in the fields, in the hotel industry and in other services are empty.”