Highway Billboard Calls Out FL Gov. Rick Scott on Failure to Pass E-Verify

A billboard “welcoming” illegal aliens to Florida and sarcastically thanking Gov. Rick Scott appeared on Interstate 75 Wednesday.

Produced by Floridians for Immigration Enforcement, the billboard calls out Scott for the state’s failure to adopt an E-Verify law.

“This is a wake-up call for Governor Scott, who promised Floridians he would work to get mandatory E-Verify in the state to protect our legal workers,” said Jack Oliver, legislative director of the group that goes by the name FLIMEN.

The 40-foot-by-10-foot illuminated billboard (see above) is along I-75′s southbound lanes between the Georgia border and I-10.

Georgia with neighboring Alabama and South Carolina have all passed E-Verify laws.

House Bill 1315, sponsored by Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Port St. Lucie, would require private employers in Florida to run the names of new hires through the federal E-Verify system to determine eligibility for employment.

The bill has failed to get a committee hearing. Scheduled for four committee stops, it is all but dead this session.

Last year, the Senate passed a watered-down E-Verify measure, but the House never took it up. A companion House bill by Rep. Will Snyder, R-Stuart, was not heard.

“Seven states have passed E-Verify, making Florida a sanctuary state and haven for illegal aliens, which is not acceptable,” Oliver said. Blaming “a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans who owe their allegiance to criminal illegal-alien employers in the state,” FLIMEN said Florida taxpayers spend billions of dollars “educating, medicating and incarcerating” some 900,000 undocumented immigrants and their children.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries of Florida, agricultural interests and “social-justice” allies on the left combined forces last year to defeat E-Verify legislation. The business groups branded the screening system unreliable and burdensome, while Hispanic activists complained of racial profiling.

E-Verify proponents cited independent studies that found the free, computer-based program had a 98 percent rate of accuracy in cross-referencing Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses. Last year’s proposed bill, like this year’s, would have required all employers to use E-Verify on new hires, regardless of ethnicity.

Since Alabama passed it mandatory E-Verify as part of its tough HB56 immigration law last summer, the state has seen an astounding fall in its unemployment rate (see chart here) – particularly in areas with the most number of known illegal alien workers. By contrast, Florida’s unemployment rate has barely budged at all.

Gov. Scott campaigned in 2010 on passing an “Arizona-style immigration law” in Florida. Florida citizens are still waiting, Governor.

You can contact Gov. Rick Scott to let him know you support E-Verify and S.B. 1070-style enforcement in Florida:

By Phone: (850) 488-7146

By Email: http://www.flgov.com/contact-gov-scott/email-the-governor/

By Mail:

Office of Governor Rick Scott
State of Florida
The Capitol
400 S. Monroe St.
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001