If shelves go bare early next month, this time, Sunshine Staters will know precisely where to place blame. And it won’t be Gov. Ron DeSantis or the Legislature’s GOP supermajority.

It’ll be truckers intervening on behalf of Latinos illegally in the United States, particularly in Florida. Gosh, who can guess how that will go down?

Last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill imposing tough new penalties and restrictions on undocumented immigrants in Florida that, among other things, requires employers to use E-Verify to make sure workers are authorized to work in the U.S.

By the weekend, Latin American truck drivers were threatening to stop delivering to and in Florida, according to independent journalist Arturo Dominguez. “Don’t enter Florida,” one trucker said in a TikTok video.

“Spanish language social media has exploded with Latino truck drivers calling for a boycott and refusing to take shipments into Florida,” Dominguez tweeted Saturday. “Things are about to get interesting.”

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of this latest plot twist in DeSantis’ shadow campaign for the White House is how Big Media unblushingly declares the statute imposes “tough” penalties and restrictions on our foreign-born friends illegally residing, working, and/or driving in Florida.

From the tone of the various articles, we suspect the writers are not employing “tough” as a stand-in for healthy, solid, or tenacious, but, instead, harsh, strict, severe, cruel, ruthless, merciless, vicious, or violent.

Or so it would seem from this trucker, quoted by FreightWaves (The Nerve Center of the Global Supply Chain®):

In another TikTok video, a truck driver said, “Truckers, don’t enter the state of Florida. Let’s be united as Latinos in defense of our Latin American brothers who are being assaulted by this very stupid law, which incites hatred and discrimination.”

Wow. Really? OK. Eye of the beholder, and all that.

Here’s how Desantis addressed the topic at the time of the signing last week:

“We’re bracing for some turbulent times ahead,” DeSantis said. “And I think when you have a president who has turned a blind eye to what’s gone on at the border… you’re likely to see it get a lot worse. We’re protecting Floridians, to the full extent of our ability.”

From the Florida governor’s office, here’s your bulleted list of the bill’s highlights:

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  Requires employers [of 25 or more workers] to use E-Verify to check the employment eligibility of employees, and fines employers who fail to use E-Verify $1,000 per day.

• Suspends licenses of any employer who knowingly employs illegal aliens, and make using a fake ID to gain employment a felony.

• Enhances penalties for human smuggling, including making knowingly transporting five or more illegal aliens or a single illegal alien minor a second-degree felony subject to a $10,000 fine and up to 15 years in prison.

• Provides $12 million to continue the Unauthorized Alien Transport Program to relocate illegal immigrants to sanctuary jurisdictions.

• Bans local governments and NGOs from issuing identification documents to illegal aliens and invalidates all out-of-state driver licenses issued exclusively to illegal aliens.

• Requires hospitals to collect and report healthcare costs for illegal aliens, without identifying the patients.

So, are the provisions DeSantis signed into law bad-tough  (mean, heartless) or good-tough (prudent, judicious)? We know where certain outspoken truckers and their allies stand (and we suspect such outspokenness will galvanize Floridians’ rejection of our current laissez-faire border policies).

“It shows solidarity, it cuts off the supply chain to Florida, A. B, it’s also a statement of solidarity with their fellow [foreign-citizen] countrymen, who don’t see that [illegal] status as an issue when they’re here,” said Allen Orr, the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Not to be outdone, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighed in with the predictability of a clock striking noon:

Anti-immigrant policies reap what they sow. DeSantis’ Florida is about to find that out.

The US has such deep needs right now, particularly in labor. Yet policymakers (of ALL stripes) take our immigrant communities for granted.

No más. Time to stop biting the hands that feed. https://t.co/FVGRjDr6BR

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 13, 2023

This, too, as noted by BayNews 9, is fraught with irony:

[Tampa Bay Area immigrant rights advocate Ana] Lamb says she has spoken with several organizations planning to organize a boycott. She says that migrants play an essential role in the economy of Florida and the United States, and a boycott would help make others realize their importance.

I’ll take “Spot the Missing Word” for $600, Mayim. What is “illegal migrant”? Yes, Tom. We also would have accepted “undocumented.”

There has been any number of times in America’s history when other readily identifiable classes of humans were instrumental in perpetuating certain economic models. And, indeed, beneficiaries of that model — from planters to railroad tycoons to textile manufacturers to corporate farmers —have advanced similar arguments about the arrangement playing an essential role in the health of the nation.

The arguments — it’s OK to exploit workers if their availability and cut-rate compensation serves the *ahem* greater good — always have been wrong. Not just wrong, but scurrilous. And for a so-called “immigrants rights advocate” to not just facilitate, but amplify them is beyond reproach.

Add this, from the USA Today Network:

Immigrant advocates said Florida’s approach targets a community already struggling to survive with new criminal penalties and restrictions. Immigrants living in Florida, legally and illegally, represent a huge share of the state’s workforce, leaders added. And now with out-of-state driver’s licenses for undocumented people invalid in Florida, some are concerned they will be profiled and stopped.

“I’ve been getting a lot of calls from people asking me if they should leave the state,” [Jacksonville-based immigration lawyer Susan] Pai said. “The undocumented community is very scared to even show up for work.”

In other words, she’s hearing from folks wary of showing up for jobs they’re not legally allowed to hold (oftentimes undercutting the wages similarly skilled native-borns could claim). Imagine!

Let’s say this about all of that: 

As the governor of Florida and an unannounced candidate for president, DeSantis is in no position to order the defense of U.S. borders. But the tools he asked the Legislature to provide are, once again, a preview of the seriousness with which he regards an issue of critical importance to America and Americans of legal status.

When at last he makes himself a formal candidate, DeSantis — who pursued and enacted bold advocacy for Florida — can expect voters who also regard gravely the invasion of our southern border to turn to him from you-know-who, who left things woefully incomplete, in three … two … one …