Mitch Perry
In his State of the State address on Tuesday, Gov. Rick Scott hailed Florida’s diversity, featuring sentences in his speech that mentioned “we are home to over 250 languages,” and “we are clearly the best melting pot in the world.”
However, in Ybor City’s Centennial Park in Tampa on Wednesday, a group of immigration activists said the governor’s pride with the state’s multiculturalism clearly doesn’t spread down to those fighting for comprehensive immigration reform.
“What he failed to say is that he is using time, effort, resources, and energy to not only remove the protections that would protect families, but that he’s failing to do so by giving us another alternative,” said Daniel Barajas, of Young American Dreamers. Barajas said Scott neglected to mention that 72 percent of registered voters in the state support some form of immigration reform, nor did he show compassion for immigrants when he congratulated Attorney General Pam Bondi for her “outstanding efforts.”
Bondi announced in December that she had joined a federal lawsuit (which now has expanded to 26 states) to block President Barack Obama‘s executive actions that would shield as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. A federal judge in Texas last month temporarily blocked that action. The judge did not rule on the legality of immigration orders, but said there was sufficient merit to the challenge to warrant a suspension while the case goes forward.
Perla Hinojosa with the group Mi Familia Vota said Floridians come from “different countries, different backgrounds,” and that Scott and Bondi need to realize that Latinos are growing in terms of their electoral clout in the Sunshine State. “These people will remember when you didn’t support their families, didn’t support their parents,” and vowed that they will remember when elections roll back around in 2016. “He needs to remember that Florida is not only comprised of citizens, but of other people who came from other countries. So we’re here to highlight his speech. He needs to represent our immigrant families as well.”
Although Latinos are growing as a part of Florida’s electorate, November’s election was still dominated by older whites, who may be getting grayer and even dying off, but remains a demographic that reliably comes to the polls.
The advocates aren’t going away,though. In addition to the two groups mentioned above, there were representatives from the ACLU of Florida, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Faith in Florida, United We Dream Tampa Bay, the Service Employees International Union state council, and 1199 SEIU at the news conference.
