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Illegal Immigration in Florida

Over 700,000 illegal aliens are living in Florida, estimates the Migration Policy Institute.37 This is an increase of 350,000, or 100 percent, since 1996 and an increase of 430,000, or 159 percent, since 1992.

Thousands of migrant workers, most of them illegal, spend six to nine months a year picking crops in Immokalee fields.38 Estimates of the illegal migrant population range as high as 400,000, or up to 90 percent.39

Florida state officials are so desperate to cut the influx of illegal immigration to the state that, under former Governor Lawton Chiles, they spent state money on foreign aid, funding overseas trade and development programs in the hopes of keeping potential immigrants at home and out of Florida.40

Florida complained for years to the federal government that it wasn’t doing enough to stop illegal immigration or to help the state bear the costs. Then, in the summer of 1994, 32,000 Cuban rafters started coming ashore in Key West, at a rate of 1,000 a day.

Florida sued the federal government, arguing that it was failing to adequately enforce immigration law. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, but the Justice Department released $18 million to the state from an immigration-emergency fund and agreed to other steps to support enforcement efforts. The agreement, the Florida Immigration Initiative, includes, prosecutions of illegal re-entries (aliens who were deported and then came back) are now handled by federal prosecutors, and federal immigration officials share data with Florida law enforcement agencies.41

U.S. Representative Mark Foley (R-FL) has asked the General Accounting Office to look into the financial toll illegal immigrants place on hospitals, in response to a growing number of cases in which hospitals provided expensive care to illegal immigrants, then found themselves stuck with the bill.42 As the number of illegal immigrants increases, hospitals throughout the state say they have been left with millions of dollars in unpaid bills after treating illegal immigrants. Under federal law, hospitals cannot refuse emergency care to anyone, regardless of their immigration status. But because many illegal immigrants work in low-wage jobs that offer no benefits and cannot qualify for Medicaid, they often use emergency rooms as their primary source of routine and critical health care.43

Florida authorities requested compensation of $56 million from the federal government in FY’99 for the incarceration of illegal aliens in state and local jails and prisons, but it received only $21.6 million in compensation, leaving $34.4 million in uncompensated costs to be borne by Florida taxpayers. 24

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