Recent immigration crackdowns have created concerns about who will pick our crops.
While federal data shows at least one out of every four crop workers nationally lacked legal status, Florida's top agricultural official is claiming that's not true here.
Wilton Simpson said he's doubling down on his support for the enforcement of immigration laws by the federal government.
Simpson, a fifth-generation egg farmer from Pasco County, is the state commissioner of agriculture. During Friday's meeting of the Tampa Tiger Bay Club, he said most of the migrant farmworkers in Florida have visas.
"In Florida, the vast majority of our agriculture labor is H2A legal labor," he said of the federal government work visa. "In the farm bill this year, we made it accessible to them to be able to build houses on those farms. So just because you drive by a field of people that may not look like you, that does not mean they're illegal."
In 2022, Florida had more than 1 million unauthorized immigrants, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. But a study by the Migration Policy Institute said most of those worked in construction or service industries — not agriculture.
Simpson also addressed the state's skyrocketing home insurance rates.
Some analysts have found that average premiums have gone up by a third in the past three years. That means Florida's rates are among the highest in the nation.
So, what is the state doing about it?
Not much, Simpson said.
He said having two hurricanes ravage the state in the same year could exhaust the reserves of large insurance companies.
"You could have an Andrew and a Michael in the same year, which would be a serious disaster, and we would not have the reserves to maybe overcome those in most of our large insurance companies," Simpson said. "So, if we're going to do this properly, we're going to have to come up with some sort of criteria for the state or the federal government nationalizing these traumatic events that could happen here in the state of Florida."
Simpson said that national idea could be a larger version of what Florida does with Citizens Insurance, the state's nonprofit insurer of last resort.
