What the hell is Florida thinking?

How a crackdown on illegal immigrants would affect all foreigners and could hurt the state’s biggest industry.

What the hell is Florida thinking? Seriously!

Tourism is Florida’s biggest industry, injecting $65 billion into the state’s economy every year. Sixty-five BILLION dollars. And over a MILLION jobs.

Yet the state could be about to jeopardise all that.

Tourists come to Florida in their droves – 82.5 million in 2008, the most recent year we have data for. They come for the beaches. They come for Disney World. They come for the Everglades. They come for business (Orlando is a popular conference destination). And a lot of those tourists come from outside the United States.

The state’s tourism sector has already been hit by the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Hotel occupancy rates are reportedly down 30% between Pensacola and Panama City, while hotel occupancy rates during Memorial Day along the Florida panhandle were projected to be down 70%.

So it really doesn’t seem like the best time for Florida to go “one step further” than Arizona in checking the immigration status of non-US citizens. A proposal by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who is trying to become the next Republican governor of the state, would require Florida law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of a suspected illegal immigrant in the course of a stop or violation of another law. Quite where that suspicion would come from when the law is meant to rule out racial profiling is unclear.

Now others will address this story from the perspective of human rights and the debate on how to manage illegal immigration in the US. Others will assess how this would affect, in particular, people of Hispanic descent living in Florida. Please allow me to take it from a travel perspective.

Here’s the part that scares me as a potential tourist to the state. According to the Reuters story: “The proposed legislation’s provisions require that aliens carry immigration documentation or face a possible misdemeanor penalty of up to 20 days in jail for the first offence.”

Now I am an “alien”. Not an “illegal alien” – I am a legal non-immigrant resident alien living in California. I have “immigration documentation” in the form of the visa inside my Australian passport. But do I carry this around with me at all times? No. Do I want to carry it around with me at all times? Hell, no! I had my passport stolen six years ago in Britain and I know how hellish it is to get passports and visas replaced. I like to keep it in a safe place, thank you very much.

The main reasons I would consider going to Florida would be to see the Everglades, spend some time on the beach, and perhaps visit Disney World. Would I take my passport to the beach? Definitely not. Would I take it to Disney World or the Everglades? If I really had to but if this became a genuine requirement, I’d probably want to get out of the state as quickly as possible. In fact, I’d prefer not to take my passport with me to Florida at all. When I went to New York in June, I used my California driving licence for ID on my flight, since I wasn’t actually entering or leaving the country.

Tourists from overseas would also have their immigration status in their passport, in the form of some kind of visa or a stapled green card (not to be confused with a “Green Card”) from their Visa Waiver form. They would likely have their passport with them but, like me, would probably rather leave in their hotel safe rather than risk it being stolen from them while they swim at South Beach.

Yet, according to the law proposed by this joker, they would technically be risking 20 days in jail if they did so. Now even though the racial profiling isn’t meant to happen, I don’t believe that for a minute. So I have to admit that the risk of blonde-haired, blue-eyed me get getting stopped and checked by a police officer are probably low. But what about tourists who don’t look like me? How is that fair? And seriously, I don’t think I’d chance it anyway unless there was a very compelling reason to visit. The idea of 20 days in jail and a criminal record of some kind genuinely scares me, no matter how small the risk.

Anyway, I can go to the beach in California. We even have Disney Land. I’m just sorry I’ll miss the Everglades and won’t be able to contribute to the recovery of the state’s economy after the oil spill. My portion of the annual $65 billion is going elsewhere if this law passes.

Photo Credit: Panama City Beach by Bob Therina on Flickr. Licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons.

What do you think of how the proposed law might affect tourism in Florida? If you were a major tourism business in Florida, would you be lobbying against it? (By the way, Disney declined to comment for this story).

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