The economy would collapse, we are told by the open-borders lobby, without the millions of illegal immigrants needed to do jobs Americans won’t do.

So when Florida passed E-Verify, a law that requires employers to verify the identity of newly hired employees, and it was implemented on Jan. 1, 2023, open-borders advocates predicted imminent doom for the Florida economy. 

And NPR, an open-borders lobby ally, wants you to believe the economic apocalypse has come to pass. Under the headline, “A year later, Florida businesses say the state’s immigration law dealt a huge blow,” NPR reports, “Many local Florida businesses say the new law has led to workers leaving the state, hurting their bottom line.”

“A lot of people are scared,” strawberry farmer Fidel Sanchez said. “A lot of people went north and never came back.”

Sounds bad. NPR then cites something called the Florida Policy Institute, which claims the law “could cost the state’s economy $12.6 billion in its first year.”

Well, it’s been more than a year, and instead of relying on anecdotes and predictions from far-left activist groups, let’s look at actual data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, instead of shrinking, Florida’s economy actually grew 4.6% in 2023, the first year E-Verify was enforced, compared to just 3.6% in Georgia, just north of Florida, 3.1% in the sanctuary state of California, and 1.6% in the sanctuary state of New York.

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Employment is also humming along in Florida, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the past year, Florida has added over 211,000 jobs, or 2.2% annual job growth. Over that same time, California jobs grew only 1.1%, and in New York, the rate of growth was just 1.5%. Meanwhile, California has the country’s highest unemployment rate at 5.3%, while Florida’s 3.2% is below the national average.

The reality is that America does not need cheap labor to survive. There is no such thing as “jobs Americans won’t do.” As Nobel Prize winner economist Sir Angus Deaton said, “Anyone who says that should be discarded and yelled at unless they mention something about wages. Because the question is, you can’t say Americans won’t take a job. If you paid them enough, they would take that job.”