Republican lawmakers create $10m programme to fund governor’s push, which critics say treats individuals as ‘chess items’.

Legislators within the US state of Florida have handed a invoice backing efforts by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to transport migrants and asylum seekers into Democratic-controlled components of the USA, a push that critics have decried as “indefensible”.

The measure authorized on Friday gives $10m to create a brand new initiative – dubbed the Unauthorized Alien Transport Program – to fund DeSantis’s plan.

Final yr, the Florida governor – a rising conservative star who is anticipated to hunt the presidency in 2024 – joined different Republican state leaders in funding the relocation of asylum seekers to largely liberal areas of the nation.

DeSantis nonetheless has to signal Friday’s invoice, which permits his administration to move migrants from anyplace within the US, earlier than it turns into a legislation. The measure handed in a 77-34 vote within the Florida Home alongside occasion traces, native media retailers reported.

“This invoice is indefensible,” Democratic Consultant Christopher Benjamin mentioned on the state’s Home flooring on Friday. “They’re human beings, not chess items. Cease taking part in video games with individuals’s lives.”

In September of final yr, DeSantis chartered two flights to move dozens of migrants and asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Winery, a rich neighborhood within the northeastern state of Massachusetts.

The migrants arrived with out superior discover, native authorities mentioned, sparking outrage and questions concerning the legality of the switch. The White Home denounced the incident at the moment as merciless “political theatre”.

Over the previous yr, the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona even have despatched bus-loads of migrants to New York Metropolis, Chicago and Washington, DC, together with dozens who have been dropped off close to the house of Vice President Kamala Harris in December.

Whereas most of the asylum seekers have taken such journeys voluntarily, some have mentioned that they have been misled.

Massachusetts immigration lawyer Rachel Self informed reporters when final yr’s flights arrived in Martha’s Winery that the migrants “have been informed there was a shock current for them and that there could be jobs and housing ready for them once they arrived”.

Republicans have mentioned the relocation marketing campaign goals to deliver consideration to a rising immigration “disaster” on the US’s southern border, the place file numbers of asylum seekers have arrived in current months in the hunt for safety.

Conservatives have blamed President Joe Biden for the border surge.

“The Legislature finds that the Federal Authorities has did not safe the nation’s borders and has allowed a surge of inspected unauthorized aliens to enter the USA,” Friday’s invoice in Florida learn.

The laws additionally said that the programme goals to guard Florida from the “detrimental” results of migration, together with “elevated crime, diminished financial alternatives and wages for American employees, and burdens on the training and well being care methods”.

Quite a few impartial research have discovered that immigration boosts the US economic system. Undocumented immigrants are additionally far much less more likely to break the legislation than native-born residents, knowledge exhibits.

DeSantis has been making headlines for implementing far-right insurance policies on problems with nationwide curiosity, together with the COVID-19 pandemic response, abortion and training. He’s broadly thought-about to be the primary challenger in former President Donald Trump’s bid for the 2024 Republican nomination.