Senate budget chief JD Alexander, a citrus farmer who’s now shepherding a developing immigration reform package, expressed his reservations about the push to deport illegal immigrants, many of whom have lived in the state for decades picking fruit and vegetables for his colleagues.

Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said he’s concerned about the fallout from the federal E-Verify program to check on potential employees, something Gov. Rick Scott has already initiated for state government workers and a component tea party activists are pushing lawmakers to pass.

“My personal struggle with E-Verify is that many of these folks have been here for decades for good or for bad,” he said.

In “a perfect world” the federal government would control the borders but instead has given tacit permission for illegal workers to remain in the country, Alexander said.

“It seems challenging to suddenly ask them to not be able to be here. I personally believe we need a federal guest program to allow for some sort of normalization of these folks status where they can be protected by our laws without fear of deportation,” he said. “Because some of these things have been going on for so long, I’m personally troubled by the broad net that could be cast.”

Alexander said he’s having a hard time balancing his duties as budget chief and agricultural baron as he tries to get his blueberry crop harvested.

“I’m probably short about 100 people to get my blueberries picked,” he said, adding that he and other blueberry farmers can find less than half the workers they need to get their crops in.

“For all the unemployment there just aren’t folks who want to pick blueberries,” he said.

The Senate is slated to take up its immigration package on Monday. Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, had pledged that each bill would pass through at least three committees before being sent to the floor for a vote. But he reversed himself on the contentious immigration measure (SB 2040), which was heard in a single committee. Haridopolos also took the bill away from its sponsor, Sen. Anitere Flores, and gave it to Alexander this week. Flores, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami, refused to go along with the Arizona-style bill proposed by the House, sponsored by William Snyder, R-Stuart.

Hundreds of immigrants, including undocumented workers, and children whose parents have been deported have swarmed the Capitol over the past several weeks demanding that lawmakers abandon the immigration package.

The Florida Senate scrubbed a rare Saturday meeting scheduled to take up a Medicaid overhaul and possibly immigration reform.

Before breaking for lunch after the morning floor session, Senate President Mike Haridopolos said told his members that he is “going to give you a little bit of a break before you come back to work on Monday.”

That puts off until at least Monday the Senate’s discussion of immigration reform as Senate budget chief JD Alexander grapples with crafting a proposal he can sell to a chamber divided on the issue, let alone to the Florida House that wants an Arizona-style package. Yesterday, Haridpolos, R-Merritt Island, assured reporters that the Senate would vote on the issue before the session ends on May 6.

Sen. Anitere Flores, the Cuban-American Republican from Miami initially shepherding the Senate’s immigration plan until Haridopolos gave it to Alexander this week, summed up the difficulty.

“This is a severely complicated, complex issue where there are hundreds of different people that have hundreds of different opinions,” she said. “There are employment provisions. There are law enforcement provisions. There are business owner provisions. And there are just individual human emotions. There are political considerations. All those considerations are all there. To try and make that into a bill that you can get a majority of votes on in the House and the Senate is a problem.”

Immigrants, many of them undocumented, children of parents who have been deported, students in the country illegally and their advocates have thronged the Capitol pleading with lawmakers to abandon immigration reform as the clock winds down on the legislative session.

The Florida Senate held a low-key information-gathering session on immigration reform late this afternoon, the first in a series of meetings coinciding with immigration legislation currently in the works.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos put Sen. Anitere Flores, a Cuban-American from Miami and chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in charge of three meetings on the controversial topic that legislatures throughout the nation are grappling with.

Today’s meeting included presentations from federal immigration authorities and an update from state education, prison and highway safety officials as well as a law professor from Florida International University.

Flores said she hoped the cerebral kick-off would set the stage for future discussions to be held in “dispassionate and well-informed manner.”

But some lawmakers were clearly frustrated by what they heard.
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UPDATE: Ana Maria Monte Flores said this morning that the e-mail provided to us was doctored. She admitted sending the fund-raising e-mail after the start of session, but said she never wrote the line asking for donors to pre-date checks. She said she no longer has a copy of the original e-mai, but was trying to track one down.

Two days after the start of the annual spring legislative session, when House lawmakers are banned from collecting or soliciting campaign contributions, the state Senate campaign for House K-12 Budget Council Chairwoman Anitere Flores sent out this e-mail asking donors to pre-date checks to Feb. 27.

Flores chalked it up as a misstep from “an overzealous mom.” “She’s not familiar with all the rules,” Flores said.

But Flores’ Senate primary opponent, House budget Chairman David Rivera, said Flores may be vulnerable to an ethics complaint. “That doesn’t mean it’s not a violation,” he said of Flores’ mother sending the e-mail.

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Rep. Steve Precourt, R-Orlando, logs on to www.PostOnPolitics.com during House session Friday to read the grand jury indictment of former House Speaker Ray Sansom, R-Destin. (AP Photo/Phil Coale)

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Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday looks closely at his portrait that hangs in the Tallahassee City Hall. Crist was at the hall to attend the kids only town hall meeting.(AP Photo/Phil Coale)

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People line up at a Workforce Plus job fair in Tallahassee on Thursday. The state's unemployment rate rose to 9.4 %, the highest since 1976, after 75,000 Floridians lost their jobs in February. Nearly one in 10 or 874,000 are jobless. (AP Photo/Phil Coale)

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