Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is continuing to push his populist agenda for Florida, joining Angel Families who have lost their loved ones to illegal aliens to demand mandatory E-Verify in the state to ban employers from hiring illegal aliens over Americans.

Bucking the Florida Republican Party’s donor class of billionaire executives and the Chamber of Commerce, DeSantis — alongside Angel Families — asked that the state legislature move forward on mandatory E-Verify legislation this year to hike the wages of American workers:

What I think you will see, obviously it creates a disincentive for people to come illegally if you have E-Verify, but I think what it does is it further tightens the labor market. It has rising wages at the bottom for our blue-collar workers here in Florida and I think that’s something that we should all want to see.

While supporting a wall along the United States-Mexico border, DeSantis said it is crucial to reduce illegal foreign competition against America’s working and middle class by cutting off the “number one reason” foreign nationals illegally come to the country:

The number one reason that you have illegal immigration is because of an employment magnet. And so when you have people that are coming, a lot of times there will be businesses throughout the country — including here in Florida — that will hire cheap foreign illegal labor that undercuts American wages and obviously creates an incentive for people to come illegally.

“Really all it does, it gives employers a way to verify that the people that they’re hiring are actually eligible for employment,” DeSantis said.

In one case, DeSantis explained, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) busted an illegal foreign labor operation in Jacksonville that was profiting from smuggling illegal aliens into the state to take U.S. construction jobs.

“We need to stand for workers here in Florida first, and that’s I think what E-Verify will do,” DeSantis said.

Mass immigration has direct impacts on the nation’s working and middle class, who are forced to compete for U.S. jobs with millions of newly arrived illegal and legal immigrants every year. Annually, the current immigration system brings at least 1.5 million mostly low-skilled foreign nationals — illegal and legal — to the country.

Though the big business lobby and corporate interests claim that the labor pool must be expanded to provide them with a never-ending flow of foreign workers, about 11.5 million Americans today remain unemployed, underemployed, or out of the labor force though all want full-time employment.

In a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by about 12.5 percent. In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.

Every one-percent increase in the immigrant composition of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent, research has revealed. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.

In states that have implemented mandatory E-Verify, the program has resulted in fewer jobless Americans, the most recent study by FAIR has found.

Since 2012, Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia have all implemented one form or another of mandatory E-Verify. In some of these states, like Alabama, all public and private employers must screen potential employees to weed out illegal alien applicants. In other states, like North Carolina, all public employers and government contractors are required to use E-Verify.

All of these states, except for Tennessee, saw their unemployment rate decline a year after implementing mandatory E-Verify. Likewise, when Florida, Louisiana, and Indiana implemented forms of mandatory E-Verify, all three states saw a decline in unemployment at a greater rate than the national average at the time.

Mandatory E-Verify continues to be one of the most popular national immigration policies across party lines and the American electorate. In November 2018 exit polling by Zogby Analytics for FAIR, a total of 75 percent of American voters said they support mandatory E-Verify to prevent businesses from hiring illegal aliens over U.S. workers.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.