The Florida State Senate’s leading Republican is refusing to support Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) effort to implement mandatory E-Verify to ban employers from hiring illegal aliens over Americans and legal immigrants.

Last month, DeSantis rolled out his statewide initiative to pass mandatory E-Verify in Florida — putting the state in line with neighboring states like Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. Mandatory E-Verify is supported by more than 7-in-10 Floridians, including 63 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Republicans.

“We need to stand for workers here in Florida first, and that’s I think what E-Verify will do,” DeSantis said in the press conference with Angel Families who have lost loved ones to illegal aliens. Oftentimes, those illegal aliens are incentivized to stay in a state like Florida because there is no requirement for businesses to check their legal status.

Despite its popularity with Florida voters, Florida Senate President Bill Galvano said last week that he does not support DeSantis’s mandatory E-Verify measure, according to the Tampa Bay Times:

“It is something that the Florida Senate — or at least this administration — does not endorse,” Galvano told The News Service of Florida during an interview Thursday. [Emphasis added]

…

But, although Galvano said he opposes an across-the-board E-Verify requirement, he left the door open for a slimmed down immigration proposal. [Emphasis added]

“Let me put it this way,” Galvano said. “I don’t support having the requirement that everyone (use) E-Verify. It’s putting an additional responsibility on non-government officials.” [Emphasis added]

Rather than Florida’s workers, Galvano is siding with the state’s donor class and big business lobby that have attempted to thwart all efforts to ban state businesses from hiring illegal aliens, thus driving up U.S. wages and decreasing foreign competition against Americans.

Nonetheless, State Sen. Tom Lee, as well as Sen. Joe Gruters, who is the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, are working to push through SB 664 banning all employers in the state from hiring illegal aliens.

Before the state’s legislative session starts, though, the business lobby that hires illegal aliens to take U.S. jobs is already looking to pick off GOP state legislators from supporting mandatory E-Verify.

“We have to hope that we can lobby against it,” Tony DiMare of tomato-growing DiMare Farms company said.

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.

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