Florida officials are holding off updating the state's population projections because of uncertainties about how the immigration policies of President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis are going to impact growth.
Members of Florida's Demographic Estimating Conference met this month to adopt a new population forecast. But they decided not to make any updates to their model because of “emerging and evolving changes" to federal and state immigration policies.
Conference members expect that both federal and state immigration policies will “exert downward pressure” on the population projections for Florida, the third most populous state, the conference said in an executive summary.
Florida has a population of more than 23 million residents. More than a fifth of Florida residents were born outside the United States.
Last week, DeSantis signed a sweeping package of laws aimed at carrying out Trump’s immigration agenda.
