This week, Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R) took part in a hearing, questioning Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Isabel Guzman. For Elvira Salazar, the purpose of the hearing was to bring up concerns involving small businesses and expressing how Miami has been affected throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the exchange, Guzman reiterated that she wants “everyone to know that the Small Business, the face of the Latino community, is entrepreneurship.”
While both lawmakers agreed on this assessment, Elvira Salazar questioned Guzman on a number of issues, commenting on how COVID testing is affecting the growth of business in Florida and how mass migration at the border “could be harming the rest of our plan of wanting to live the American Dream.”
The Florida Republican has been a vocal critic of the Biden administration, and she has also focused on advocating the passage of her Dignity Act, which she argues addresses the most pertinent concerns regarding illegal immigration.
“Every time someone comes to this country, international tourists, that person needs to get tested 24 hours before getting on that place and that measure is killing the tourism industry in Florida, specifically in Miami,” Elvira Salazar argued.
Citing that “Miami is the hub of international tourism in Florida,” she questioned if Guzman could “please tell the President next time you see him in one of those cabinet meetings that we need to do away with that measure?”
Elvira Salazar also asked Guzman if she was "concerned... that what's happening at the border is giving a very bad rep to Hispanics, to the Latinos?"
The Florida Republican asked Guzman to speak to the president about the issue, and Guzman responded by saying that she would be focusing on entrepreneurship and the Hispanic community.
"What I would share is that I have continually advocate and make clear that the face of entrepreneurship is changing and I would like to portray Latinos as the ones who are leading on that because they are starting businesses at the highest rate and across most states according Mckinsey studies, so that entrepreneurship and that face of entrepreneurship," she commented.
