(Headline USA) More New Yorkers fled to Florida in 2022 than in any other year in history, according to a new report.
At least 64,577 New Yorkers exchanged their driver’s licenses for Florida ones last year, the New York Post reported.
“They come in every day,” a staffer at a Jacksonville DMV office said. “I hear all the complaints. I feel like a therapist sometimes.”
Most New Yorkers complain about high taxes, crime and the overall eroding quality of life in the Empire State, the staffer added.
“It’s slowed down a little bit,” she said of the exodus to Florida. “But not by a whole lot, I can tell you that.”
New Yorkers began fleeing the state during the pandemic, with 61,728 residents making the move to Florida in 2021. There’s been a 46% surge in moves from New York to Florida since 2017, according to data from the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Other leftist states, including New Jersey, California, Illinois and Pennsylvania, also lost tens of thousands of residents to Florida. New Jersey recorded 32,184 license swaps in 2022. Since 2020, California has lost lost 262,000 people to other states.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has mocked the Democrat governors of these states for passing policies that drive away residents.
“They tax and regulate so they repel people to leave their state,” he said last year. “The base shrinks so they got to do it again to try to square the circle. And you just can’t have it. So states like Illinois, New York — they are in a tailspin and they’re not probably going to be willing to change their policies.”
DeSantis also cited rising crime rates in liberal areas as a reason so many people are making the move.
Rising crime rates in other parts of the nation have also spurred interest, he argued.
“A lot of families were like, look, I need to live in a state that’s a law-and-order state,” he said. “So the number of people I run into from, like, Washington state or Minnesota who say one of the breaking points for them was the fact that crime was going through the roof.”
