Conservative Talker Steve Gill Finds Common Ground with Democrat Lawmaker on Legislation to Punish Employers of Illegal Alien Workers

Conservative political commentator and Tennessee Star contributor Steve Gill said on The Gill Report, broadcast live on WETR 92.3 FM in Knoxville, that he has found common ground with State Senator Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville), who submitted legislation that would penalize employers of illegal alien workers.

The new proposal would be an amendment of the much talked-about Green and Reedy anti-sanctuary city bill.

“I mentioned just a moment ago the raid by ICE agents in Granger County at that meatpacking plant that rounded up about a hundred illegals said has caused one state legislator – Jeff Yarbro, a Democrat state senator from Nashville – to propose legislation that would start punishing employers, in addition to the employees, who work here illegally,” Gill said.

He continued:

It makes a lot of sense to me.

If you’re going to punish to the person working, why wouldn’t you punish the company, the people who hire illegals?

They’re both breaking the law.

And if you have a construction company that wasn’t just trying to save money and make bigger profit by hiring illegals for cheaper than they can hire Americans – why would we tolerate that, but not tolerate then using substandard materials that would be dangerous in constructing a building?

If we’re going to tell builders that they have to use valid, legitimate materials, why wouldn’t we tell them they have to use valid materials in terms of human labor?

And this is sort of what Yarbro’s bill will get us to.

He proposes legislation that has three main parts, that if you directly or indirectly employ 50 or more undocumented immigrants, it would become a Class E felony. If the employer has a reason to know the workers lack authorization to work in this country.

If ICE agents detain or deport the workers, then the DA has to launch an investigation into whether any health, safety, tax, employment or wage laws were violated.

And if employers are convicted of knowingly hiring undocumented workers, they have to pay restitution to the state local government to cover the cost of finding them and lost wages employees that might not have been employed that would have been employed if they’d hired legal Americans.

Now, one of the things we could do help this along is to have eVerify, where employers could very easily could determine whether or not their employees are legal or not.

I’m a big proponent of eVerify and that will solve most of our illegal immigrant worker problems.

But if we star punishing employers for breaking the law, that will also help a lot as well.

Now, I don’t think Yarbro – the state senator proposing this legislation – is really wanting to stop illegal immigration. He’s just wanting to make it even harder employers to hire illegals, so he can punish employers while at the same time creating sanctuary cities for the illegals.

But that doesn’t mean the idea is a totally bad one.

Listen to the segment: