Thread: TN Gov. signs bill to thwart employment of illegal immigrant

Tennessee governor signs bill to thwart employment of illegal immigrants

A new law in Tennessee allows the state to suspend business licenses for companies found to have “knowinglyâ€

It's good to see the other major prong of legal deterrence being put into place [in law] by the law passed in TN.

The two prongs:

1. Employer prosecution, leading to jail time (not just 'cost-of-doing-business' fines), and,

2. Loss of business license or incorporation of business (as in the TN case here)

If we were to get serious and do both the above, the magnet for illegals to come here would largely disappear overnight - and that would leave a pool of persons whose presence and reasons for being here could be focused on in much greater detail.

Good for Tennessee!!!!!!!!

Employers who check identification and are misled by an illegal immigrant will not be considered to be in violation and would not be prosecuted.

There's the loophole. No matter how poorly the fake documents are made, the employer will claim he's not an immigration expert. So basically any required document will do, even the one bought on a street corner.

However, I guess something is better than nothing, even if that something doesn't go far enough.

The Basic Pilot Program for employment verification is availible nation wide and should be mandantory for all employers in every state.

YAY Tennesee!!!

I do applaud efforts of states in taking these actions, but one thing that really disturbs me is all of the "knowingly" language.

What is going to stop all of these employers from making claims that they didn't know that illegals were being hired by managers, HR personnel, employment agencies, etc? What is going to prevent them from claiming they were "fooled" by forgered documents that looked legitimate?

True, these are all things that do happen, but my concern is that these employment laws are just going to turn into another paper tiger because every single employer out there is going to be making these excuses, true or not, to evade punishment.

So, where is the middle ground? What can be done to eliminate these excuses? What steps do employers take to prove that they are actually trying to abide by the laws and not making excuses to portray themselves as "victims" and thereby avoid punitive measures?

Farmers are exempt from the new rule. They are not required to have business licenses.

So farmers continue the status quo and continue the job magnet with the cheap labor practice of hiring illegals.

Does anyone know just how much information this data bank gives the employer when checking a SS#?

www.uscis.gov

(quote)

B. EFFECTIVENESS OF THE BASIC PILOT PROGRAM IN DETERRING
UNAUTHORIZED EMPLOYMENT

1. EVIDENCE THAT THE BASIC PILOT PROGRAM DID PREVENT SOME
NON-AUTHORIZED INDIVIDUALS FROM WORKING AT PILOT EMPLOYERS

Theoretically, the Basic Pilot system could reduce the employment of individuals without
work authorization in several ways:

• The Basic Pilot system might determine that certain employees are unauthorized to
work and the employer might terminate employment.

• Unauthorized employees might receive tentative nonconfirmations and not contest
them, thus becoming ineligible to work for the pilot employer.

• Unauthorized workers might decide to avoid the records checks with SSA and INS
by not applying for a position with a Basic Pilot employer.

(quote)

http://www.uscis.gov/files/article/6%5B ... 20C_XI.pdf

I'm not too enthused about this.

Granted, I didn't read it all carefully, but I did notice that it does nothing to verify present employees - only new hires.

The Basic Pilot program seemed to say it did nothing to verify stolen ID.

Am I wrong?