It appears there hasn’t been much happening with the meant-to-get-tough new law:
Five months after Tennessee’s “Illegal Alien Employment Act” became law and threatened to penalize business owners found more than once to have knowingly employed illegal workers, no company has been fined or lost its business license.
In fact, only NINE complaints have been filed statewide, and two of those were filed by the same state legislator:
On Feb. 8, Ketron filed a complaint alleging that a single employee worked at two businesses owned by a single owner - Tribe, a Church street restaurant and night club, and Play, a neighboring club - despite having an expired visa.
But, the complaint indicated that the owner was able to supply I-9s for all of the company’s 45 employees. No penalties were assessed. Attempts to reach Tribe and Play, its combined corporate office and the owner were unsuccessful.
On Feb. 4, Ketron filed a complaint against the “repack” department at Americold Logistics. The company provides cold warehouse and refrigerated shipping services at 107 locations, including one in Murfreesboro.
The complaint alleges that “illegal alien workers were being employed at the location and the employer had full knowledge of the situation.” A pair of labor agencies who knew the potential workers were not authorized to work in the U.S. supplied the workers, the complaint said.
State investigators visited the business and labor agencies and asked for the I-9s associated with all workers in the “repack” department. Americold nor the labor providers were able to supply all the I-9s immediately, but were able to do so within the three days allowed by federal law, Bailey said. So no wrongdoing was found.
Bad Behavior has blocked 481 access attempts in the last 7 days.
The law is actually quite weak. Filing a complaint under it won’t do much good-which would probably explain the low number.