Did illegal immigrants work on the construction of Cobb County's new Superior Court Building? We hope not - but the accusations by an undercover investigator are troubling.

The accusations were raised at the Feb. 8 Board of Commissioners meeting by representatives of the watchdog group Jobs for Georgians, who said one of their investigators, Jose Alvarez (who also is an agent for the Washington, D.C.-based International Union of Bricklayers), had spent three months visiting the site posing as a bricklayer seeking work. He reportedly taped conversations there with workers for Zebra Construction, the masonry subcontractor for the project, that he said proves the workers were paid in cash, were not paying income taxes or Social Security insurance and were not being checked under the federal E-verify program. Alvarez estimated that 14 of those employed by Zebra's subcontractor were illegal immigrants.

After the MDJ reported the allegations on the front page, Suwannee-based Zebra pulled its subcontractor, Victor Candelaria, from the project for failing to use E-verify.

State and federal laws require that companies and subcontractors who do work under government contracts must verify that those they hire are eligible to work in this country. But there is a significant loophole in those laws: They not only do not require that the companies who work for the subcontractors (sometimes called "sub-subcontractors" or "second-tier subcontractors") verify their employees' eligibility, but they prohibit the general contractor from checking the status of those workers. In short, it's a loophole big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through.

"The county is thoroughly frustrated by this," said Cobb Board of Commissioners Chairman Sam Olens. "We took action no one else has taken to make sure our contractors and subcontractors are following the law. It is mind-boggling that we as the county could fully comply with this bill and yet illegal activity could still slip through and happen. Myself and the county absolutely did not know that any illegal activity was happening."

Meanwhile, Georgia Department of Labor spokesman Sam Hall confirmed to the MDJ that his department has been investigating Candelaria since November about whether unemployment insurance fraud has taken place during the construction of the courthouse.

All told, it is an unsettling chain of events for the new courthouse, a building intended not only to relieve courthouse overcrowding but to be a point of pride, as it was consciously designed to resemble the historic Victorian-era Courthouse the county shortsightedly tore down four decades ago.

Olens has asked federal officials to explore whether criminal charges should be brought against whoever is responsible for hiring illegal labor for the project. We would concur with that request. And we would further suggest that the allegations about illegal laborers working on the Cobb Courthouse should come as a warning "shot across the bow" to other local public entities with construction projects under way that are being paid for with tax dollars.

With this country's and this state's economies in the pits, it makes no sense for tax dollars to go to unscrupulous contractors who are fattening their bottom line by hiring illegal labor - thereby helping keep local, legal workers out of work.