Gov. Phil Murphy this week caught flack from a lot of hosts on this station when he said giving license to immigrants here illegally was a "no-brainer." To Murphy's mind, it's a way to get more people insured, and to make the roads safer.

"We berate the illegal aliens," Jim Gearhart says in this week's edition of the Jim Gearhart Show, live on Facebook every Thursday at 10:30 a.m., and available here as a podcast every week.

But, Jim says ... maybe we shouldn't.

"A lot of these people we meet ... I've had them working at my house. They're great people," Jim said. "I would prefer them way over some of the indigenous citizenry we run into."

Now, Jim's not on board for Murphy's plans. He doesn't think immigrants here illegally are all going to rush out and get insurance ("Now if that's not a pipe dream, then I never heard one"). But he thinks it's worth exploring just what relationship such immigrants have to the rest of New Jersey's community.

Why is there such a strong, vitriolic response to immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization?

"There is something in people that the progressives do not understand or have just forgotten," Jim says: We're taught from an early age to be "repulsed by lawbreaking," and it's a hard instinct to move past.

And yet, Jim says, at every point in our history, we've relied on underclasses to do the work others won't. For a long time, that meant slaves. Then the poor. And as people began to get organized, began to demand agency, they rebelled against what they considered abusive conditions.

So who's left? Well, Jim says ... the immigrants here illegally, hiding in the shadows.

Got an idea for an upcoming installment of Jim's show? Meet Jim at Facebook.com/NJ1015 to suggest it in the comments, or email Jim@nj1015.com.

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That's just part of what Jim and Bob Williams take on in the latest installment of his show, also available as a podcast. Check out the full episode to hear the rest.

The Jim Gearhart Podcast is available every week on New Jersey 101.5 and in the New Jersey 101.5 app. You can also subscribe with your favorite podcasting app for iPhones, Android devices or your computer:

Love Podcasts? This week, on Speaking Podcast: Hecklers, yoga moms and undercover police work. Hugh?

— New Jersey 101.5 staff

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