New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio put it bluntly during a radio interview Thursday. When a Brooklyn supermarket owner admitted hiring undocumented workers for his store — the mayor thanked him.

“Of course you’re running a business and if someone’s willing to work hard for you, you’re going to hire that person,” de Blasio told the man, who was identified on air only as “Thomas in Brooklyn.”

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“And you’re giving them a job that they get to feed a family on, and I thank you for that,” said the mayor.

Said the supermarket owner, “A large number of my employees are undocumented workers and, you know, I have to say that, you know, they are hard workers, they do get paid well. Just as a businessman, I’m caught between having these undocumented workers, which I’m not supposed to employ.”

Rather stunningly, de Blasio also said neither the business owner nor the employees should be penalized for what they’re doing — and he called the current rules that govern immigration “ridiculous,” as Crain’s New York and the New York Post reported.

Related: Trump Unveils Muscular Immigration Agenda

When the caller also asked de Blasio, “How can I protect myself and protect them to continue working for me or continue working for businesses like mine without causing more hardship on them?” — the mayor was mum.

All of this begs many other serious questions. Since illegal immigrants do not have valid Social Security numbers, is this small business owner then not paying his share of Social Security taxes to the government and not paying the required insurances for this employee? Also, assuming there is no Social Security number, is the employee then also not paying his fair share of Social Security taxes and income taxes?

Many illegal immigrants often get jobs by using forged, invalid, or illegally obtained Social Security numbers — and when employers report the income of these people using those phony numbers, the tangled web gets even more tangled. Bottom line, though: Illegal immigrants with jobs steal those jobs from legal American workers. And apparently others are willing to help them do it.