Ho hum! No real surprise here. A South Dakota legislator had introduced a bill that would have attempted to rein-in the refugee program in that state, but Betty Oldencamp, Lutheran Social Services of SD Prez convinced him they were taking very good care of the citizens of South Dakota and that there wouldn’t be terrorists and other undesirables coming to SD through the program.
The bill was unlikely to go anywhere because the REPUBLICAN governor was all for more refugees colonizing the state anyway.
Since South Dakota is a Wilson-Fish state, he has a ready-made opportunity to sue the federal government using a states’ rights argument, here, and has not taken it. A surefire way to find out where your governor stands on refugees in twelve US states is whether any of them agree to be a plaintiff on the lawsuit crafted by the Thomas More Law Center. So far, no brave governor is willing to defend the Constitution.
I’ll betcha that there are some powerful special interests, big businesses, the Chamber of Commerce making sure they get a continuous supply of cheap labor flowing to SD! Security, economic stability and cultural cohesiveness be damned. Follow the money! Find out which business interests are donating to elected officials!
LSS South Dakota is rich!
By the way, LSS South Dakota is rolling in YOUR money. Check out USA Spending.gov. Yikes! Almost $40 MILLION of your tax dollars have gone (via grants and sub-grants) to this one state ‘religious’ non-profit since 2007.
From Rapid City Journal:
House Bill 1158, which sought to give the South Dakota governor the power to keep refugees out of the state, is dead.
The proposed law has been tabled by its lead sponsor, state Rep. Scott Craig, R-Rapid City.
“That’s a nice way to say the sponsor withdrew the bill,” Craig said in a phone interview Monday, adding that HB 1158, which was scheduled for a committee hearing on Monday, will not come up again during this legislative session.
Craig said he made the decision to abandon the bill after a weekend conversation with his bill’s state Senate co-sponsor, Sen. Bruce Rampelberg, R-Rapid City, and Betty Oldencamp, president of Lutheran Social Services.
Apart from granting the governor extraordinary powers, HB 1158 would have created an infrastructure within the South Dakota Department of Social Services to monitor and coordinate the resettlement of refugees, a function that Lutheran Social Services already performs.
“Everything that bill attempted to secure, they already do, so it’s unnecessary,” Craig said. “We’ve got a phenomenal process. Everything (Oldencamp) described is very thorough.”
Continue reading here.
And, go here, for more on problems with the refugee program in the Dakotas. Don’t miss the 2014 Iraqi refugee sex trafficking case, here.