From the campaign
Where I Stand on Immigration and Border Security
The southern border is about a thousand miles from Pennington County. Washington owns the border. Pierre owns what happens inside South Dakota, and I am running to take care of our end.
The southern border sits about a thousand miles from Pennington County, so when I put immigration in my platform the same question comes back at almost every door. Why is a man running for the South Dakota House talking about it?
That is a fair question and it deserves a straight answer rather than a speech.
The border is a federal line. The bill for ignoring it comes due locally. It comes due in the paycheck of a working dad in North Rapid who got underbid by an outfit paying cash under the table to people with no lawful right to work here. It comes due in a state budget, where a dollar spent on someone not lawfully present is a dollar that never reaches a South Dakota family, a senior on a fixed income, or a kid who needed help. And it comes due on I-90 when a driver hauling eighty thousand pounds through a January whiteout cannot read the sign telling him the road ahead is closed.
Washington owns the border. Pierre owns what happens inside South Dakota. I am running to take care of our end of it.
A nation without borders is not a nation. Translated into the powers a state legislator actually holds, that comes down to four things.
Mandatory E-Verify for South Dakota employers, so every employer confirms every new hire is lawfully eligible to work here. Same rule for everybody.
Full cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. When federal officers enforce the law, South Dakota works with them rather than around them.
English proficiency for commercial driver's licenses. If you want the license to haul heavy freight on our roads, you can read our signs and talk to our troopers.
No public benefits or in-state tuition for those not lawfully present. South Dakota's promises belong to the people lawfully in South Dakota.
What is not on that list
Read it again and notice the absence. Nothing there touches a single person who is in this country lawfully. Not one line of it.
If you stood in line, filled out the forms, and came the right way, this plank asks nothing of you and takes nothing from you. E-Verify clears a lawful worker in minutes. I want to be very clear about that, because this is the issue where people assume the worst about a candidate's intent, and in my case the assumption would be wrong.
The one that deserves the most honest answer
Somebody always tells me that cutting benefits and tuition is heartless, and that objection has earned a real reply rather than a deflection.
I founded and I run a nonprofit. I have sat at kitchen tables with families in genuine crisis and I do not treat hardship as an abstraction. Compassion is real. Arithmetic is also real. Public benefits and in-state tuition are promises between South Dakota taxpayers and the people lawfully in this state, and every dollar routed around that line is a dollar that never reaches a family who kept the rules.
Then think about the immigrant who did everything right. Paid the fees, waited the years, learned the language on nights after work. Rewarding unlawful presence tells that person the rules were for suckers. So the line stays where the law puts it, and inside that line nobody loses a thing.
The rest of it
A family locks the front door at night. Not out of hatred for the neighborhood, but out of love for the people inside and out of respect for every guest who knocks and gets welcomed in the right way. A state is not different. Rules that get enforced are promises that get kept.
Four more objections come up constantly on this one, and my answers are published below rather than saved for a forum.
On November 3 District 32 picks two representatives. If you want one of them holding this line, the full platform is at zac4sd.com.
Strong Families. Strong South Dakota.
Anticipated pushbacks · prepared responses
Common questions on this issue
These are the questions and concerns that come up most often. The responses below are my honest answers, not talking points.
- Q. This is a federal issue. You are running for the state House.
- A. The border crossing is federal. Every item on my list is a state lever. Whether South Dakota employers must use E-Verify is state law. Whether our agencies cooperate with federal enforcement is state policy. Whether tax dollars fund benefits and tuition discounts for people not lawfully present is a state budget decision. Commercial driver's licenses are issued by the state. I am not promising to build a wall from Pierre. I am promising to pull the four levers Pierre actually holds, without apology.
- Q. E-Verify is red tape for small business.
- A. I am a businessman and I have no patience for paperwork that exists to make a bureaucrat feel busy. E-Verify is not that. It is a free federal tool that takes minutes and confirms a new hire is lawfully eligible to work. The employer it actually squeezes is the one gaining an edge by hiring people not lawfully here and paying them off the books. Right now the honest shop in Rapid City eats that disadvantage on every single bid. Mandatory E-Verify is not a burden on honest employers, it is their protection.
- Q. We have a workforce shortage. This will hurt the economy.
- A. South Dakota needs workers and nobody serious disputes it. A shortage is still not a license to look away while an under-the-table labor market undercuts the wages of working families in North Rapid. And here is the part that gets skipped: nothing in this plank touches a worker who is here lawfully. E-Verify clears a lawful worker in minutes. The people who came the right way deserve a labor market that is not rigged against them by the people who did not.
- Q. Requiring English for truck drivers is discrimination.
- A. It is a safety standard, and it protects every family sharing the road regardless of what language they speak at home. An eighty thousand pound rig on I-90 in a Black Hills winter is not the place to discover that a driver cannot read a closure sign, follow a detour, or understand a trooper at a roadside stop. A driver from any background can meet the standard. South Dakota should confirm it before handing over the license rather than after the crash.