State budget hangs up hotline

The state of South Carolina needed $287,000 for a hotline to report illegal immigrants- that’s not going to happen. “We just didn’t have $280,000 to put into it. We’re general fund revenue, we’re from $7.1 billion last June 1, to estimated down to $5.8 and you know the story behind our budget woes, there just wasn’t enough sufficient money there to do it,” says Senator Larry Martin of Pickens.
Martin says the state has no authority to deport anybody here illegally, but this hotline would have helped at least report the activity.
“Keep in mind this is not for us to deport illegal aliens under state law, this is for the reporting of suspected illegal conduct under employment laws, and under, particularly the illegal immigration bill that we passed last year,” says Martin.
Martin says residents can still report illegal immigration activity, but just not on the hotline.
“It doesn’t forestall that reporting, what it does do, you don’t have the hotline, the 24 hour, 7 days a week hotline building a database of where these complaints are coming from,” says Davis.
The Commission on Minority Affairs was set up to operate this hotline that Martin says could possibly be transferred to another agency in the future.