Scott Mooneyham

RALEIGH -- Surely the very foundations of civilization are crumbling. The pillars have been torn down. The culture is being shaken to the core.

State community college officials have agreed to allow illegal immigrants to enter the premises, enroll and take classes.

Mind you, they've done so only under some fairly limited circumstances. Students must have graduated from a U.S. high school, meaning they were likely brought to this country by their parents and not of their own volition. They'll also have to pay outof- state tuition, about $7,000 a year.

And mind you, until a couple of years ago, this same thing occurred, but without much public fanfare. Back then, 112 of the 300,000-plus degree program students were believed to be illegal immigrants.

But in 2007, the community colleges faced public scrutiny of its decision to allow illegal immigrants. Criticism of the policy came despite federal court decisions requiring that illegal immigrant children be admitted into K-12 public schools.

Community college officials decided to suspend any admissions of illegal immigrants and re-examine the decision.

Last Friday, the 21-member board voted with one dissent to reverse course again and begin admitting the students.

The dissenting vote, not surprisingly, came from Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, one of the two statewide officeholders on the board.

Politicians fear immigration as an electoral bludgeon. Some pander to willing constituencies worried about a world and community that doesn't look like the one in which they grew up.

Some of the panders do so knowing that a farm economy, here and across the country, wouldn't succeed without immigrant labor. Some do so while their staffs in Washington take calls every week from business owners seeking visas for specialized workers whom they say can't be found in the U.S. workforce.

As I've written before, as emotional as the issue can be, it's not clear that the fear or the pandering is justified. In general elections, finding a single legislative or statewide race in North Carolina even marginally influenced by the issue of illegal immigration would prove difficult.

The relevance politically seems to have faded even more as the economy tanked. With jobs less plentiful, many illegal immigrants have headed home.

Still, the opponents of the board's decision say it was wrong. Illegal is illegal. Even if there is no cost to taxpayers, public policy shouldn't be encouraging illegal behavior.

It's criticism not easily dismissed. In an ideal world or anything close to it, policy shouldn't encourage lawbreaking.

Failed federal immigration policy has ensured that we don't live in an ideal world. Rather, we live in a world where the costs of everything from green beans to Christmas trees to homes is kept lower -- and the profits of business made higher -- by imported labor, a good deal of it here illegally.

The decision by the community college board was made in such world.

It wasn't made in some alternate reality where market forces stop working and politicians forego pandering for problem-solving.

Scott Mooneyham is a columnist with the Capitol Press Association.