Gubernatorial candidate Fred Smith has called on Attorney General Roy Cooper to clarify the policy that requires N.C. community colleges to admit illegal aliens. Here’s part of his letter (emphasis added):

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) stipulates that it is a crime to enter the United States without proper documentation (8 USC 1181). It is also a crime to encourage or induce illegal immigrants to enter the United States (8 USC 1324). Finally, it is a crime to harbor or to employ an illegal immigrant (8 USC 1324). Under Memorandum CC 07-275, the community college system of North Carolina will be flouting federal law by undertaking activities that could serve as a positive inducement to illegal immigrants to enter the United States.

I wrote the other day that you can’t have good public policy that ignores unchangeable human nature:

So, when a Mexican (or Ecuadorian, or Dominican, etc.) does a cost-benefit analysis of coming to America, on the one hand he’ll have, at least in some states, two huge benefits (a free elementary-secondary education plus a low-cost post-secondary education) weighed against the scant possibility that anything will be done to keep him from reaping those rewards.

Not a recipe for good public policy.

It looks like at least one candidate understands that.