This constitutes my final act of journalism criticism directed at our local McClatchy outpost. It is obvious that no one in a position of power at the paper cares one iota about accuracy.

The headline Community colleges ban illegal immigrants is wrong. Further it is deliberately wrong as evidenced by the wholly misleading lede penned by Franco Ordoñez:

A simmering debate over illegal immigrants on N.C. college campuses broke open Tuesday when the state community college system announced it will no longer enroll undocumented students.

This is not true, as we pointed out yesterday and Ordoñez himself gets around to in the 18th graf:

Undocumented students will still be allowed access to such programs as GED and English as a second language classes.

More precisely, the ban only applies to the 297,000 students in degree-tract programs, which is only about 35 percent of the system’s total enrollment of over 800,000. The state, to my knowledge, has never indicated how many total undocumented students it has admitted to the system. As we noted last year, CPCC has a separate “undocumented” check-box for citizenship status, so the number cannot be inconsequential.

In any event, the new-new partial ban policy still leaves illegal immigrants free to take all of the “workforce development” classes they desire — learn how to operate a forklift or automotive repair or become a certified bank teller or learn about iPods (I am not making that up.)

This continuing education angle points to an even bigger lie in this story that is not specific to the Observer’s coverage but is being wonderfully overlooked. The state is making a big deal about how undocumented students have to pay out-of-state tuition. Well, the continuing education classes at CP — and I assume elsewhere — have no residency requirement. Flat fee all around.

So it is absolutely true that North Carolina citizens who pay their state income taxes have been and will be sharing class space and paying the same rate as illegals who have not paid income taxes. Who knows, perhaps a citizen will be denied a spot in a preferred class time and place in favor an illegal who got there first.

And let’s not forget that any occupational skills learned at CP or elsewhere in the system would have to be put to use outside the United States to avoid violating federal law.

Has the whole world gone nuts? I am not that hardcore on this issue, but you cannot seriously contemplate providing this benefit to undocumented students without raising serious questions of fundamental fairness under the law and the meaning — if any — of US citizenship.

The Uptown paper? It’ll pander away unto dust. I’m done trying to save it.