Can we get this election over, please, so Congress and a new president can finally stop posturing and enact some sensible immigration laws?

Determining whom to let into the country and what to do with those already here illegally are national questions that need national answers. But Congress' inaction has created a vacuum into which have rushed state and local politicians with all manner of mean-spirited, stupid, politically motivated non-solutions.

Attorney General Roy Cooper, an occasionally sensible public official, is the latest to join in the immigrant-bashing fun, with his recommendation that community colleges bar illegal immigrants from degree programs. I'm sure it's pure coincidence that he's up for re-election.

Community colleges -- where workers are trained or retrained to take part in the modern economy -- are a vital part of the state's economic strategy. When the state tries to lure companies here, a big part of the pitch is that community colleges will create specific classes to train workers for the new jobs.

Locking hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants out of community colleges isn't going to make them pack up and go home, regardless of what the deport-'em-all crowd would like. It will, however, exclude many of them from the labor pool for high-skill jobs.

Isn't it in the state's interest to make the skilled-labor pool as big as possible? N.C. business leaders are rarely shy about making their interests known and getting their way in Raleigh. Why are they so silent now?