North Carolina's employers are enthusiastic beneficiaries of the newcomers' willingness to work. The influx carries costs, too, for taxpayers and blue-collar workers.

School budgets are feeling the pressure of educating students who are often poor and have little if any command of English. Critics wonder whether the spending is justified.

Small-town ways can seem changeless, and many natives like it that way. But some rural areas in North Carolina are having to adapt in a hurry to a wave of newcomers with a new language, new customs and new expectations. Case in point: Warsaw.

In a report in January on the economic impact of Hispanic immigration in North Carolina, researchers at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC-Chapel Hill estimated the state's 2004 cost for health services provided to all Hispanics, legal or otherwise, at $299 million.

In North Carolina, where the illegal immigrant population is climbing toward a half-million, businesses are tailoring their products and tweaking their policies to reach the newcomers.

Jacksonville rep wants peers to consider making attorney general's recent opinion a state law.

Community College System President Scott Ralls said Friday that he will happily admit illegal immigrants if he gets new legal advice.

The state community college system, embroiled in debate about illegal immigrants, will have to produce thousands of additional graduates each year to deal with North Carolina's looming worker shortage, a new report says.

North Carolina community colleges on Tuesday banned illegal immigrants from seeking degrees, a policy that is among the most restrictive in the nation.

North Carolina is free to admit illegal immigrants to public colleges and universities, federal officials say.