The new president of the state's community college system has planted himself in the doorways of the system's 58 campuses, barring illegal immigrants from seeking degrees.

Scott Ralls' stance may be politically popular -- both major-party candidates for governor favor a ban -- but it's neither necessary nor humane. North Carolina should stand for something better than having one of the nation's toughest policies on educating illegal immigrants.

So let the community colleges reopen their doors to the relatively few people involved in this needless dispute. And get on with the job of upgrading our state's workforce and broadening the horizons of young people whose immigration status, in most cases, is not under their control, since they came here as children. They've gone through the public school system -- as is their right -- and graduated from high school. Now they wish to better themselves but find the state barring the most likely path, its excellent system of community colleges.

It's not as if some binding legal judgment requires the system to change its existing policy, which for several years has allowed admitting illegal immigrants.

After reviewing the same advisory letter from the state Attorney General's Office that Ralls acted on this week, UNC System President Erskine Bowles, to his credit, decided that university campuses will remain open to qualified applicants. (That policy will change, Bowles said, if a definitive legal opinion requires it).

Nor is it that North Carolina community colleges are being flooded with undocumented applicants for degree programs (the colleges will continue to admit such students to non-degree courses, and students currently enrolled will be allowed to continue). There are, after all, just 112 degree-seeking students -- out of the 296,540 students in the nation's third-largest community college system. No wonder: those 112 pay out-of-state tuition, about $7,500 for a full class load, six times the in-state rate.

Not like in Texas, where community colleges admit thousands of illegal immigrants at lower in-state rates. But in North Carolina, we're tougher on degree-seeking young people than that.

Finally, it's not as if the federal government, supposedly the main reason for a crackdown, actually requires one.

Earlier this week the office of Roy Cooper, the state attorney general, issued the advisory letter saying that federal law makes non-citizens ineligible for public benefits, including "post-secondary education," unless a specific state law allows it. Yet the letter concedes that in the absence of such a law (as in North Carolina) legal precedents are "unsettled." It claims the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has the final say.

When queried last week by The N&O's news staff, that agency responded that it "does not require any school to determine a student's status." An article on today's Other Opinion page by Hans Christian Linnartz, an immigration law specialist at Duke, makes the case that the federal law doesn't apply to the community college situation here. All in all, it's hard not to conclude that this is a policy question, and that the state can choose its policy.

Governor Easley, with the good sense that has marked his stance on this issue since last fall, calls for keeping the doors open. On Tuesday he chided the community college system, saying it has been overhasty in changing course. He's right. When opportunity knocks, let it in.