NC is also attractive due to incredibly lax documentation requirements in order to receive a drivers license. There have been recent noises about trying to correct this situation, but I think that the ease of acquiring fraudulent ID has more to do with the popularity of NC for illegal immigrants than the economy.
El Paso, Tx has as many illegals as the entire stateof NC.
Hmm...we simply cannot get a driver's license for our 17-year-old born-in-the-USA daughter. It might be the county we're in or it might be that getting an NC identification card is easy as pie. Don't know if it has to be fraudulent, though. Do know that here in Lee County, illegals are thick on the ground and getting thicker. We're partly agricultural, so perhaps that's part of it. I do know that every last governmental level, from the NGOs like HAVEN to the County Commissioners, are turning up the volume for cash. There's a proposal for added sales tax and for increasing the property tax.
Given that the pressure might well be related to illegals who are not otherwise capable of paying their public way, I would favor sales tax increases coupled with an attempt to locate and either legitimize or expel illegals.
And it's not necessarily that you hit on the ones speaking any form of Spanish. That's profiling and, as Ron White would say, that's wronnggggg. (and that's me joking: if you wanna catch the bad guys, you narrow the field of candidates, eh?)
Cheers!