Politics of Immigration: View from Charlotte and Elsewhere

In booming Charlotte, where rapid growth and plentiful jobs have attracted thousands of illegal immigrants, Romero is the latest catch in an aggressive new effort to turn routine arrests into one-way tickets out of the country.

With anti-immigration feelings running high and elections just three weeks away, this once-insular state has become a key actor in the national debate over how to absorb - or expel - illegal migrants. North Carolina has had a greater increase in foreign-born population over the last 15 years than any state in the nation: a 412 percent increase, almost five times the national average.

The same concerns and fears being voiced from Hazleton, Pa., to Riverside, N.J., to Phoenix, Ariz., are writ large in North Carolina. Illegal immigration has figured prominently in political campaigns here and in neighboring counties of South Carolina.

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