Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was interviewed this weekend by WUNC. Here’s an excerpt:

Q: Recently, the State Board of Community Colleges here in North Carolina decided to extend a ban on illegal immigrants attending community colleges. In general, what are your opinions on access for higher education for illegal immigrants?

Obama: Well, the first thing is we shouldn’t have illegal immigrants here — by tightening up border security, cracking down on employers who are hiring undocumented workers, and then giving a pathway to citizenship for those who are so that they’ve got some legal status, those who are already here. That would solve the problem. But we’ve tended to demagogue this issue instead of recognizing we are a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. …

I’m one of the co-sponsors of something called The Dream Act in the Senate, which I think goes to the core ideals of America. It says if you’ve got a young person who was brought here by their parents, say they were brought here at 5 years old, they went to a public school all their lives, they’ve now graduated. For all practical purposes, they’re an American kid. For us to deny them access to community college, even though they’ve never lived in Mexico, at least as far as they can tell … is to deny that this is how we’ve always built this country up.

And I think we don’t want them in the underground economy. We want them contributing, and it makes sense for us to provide them some pathway. If they’ve been here a certain period of time and they’ve been good citizens, let’s try to figure out how we can work them into the fabric of our society.