They don't even notice the clue phone ringing

Last week, the Raleigh News and Observer ran a smarmy puff piece about a North Carolina state bureaucrat - Bridge-builder is honored: Millie Ravenel lauded for work on U.S.-Mexico relations:

As director of the N.C. Center for International Understanding, Millie Ravenel had helped organize dozens of excursions to other countries -- but never to Mexico.

So she was flustered in 1998 when a group of private foundations asked her to arrange a trip across the border for their directors.
...
The trip turned out to be the first of many to Mexico. Over the next several years, Ravenel and her staff helped send more than 300 politicians, government officials, community leaders and private citizens from North Carolina to Mexico to help them understand a country that is changing the face of the state.

Which, of course, is the Nobs' way of describing the effect of illegal aliens. You have to recall that the Nobs likes to enjoin us to welcome the "new neighbors" as their preferred response to illegal aliens.

To honor her work, the Mexican Consulate on Wednesday presented Ravenel, 61, with an Ohtli Award. The award -- whose name means "way" or "road" in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec Empire that flourished in Mexico -- is given to people who have helped make life easier for Mexican immigrants in the United States.

A "Friend of Illegal Aliens" Award! Now that is cool!

But I'm confused. What exactly is Millie's job for the State of North Carolina?

Since its inception, the center has sent 7,000 people from North Carolina to visit 47 countries. It has also brought 4,000 people from abroad to visit North Carolina.

The study programs are fully funded by grants and by the participants. The money from the state pays for operational expenses at the center, where the staff has grown from one in 1979 to nine today.

So the North Carolina taxpayers are funding a travel agency for junketeers? It's good to know they are so flush with cash.

A public service of the University of North Carolina, the center was started in 1979 by then-Gov. Jim Hunt. State legislators last year nearly eliminated its $500,000 annual allocation.

Since there's no whining, this must mean the legislature tried but failed to eliminate this boondoggle as opposed to reducing the funding to $1.28, say.

I know, it's just one of many boondoggles financed by the long suffering taxpayers. But it gets better - check out this heartwarming story:

The study trips organized by the center have helped soften many people's views on immigration from Mexico at a time when North Carolina's Mexican population has surged.

The state's foreign-born population jumped 274 percent in the 1990s, according to the 2000 Census. More recent census estimates indicate that the flow of immigration has continued, with Latinos, including many from Mexico, making up the majority of the state's 480,000 foreign-born residents.

Since this is the Nobs, they can't say a horde of illegal aliens.

In 2000, the center sent Rick Givens, then-chairman of the Chatham County commissioners, and 24 others to Mexico for a week. Only months before the trip, Givens had sent a letter to federal immigration officials asking them to deport undocumented workers in the county.

During the trip, Givens, who is no longer a county commissioner, visited impoverished families whose sons and daughters were working illegally in the United States. When he came back, he expressed regret for the letter and spent his final two years as a county commissioner trying to help immigrants in Chatham County.

"Anyone with a heart couldn't have sat there with those families and then criticized them for trying to get across the border," said Givens, 54, a retired airline pilot who lives in Bear Creek. "If I were in their situation, I'd be in my Bronco crossing the border with my family in a heartbeat."

Terminal "street smarts" shortage alert! Did Ricky actually think the illegal aliens in North Carolina were all sitting around the country club pool in Cancun and then suddenly decided to hop in their "Broncos" and check out the hors d'oeuvres up North? Of course they were dirt poor, pal. But the problem is that poverty in Third World countries can't be solved by inviting their residents to move into the spare bedroom in the USA. Or by winking at the ones who arrive illegally.

After returning, Givens said he helped create a program to show Mexican immigrants how to get driver's licenses and car insurance and worked with nonprofits and church groups to improve outreach programs for immigrants.

Thanks a lot. And as always, it's not "immigrants", it's illegal aliens.

And thanks to the Nobs staff for their continuing campaign to sugar coat illegal immigration. I guess they are spiffing up their resumes for when they attempt the big jump to one of the primo liberal mouthpieces.