CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Dan Ramirez, Jim Pendergraph and Corey Thompson, all republican candidates for county commission, said in a news conference on Friday that North Carolina has waited too long to tackle illegal immigration and that it's impacting the state's bottom line. "The NC cost of illegal immigration is $2.1 billion per year,” says Pendergraph.

Pendergraph, who used the be the sheriff in Mecklenburg County, says he'll push for an Arizona-type immigration law in North Carolina.

He says, "The reaction from some narrow minded people about my comments will be, 'well he's just a racist.' That is what people say when they want to put me and others on the defensive because they have no other defense for the situation that they have placed themselves in.”

County commission chair and democrat Jennifer Roberts, who was not at the news conference, thinks illegal immigration needs to be left to the feds. She says, “The fact that these kinds of laws, like the Arizona law, have been struck down across the country, shows the federal government needs to act."

Maudia Melendez, a republican and immigrant rights activist, challenged the candidates at the news conference. She asked, "Would you like to get all these people some boats and planes and ship them back to their country and actually do we have the resources to do that?"

Candidate Dan Ramirez, a Colombian native who became a US citizen in 1975, says the illegal immigration debate has gotten too political. He says, "The real issue, the real problem that we have not only here but in this country is that the federal government is not performing the duty to protect its citizens."