ScratchMonkey

The question may sound rhetorical, but it might be useful to break down all the different reasons one might have for coming to the US. Some I can think of:

Better pay
More freedom
Government benefits
Crime (including terrorism)

Are there other reasons driving people to enter the US?

Thinking of this as an engineering problem, we have differential pressure across a membrane. Most of the solutions I see try to make the membrane tougher and less permeable. But what can we do to reduce the pressure differential?

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Trooper

I have no problem with immigrats/immigration. If you can come to this country and contribute and help make this a better place then let me know how i can help. If the legalization process needs to be stream lined then lets do it. But when you are running accross a boarder and causeing crime and economic strife, which all are illegal, then we have the right to protect our boarders.
What makes them illegal is how they come over here. Should we make it easier for them to become legal? Should we put a limit on the amount of immigrants across the board?

I think Bush right now is trying to just try different ideas to help curve the problem. He is trying to apease alot of parties and do it without hurting any of those involved.

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
-Vulcan

USN_Squid

I think the bottom line is the first item in your list, pay. In Mexico the average pay is so low, inflation and interest rates are so high, that the pressure differential on this "membrane" is enormous. Any slight indication that it might be easier to get in the US creates a rush of would be border crossers to the border towns. We saw this in the last month where the immigration reform bill protestors were complaining while the border towns were filling because the bill did offer some light at the end of the tunnel.

There really is no middle class in Mexico, at least it's very small. Even college educated professionals have very little hope of really attaining what most interpret as success. Before my wife came to the US she was working as a loan officer in a major Bank making about $500 per month. That job in the US wouldn't pay less than 35-50k. When she got here we went furniture shopping and she broke down in tears because we had the cash to buy two lamps for the nightstands.

I know that's all anecdotal, but it is a very common story. I believe the ruling elite in Mexico want it this way. They profit enormously from it and very little is ever attempted to address even the most simple economic problems they have even though many of their politicians have the skills (Vicente Fox was a Coca Cola executive and went to school at Harvard).

Combine that with a Napoleonic system of law (guilty until proven innocent) and massive systemic corruption and life in Mexico becomes very difficult.

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ScratchMonkey

It's my understanding that there's a tight quota on legal immigration, so there's a huge line (ignoring the 3 year wait imposed by the process). One way to deal with that is to simply eliminate the quota. Anyone who passes the tests and evalution period gets in.

What can we do to make pay in Mexico as high as it is in the US? Bush was successful in getting Mexico to rescind its (sane IMHO) attempt at decriminalizing pot, so clearly we have a lot of political pull there. Can't we bring the same pressure to bear to clean up the corruption and make other systemic changes to "fix" the economy? Or could it be that the US is equally broken (too much government interference in the economy) and the inertia of past success hasn't yet allowed most to see it?

The March issue of Reason has a nice article entitled "Why Poor Countries are Poor":

http://www.reason.com/0603/fe.th.why.shtml

The article is based on the book The Undercover Economist:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019...243640-1272804

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xTYBALTx

You're onto something there, Scratch.

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A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy. -F.A. Hayek

leejo

Are Mexico's best and brightest scuttling across the desert illegally? So you have a test. How does that prevent people who fail the test or can't be bothered to take it from becoming illegal aliens?