Illegal immigration can be virtually eliminated with strict enforcement of laws restricting employers from hiring them. That is not done because we depend on those illegals for picking our crops. Who's fault is that? But I am glad you admit it is the Republicans and Trump shutting down the Govt. because they want to gut our social programs and cut Medicare and social security and force the Dems to vote for it or allow the dreamers to be deported. That is not going to happen and the govt. will remain shut until they give up that ploy. 2 can play that game and the Dems have the upper hand in this one.
I would only reply that one of the main reasons Mexicans never respected our immigration laws is because of the continual waves of hypocrisy that ran in regular cycles.
Our government would look the other way and tacitly approve of the big growers sending buses down INTO Mexico to recruit "braceros" to work the fields. Then suddenly with the Eisenhower administration we had "Operation Wetback" which deported millions of braceros, often dropping them off in the middle of the Mexico desert without even so much as WATER.
Then in the 60's, the braceros started coming back again!
Cesar Chavez would fight back because most of HIS people either had Green Cards (much easier to get back then!!!) or were
"Chicanos", native born Americans of Mexican descent and he wanted better pay and conditions for his United Farm Workers.
But originally, the flow of the first braceros was
initially started to marginalize the
Dust Bowl Okies anyway so Chavez and his UFW were regarded largely as an upstart (three decades later) and a minor speed bump until the Huelgas (strikes) started to gain support. The growers never expected a worker strike movement to gain traction.
Ed Murrow's docu series "Harvest of Shame" and Steve Allen's (yes,
THAT "Steve Allen") "The Ground Is Our Table" book started informing Americans on the plight of workers in the fields, and suddenly the plight of migrant farm workers was on everyone's mind.
Back and forth, back and forth. How does one make any sense out of the shifting priorities of a Mexican immigration policy when it changes not only with every administration but with every blip in the economic cycle? How is a Mexican expected to have ANY respect from such a fickle, transient and disingenuous set of policies? So in essence, the typical Mexican came to regard the entire immigration policy of Estados Unidos as a big fat sick joke.
I'll be honest, I do not have any problem with shifting US immigration policy to a merit based system.
It's just that I do not trust US immigration policy toward Central America and Mexico to be anything other than the corporate whore it has always been. Most Western democracies operate off a point or merit based system with regard to their immigration policies, so if we were to do so, and STICK TO IT, I think it's a healthy and bipartisan compromise.
But why do we have to destroy millions of people's lives in the process? The Dreamers are here with us now and this IS now their country, because they HAVE been here, and they have been productive. And with regard to El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, there is something to be said for refugee status. See Reagan, CIA and COCAINE for background.
