As the late KennyBunk told me, its too late to be talking common sense.
The whole damn thing spiraled way beyond technical fixes 20 years ago.
A few points....
- the police in Mexico have been corrupt since the Spaniards arrived. Its a feature of macho culture: he who is strong takes from the weak. Its utterly opposite AngloProtestant culture, which is why America looks the way it does, and all of Central and South America looks the way IT does.
- under any guest worker program, will “hispanics” be afforded privileges under affirmative action? Will they be counted in the census, and will their ethicity be used to further discriminate against the Americans?
- will their children born here have citizenship? Remember, they will be legal residents.
I could go on and on. The money spent to police and deport people could just as easily be spent as foreign aid. Its a small amount. Every time it has been suggested, the problem has been that the Mexican ruling class will steal the money, any way they can. They have to: they would be considered weak if they didnt.
The drug trafficers magnified all this by 10000% as you said. For the mafias (thats what they’re called in Mexico, not cartels) I recommend napalm and ruthless extinction. Legalization of pot could help, but they will simply move on to something worse. They’re a cancer on the Americas in need of excision.
And in all this, did anyone mention encouraging and enabling us Americans to have more children, bigger families? We used to. If we’re in need of people, its simple: make more of us, not import aliens.
One factor is that it's simply become too expensive (or jobs don't pay enough) for most couples to have several kids, if one is not on the gov't teat. My wife and I planned to have 3 children (2 by us and adopt 1). But the "economic reality" of 2008 - 10, for us, a very middle class family (the industry I was in collapsed), meant we could only have 1, and now my wife is past her childbearing years. (Granted, we got married / started late.)
But, that's an aside. Presently the US has a tremendous labor surplus.
One reason to look at the money sent home by guest workers as better than foreign aid is that with foreign aid, it is very hard to keep this money out of the hands of the big boys. At least the guest workers are putting it in the hands of people they trust, who are not likely to already be rich. I cannot see why guest workers would be counted in the census. On the other hand the question of citizenship for children born here would mean major legal or even a constitutional change.