If the source country really understood economic issues, they (Mexico, particularly) would fix the problems driving their people to us. If they lowered marginal tax rates and privatized such industries as oil (including the ownership of mineral rights), these people would become an asset making their own economies grow, rather than just hungry mouths to feed. Actually, I think these people will get here and get on the bottom rung of the upwardly-mobile ladder.
My point was (#88) that we cannot depend upon scores of immigrant workers paying taxes and thus saving our elderly butts (OASDI).
I sincerely believe that migrant labor will come under the control of a GATT-like or WTO-like entity. Columbia professor Jagdish Bhagwati campaigns for a World Migration Organization (WMO).
Why would the source country supply hordes of their "citizens beyond borders" for free? They won't. They will demand something, that something could be the tax on their citizens' wages. We get the benefit of "cheap" labor.
RE: If the source country really understood economic issues, they (Mexico, particularly) would fix the problems driving their people to us.
One of the thing that's driving the people across the border is Mexicorruption's policy of Mexican Diaspora. I think it was first offered by Zedillo. The current crook in charge has a cabinet post for governing nonresident Mexicans, Mexicorruption's "citizens beyond borders." Remittances especially "group" remittances are a form of taxing wages.
More and more countries are joining Mexico (and India) in this economic diaspora game.
By all accounts Mexcio could be an economic jewel with the resources of its peoples and natural wealth were it not for the corrupt government. I agree.