Except when there have been amnesties (7 of them since 1986) the immigration process for Mexicans is the same as for everybody else. The difficulty that they have coming legally is that there are only 5000 slots annually for unskilled workers. Since most Mexicans are uneducated, all 40 million of them that would like to come to America are trying to squeeze into that category and they are competing with the 5 billion other people in the world who are on average poorer than Mexicans.
It might be appropriate to adjust the 5000 number upwards a bit but keep in mind that back in the 19th century when the massive waves of poor immigrants were coming, it was before the New Deal and before America became a socialist welfare State.
Even though we set fairly high standards for the million or so immigrants we allow to come legally every year, most of them require some public assistance. Over the course of their lives, the average cost to the American taxpayers of legal immigrants is fairly low. I seem to recall a figure like a $10,000 net lifetime drain on the treasury per immigrant average. If we bump the number of low skilled immigrants up from 5000 per year to 400,000 per year which is the number in the McCain/Kennedy Shamnesty, you can expect that all these low skilled people will need substantially greater assistance and will be much more expensive for taxpayers then the higher skilled people we are bringing in now.
And once they get the vote, 80% of them are going to vote for RATS and more socialism.
Do you predict immigration will be the downfall of America?