Reagan also - out of compassion - legalized a bunch of illegals living here. He was under the mistaken impression that doing something compassionate would be rewarded rather than something that would set him up as a fool and punching bag for liberals.
You're right - Ross Perot was a strange guy but he was right on this issue. Mexico pulled in companies from the US by paying their factory slaves ONE dollar an hour... with permission to dump toxic waste in open rivers... Then Mexicans took in goods from other countries, added a ‘button’ and labeled them as ‘Mexican’ goods and slid them in our country under NAFTA.
We've grown up - the Mexican government will take advantage of us - and any good-will we extend to them will be used as an excuse to play us for fools. Mexico is most likely paying off liberal elites under the table to keep the scams going - liberals want the flow of illegals to flood our country for the votes. Mexico can empty their prisons and send criminals for us to support and incarcerate on our dime. Liberals would welcome them for the 'votes'... Democrats don't give a damn about the country. They would import child molesters if they knew they would vote a straight democrat ticket.
The Mexican Government is corrupt, horrible and exploitative... they're almost as bad as democrats....
Ironically, when Dubya in his last days in office begged Obama to at least work to establish a free trade agreement with Colombia, a staunch ally who earnestly fought against the drug cartels, O turned him down flat, arguing that free trade agreements hurt American workers, which was the Dem party line at the time.
But free trade is a conservative ideal. It has been abused and corrupted, however, and Donaldus’ attempts to right it and return free trade to its original purpose could not have come at a better time. Back in ‘84, Richard Gephardt had some good ideas on how to do that, but he wasn’t nominated and Mondale was too stupid to have a clue. Now Donaldus is finally pushing for trade reciprocity and immigration reform, and the leftards are up in arms and clueless.