A big problem here are businesses that want to employ illegals, but not citizens. They want to do so because illegals are cheaper, do not get seniority or promotion, and are often willing to give kickbacks for their job.
Oddly enough, and bite my tongue for saying it, but Obama’s two pronged approach, if repulsive, will probably get the best result.
That is, throw all the effort into capturing and deporting the criminal offender illegals, instead of all illegals, and offer the fully integrated illegals some means to stay here legally, for a while, with work permits.
The reason this will get the best results is first of all, the criminal illegals cause a LOT more trouble than the non-criminal illegals. In his shoes, I would build special prisons just north of the border, to “outprocess” them back to Mexico at a rate the Mexican government can handle, to try and keep them from immediately joining the cartels. These prisons would be in an “international border area”, so would not be subject to a lot of interference by lawyers.
They cannot be just thrown across the border, or they will turn around and come right back or heat up the drug wars, so they would need to be put on a “con-air” flight to southern Mexico. To Mexican prisons that can slowly “inprocess” them for release in Mexico.
As far as work permits for young Mexicans that are fully integrated, this also is a good idea, for the simple reason that they are already “de facto” Americans, just not “de jure” Americans. They were raised and educated in the US, and Mexico is a foreign country to them. So allowing them to stay until they are adults and can take care of themselves makes sense. Otherwise deporting them is intolerably cruel.
The most important reason that these two techniques are best right now is because there are lots of swinish people in authority who make millions off the status quo, and want no change, but pretend to be opposed to illegal aliens so they can interfere with there being *any* conclusion to this mess.
If they can be overcome, US emigration needs serious reforms, to permit achieving citizenship once someone is in the US, that does not take 10 or 20 years, and is once again “quota” based, since immigrants are not equal in what they can offer the US, and we have zero need to import uneducated, primitive peoples.
Your average Chinese, or Hindu is going to give you a similar answer.
For a Mexican raised in the USA, a visit to his own home country of Mexico is simply not going to seem very different at all.