recent years. In addition, U.S. visa policy and
the sluggish immigration bureaucracy remain
widespread sources of dissatisfaction and a barrier
to implementing sensible immigration policy.
!e current visa system largely dates from the
1960s and makes little sense in the light of today’s
economic and social needs. Recent bipartisan
reform efforts identified critical difficulties in
balancing different immigration criteria with
existing visa categories and quotas, yet these efforts
failed to effectively resolve these challenges.
!e major obstacle to immigration reform on
the domestic front has been political. Furthermore,
the weight of recent failures—now combined with
the effects of the financial crisis and recession—has
raised the question of whether the objective of
comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) should
be abandoned in favor of some smaller components
pursued separately. !is paper argues for a series of
policy steps that can be taken individually, while
recognizing that the broken migration relationship
between Mexico and the United States will not be
fixed until a critical combination of enforcement and
legalization measures is in place, together with efforts
to provide an alternative to migration. Furthermore,
some combined measures are needed not only to
effectively meet the challenge of migration, but
also to assemble the minimum political support
needed to pass legislation.
On the bilateral front, cooperative efforts and
dialogue on this issue have yet to recover from
the breakdown of talks on migration between