and two cents from forbes.com
If lawmakers want to address the future flow of people attempting to enter the country unlawfully they can make two policy changes that do not involve major changes to immigration enforcement. First, Congress can make it lawful to work in America under a legal visa at year-round jobs in construction, hotels, restaurants and landscaping. The visas can be fully portable, since that would be the best labor protection. The failure to make this common-sense reform has profited criminal smuggling gangs and resulted in hundreds of deaths annually of those attempting to enter the U.S. through unsafe border areas.
The second change is to work actively with Central American governments to reduce the violence that is driving so many of its citizens to flee to the United States. Sending people back to conditions that can get them killed or preventing individuals from pursuing viable asylum claims is not a policy worthy of the country that Thomas Jefferson once said “should be the asylum of all those who wish to avoid the scenes which have crushed our friends in [other lands].”
Beyond deporting people who represent a genuine criminal or security threat to Americans, the rest of those targeted for deportation are people already in the workforce, at least 70 percent of whom have been living in the United States 10 years or longer, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/12/05/wheres-the-immigration-crisis-u-s-border-patrol-reports-illegal-border-crossings-at-record-low/#72cb99fb4b73