Allow me to explain the logic. To come here illegal, is not like just standing up and start walking to the US. It costs money. No matter how you go about it, there is a cost involved. Most hire a guide to go through the desert, while many pay someone to hide in their van or truck. Either way, money in required.
I don't have actual numbers, but lets say that it costs $100 to get across the boarder. If you are shipped back, you lost that money and have to pay another $100. How many times will that have to happen before simply paying an application fee starts to look like a better option?
Most drivers charge more because they can lose their vehicle if caught. As such most use an IOU system. This is where the illegals gets taken across with the understanding that the driver will get paid after the illegal gets pay in the US their first time. Now if they are shipped back, perhaps the driver will give that person a second chance, but after the 3nd time, do you think that driver is still going to run them across the boarder for free when he didn't get paid the first 2 times?
Let's a say a driver charges $200. After being deported back twice, that's $600 to get across the boarder. That legal application fee looks better and better, yes?
If the drug war and AIDs has taught us anything, it's that we can't force people to act responsibly. It hasn't worked in our own country, and it certainly will not in another country. We can not make Mexico into what it could be. Only Mexicans can choose to improve Mexico.
The only thing we can do is send more of our jobs there, and if you hadn't noticed, we kinda need them here. If our economy loses all of it's non-service based business, national economic collapse is in our future.
The only way we can directly help make Mexico better would be a literal hostile take over, and as a Capitalist, honestly, that's a bad investment 
I'm still in favor physical punishment simply because I know how effective it is. People learn amazingly quick when pain is inflicted on them. Also, as you stated, community service can be ambiguous. Lashes is pretty hard to not get right.
Plus, I think that punishment should have as little cost socially as possible. The crime itself is a cost to society, then it costs us more to deal with the criminal after being caught. That is shameful. The criminal is costing society twice.
I would rather pay one person one full time wage to give out 100 lashes to 8 to 10 criminals a day, and be done with it, than have to pay 20 people full time salaries to oversight hundreds of community service projects.
You have my vote back.
That is exactly the article I was talking about. Everyone sleep in tents, tents they make and tend themselves. Everyone eats from out door pots and fire pits. Soup every day. If they want a basket ball court, they make it themselves. If they want their cloths clean, they wash them. Supplies are delivered, but beyond that, if the meal is served it's on them. They screw it up, they don't eat.
That is exactly what I support. The only problem is, that will not work the exact same way, in every state. In that location, they don't need to watch the inmates so closely, and have as much security as other prisons because it's 80 miles in every direction with no where to get water. If a prisoner escapes, it's only to his death. Much like Russian prisons that are located in the middle of sub zero woods where it's a 100 miles to the nearest out house. That won't work in Ohio for sure.
