On Thursday morning before Christmas, I was delivering a load of clothing and school supplies to a migrant shelter in Juárez, Mexico, called Respettrans when I tripped on the ragged sidewalk and crashed to the pavement.

The four young migrants helping me carry items in were stunned and helped me into the building where a crowd gathered, and two nurses from the states of Guerrero and Michoacán, Mexico insisted on washing and bandaging my scrapes.

I was more embarrassed than hurt, but this incident crystallized what I have experienced in four years of meeting with hundreds of migrants in shelters and on the streets of Juárez and Palomas, Mexico, El Paso, Texas, and Deming, New Mexico.

These are overwhelmingly good people who have made grueling, dangerous, and expensive trips to our southern border in order to escape unbearable situations of violence, corruption, poverty, and now climate change in their home countries. They deserve humane treatment and a fair resolution to their issues.

What are the issues and what could be done?

Although our immigration laws are extremely complex and contain all sorts of special circumstances for different groups or countries, I see five categories of migrants.

Guest workers

Our farmers, construction companies, ski industries, and countless others need workers, but the numbers allowed to come into the country on seasonal permits are way too low. As a result, many of those who do come to work seasonally do so illegally and then stay here because it is too difficult to go back and forth. Increasing the number of permits would allow them to return home after a season of work here and would reduce the number who are here illegally.

Dreamers

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) allowed kids who were brought here by their parents when they were young to apply for legal status. For the most part, they have absolutely no ties or knowledge of the countries from which they came, and to send them back there would be shameful. Many now have U.S. high school diplomas and have completed or are working on college degrees.

Migrants here illegally

The numbers are huge, and most are migrants who came legally and simply overstayed their visas. Many have been here for years or decades. Why not treat them as we treat the hundreds of thousands of other Americans who disobey the law? Assess a penalty and then let them get on with their lives.

New migrants arriving

On September 13, I had the opportunity to be with Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents as they patrolled the mountainous area west of El Paso and Juárez and saw how efficiently yet humanely they apprehended those attempting to cross illegally. This “human wall” is much more effective than the steel one, where “coyotes” can cross in seconds using lightweight but sturdy ladders. The question is one of having enough personnel.

Even though these migrants — mostly young men who would not qualify for asylum — are coming illegally, they are for the most part looking for work, not smuggling drugs. All studies show that the overwhelming majority of drugs entering the U.S. come through ports of entry in big trucks. Although we cannot allow them to enter illegally, keep in mind the economic pressures they face in their home countries. The minimum wage per day in Mexico is less than half the hourly minimum wage in Denver. Per capita income in countries like Guatemala and Honduras ranges from roughly $5,000 to $8,000 a year as compared to about $36,000 here.

Asylum seekers

In terms of sheer numbers this is clearly the major issue and a twofold one. First, going back at least several U.S. presidents, there has been a lack of focus on the growing number of migrants awaiting their final asylum hearings before a judge, and now the backlog is well over a million cases.

More immediate is the plight of the thousands who are arriving at the border only to find their pathway blocked by Title 42. I was impressed with the efficiency of the CBP’s screening process that I observed on September 13, but the issue is where do these migrants go once they have been screened. For example, despite the well-coordinated government and private sector efforts in El Paso, there were huge crowds sleeping on Father Rahm Street on the morning of December 22 before the temperature plummeted.

The situation is worse on the Mexican side because the existing shelters are full. Establishing a joint Mexico-USA Border Task Force should be high on the agenda of President Joe Biden’s upcoming trip to Mexico.

This will be a test of both our humanity and our ingenuity, but despite this particular challenge, the other issues I’ve mentioned can easily be resolved if we tackle them in a spirit of practicality, not partisanship.