cherry,
illegal immigration occurs predominantly because the federal government ignores illegal hiring by employers.
That's a simplistic answer, that ignores so much context as to be misleading.
It's not that the federal government ignores illegal hiring, its that the federal government, through decades of intentional bureaucratic action, administrative determinations and activist judicial decisions effectively requires illegal hiring and, depending on the administration still threatens to prosecute employers both for discrimination if they attempt to root it out and for illegal hiring. Big employers are literally penalized both for failing on compliance with government mandated forms, but also for doing more than the minimum required (you can literally see those facets where a company is both cited for failing to catch illegal I-9's (illegal employment) and expressly restricted from requiring non-falsifiable support for I-9's (illegal discrimination). That's exactly the kind of catch-22 that happens when Congress refuses to pass meaningful reform for decades and lets the bureaucrats fill in with regulations that can be used selectively to punish enemies no matter what they do.
Small employers? I doubt that what you are really calling for, is for the federal government to put everyone that has hired an illegal domestic employee in jail. Is it? Without controlling the personal services space this solution is a bunch of hot air.
And you completely ignore that in several states an illegal immigrant can claim state benefits including welfare, housing and medical assistance, and I'm not aware of the state where they can't enroll children in schools. Do you really believe access to US education and services isn't enough of a draw already? That's massive incentive to immigrate, particularly if you've been fed the propaganda about how you'll be in the US for years, at a minimum, while your case is heard.
We have illegal immigration because there are lots of benefits to living here and almost no ability to remove someone from living here.
Extending the existing wall would have zero impact on securing our borders. (Also most illegal permanent residents are visa overstays).
"Most" is relative nonsense in this case. Long term illegal immigrants from Mexico were heavily weighted towards migrant workers overstaying the program, short term visa holders overstaying their visas and true illegal border crossers. The biggest single factor that's slowed illegal immigration is massive reduction in Mexican immigrants, period. Not really what people think you mean by "visa overstays."
But let's be specific, since you love calling out the overstays, why don't you point out which overstays are troubling you. Here's the 2019 report, please cite to the country (or countries) you think we need to crack down on to make a real impact.
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/20_0513_fy19-entry-and-exit-overstay-report.pdf. It's also interesting to note that this overstates the number of overstays, you can look at the 2018 update that shows nearly half the overstays resolved over just the following 12 months.
In reality you're pretending that we have a massive problem from developed countries, with the soft undertone of implied racism, when for the most part the visa overstay percentage problems are the undeveloped countries. That's for obvious reasons, and I seriously doubt you're going to call out the countries with bad overstay issues for reduced visas to be issued, that'd be directly contrary to the argument you're trying to make about letting asylum applications begin remotely.
The only way to reduce illegal crossings are cracking down on employers - which Trump and every other Republican has refused to do.
Is it? Surely you're not denying reality? You could even more easily "crack down" on the states providing welfare, housing and other benefits. It'd be dead simple to deport people instead of providing them public housing for example. It would also be completely simple to require proof of citizenship or legal status to access primary, secondary, college and graduate education. I'm not adverse to bringing employers into it as well, how about the Federal system directly, and empower the states to, provide citizenship verification services. Maybe you could change Form I-9 to require secure ID - instead of prohibiting employers from even asking for it. Make it simple and have strict compliance, no discrimination because it would be required in all employment.
Fact is, there are thousands of ways this could be done safely and efficiently and yet, they've all been deliberately undermined. It's pure nonsense (and politics) to pretend that businesses ALONE should be accountable when they didn't create the problem and the systems in place are designed to allow illegal immigrants to work, when neither the States nor the federal government holds themselves to remotely the same standard when providing services.
And making amnesty applications allowable at US embassies rather than requiring people to be physically present in the US.
How would that work? Walk into a US embassy in the middle of a foreign country and somehow expect the US government to remove you from the country while the local government resists? Assuming this doesn't end in war or seizure of an embassy, how many persons can a US embassy take out of a country before US embassies will no longer be permitted to operate in said country? And even that's assuming a lot, you'll note, for example, that while Assange was free to stay in the Argentinian embassy (at least until they kicked him out), he wasn't free to travel through the UK to get to the airport to go to Argentina. Embassy's are surrounded by the host country. Are you suggesting that the US embassy house all these people?
In fact, the very idea that you suggest is sophistry. Asylum is not an immigration program. It's not a free pass to any country you choose. It's a temporary relocation to safety because of a threat by your own government. If you are unsafe, other than from your own government, your recourse is to your own government. If you require protection from your own government, claiming asylum as a first instance requires removing yourself to the country from whom you're claiming it - you're asking the sovereign whose power you find yourself in for safety, not some arbitrary country somewhere else. Anything less would be something like an invitation to war or conflict between two countries. Asylum is otherwise an exception both from deportation and from extradition. Traveling through multiple safe countries undermines the case that one is fleeing from government persecution.
Also China has plenty of illegal immigration (from Vietnam, Africa, North Korea, Myanmar, etc).
So what?
