well, admittedly legal immigration and legal, genuine asylum seekers does take a long time, 6 months up to 1-2 years to process, but it is processed at U.S. embassies in foreign countries around the world. Illegally sneaking across the border across multiple countries, then eventually into the U.S. clearly shows those illegal immigrants are not asylum seekers because they already escaped their home country. The U.S. currently has a merit-based immigration system, where you have to show you have some skills that the U.S. is in need of. For example, during the whole Y2K preparation, there was a nationwide shortage of software developers and 100s of thousands of east Indians applied for H1-B immigration work visas, who were well qualified software developers because of the need.