Immigrating legally means navigating a system both political parties say is broken. Here’s why it’s so difficult.

...Mejía discovered that her brother’s murder and the death threats weren’t enough to claim asylum in the U.S. — they needed to prove a fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

Fearing for their lives, Mejía and her mother used their tourist visas to flee to Houston. Her father decided to stay behind, Mejía said. When their tourist visas expired, they remained in Houston as undocumented immigrants.

That’s when they began a long and expensive path to getting legal status in the U.S. More than a decade later, Mejía and Ramírez are legal permanent residents — both have what’s commonly known as a green card — and are on a path to obtaining U.S. citizenship after navigating what most U.S. elected officials acknowledge is a broken system.

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They joined the hundreds of thousands of migrants who enter the U.S. every year and become undocumented immigrants. Most cross the border illegally, surrender to the U.S. Border Patrol and request asylum. Some evade law enforcement at the border and melt into the underground economy. Others, like Mejía and her mother, enter legally with a visa and don’t return home.

Even though the country’s two major political parties agree the current immigration system doesn’t work, they have been divided on how to overhaul a system that has been a political wedge issue for decades.

Immigration laws haven’t had a major overhaul since 1986 — when Republican President Ronald Reagan signed a law that legalized 3 million undocumented immigrants while also creating penalties for employers who hire undocumented immigrants. Since then, major immigration reform has been an unreachable goal even as the number of people trying to enter the U.S. has exploded.