"Tough Love" in the World of Illegal Immigration

In English class we've recently been circling over the subject of when helping becomes hurting. In the example of the Baptist Price family in the novel The Poisonwood Bible, ignorance of native Kikongo cultural customs hurt both the relationship between the two sides (the Prices and the villagers) and the very survival of the Prices themselves.
I've often wondered if the current confrontationalist, fence-building stance of US immigration policy has had this same effect: if, in trying to assure our laws are upheld and that Mexico's agricultural lands and border towns (where most immigrants to the States come from http://www.ackland.org/education/k12/handoutpdfs/Mexico.pdf) remain populated and economically self-sufficient, we have actually hurt our relationship with Mexico and the communities that celebrate the cultures on both sides of the border. I have often tried to think up (assuming I can even slightly comprehend the legal complexity of the issue) an effective, integrationalist reform for our current immigration policy.
I've come up short every time, I assure you. Oftentimes in this subject, two opposing sides essentially come dance around the bare bones of each of their sentiments: "I like Mexicans and they're good for the enrichment of our culture and you're a racist!" or "They're culturally different, they don't pay taxes, and they don't speak my freakin' language! How am I supposed to accept that with open arms?" In my search for a solution to perhaps bridge a gap between these two battling sentiments (in their simplest form), I've often let my own views get in the way. But in the end, we need a way to appeal to both sides, and I think I may have recently stumbled upon at least a shadow of that type of solution.
BBC News published an article in 2009 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7879206.stm) detailing a new tactic used by "La Migra" (US Anti-Illegal Immigration Agents) to prevent migrants from attempting the dangerous borderr crossing. Their method? A CD called "Migracorridos" whose songs emulate Mexican ballads called "Corridos". Their songs' intended message? That the terrible fact of border crossing isn't necessarily the illegality of it, but rather the harm that can be done to the immigrants themselves. Somber messages bear foreboding messages such as: "Cada dia mueren tres personas en la frontera. Nunca es el coyote./ Every day three people die on the border; the coyote is never one of them." Coyotes are alien traffickers who frequently leave immigrants in trucks to die out in the desert after they've collected all their money for the passage. In 2008 alone, 390 immigrants died along the way.
This CD, given its applicability to many border families and anyone wishing to immigrate, has actually been played throughout various Mexican radio channels. The government has not announced publicly that the songs played are their brainchild, but even if they had, the message that many listeners connect to would be the same. In wondering whether or not I agreed morally with this type of solution (aiding both the US's immigration issue and purportedly the lives of Mexican citizens), I first had to get over the fact that the CD's intent is to reduce immigration. It is achieved through a (likely real) veil of sympathy for immigrants, as Agent Rodriguez points out, "What we try to tell them is that this is not worth it, they should think about their families." I'm not sure whether or not the actual driving emotion here is sympathy for the families involved. In the end, we can only take the government's word; in a sense, they have done a noble, albeit covert, deed in using methods of the target culture to try to ameliorate the situation. I'm not sure if this is subtle manipulation or simply another honest reason why illegal immigration should not occur. Again, we as citizens can only "know" what we are told in this case, and it seems to be a rightly justifiable method to me.
Has it worked? Has our government found at least a path towards solving this problem within a sound realm of ethics and respect for the other side? As the article points out, more than one hundred thousand less people were arrested between 2007-2008. Perhaps the song method has died out since then. But at least for now, we can take solace in the knowledge that "La Migra" has not only taken steps to understand its "targets", but would also rather not have targets at all--and to an extent, that drop of arrests by +100,000 shows that they have succeeded. In an issue as complicated as this, success will be very difficult to clearly define. But if your definition of success involves more depth than simply placing a wall between your country and those who desire to make a better life inside of it, then perhaps we are closer to accomplishing immiration reform than we've been lead to believe.