Mexicans desperately fleeing from drug violence in their own country are seeking asylum in the United States – and their numbers have nearly doubled in recent years.

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2,231 Mexican citizens requested asylum in the United States in fiscal year 2008. Nearly half, or 1,366 people, sought asylum in 2006 before Mexico's bloodshed began to rapidly escalate.

"The issue of asylum claims is one part of a number of signs we're seeing that are the results of border violence," Michael Friel, director of media relations at Customs and Border Protection, told Fox News.

Immigration officials have been stretched thin because U.S. law prohibits them from sending the Mexican asylum-seekers back home without first processing their applications. Many are determined ineligible and sent back home after months of legal paperwork.

Asylum-seekers are fingerprinted and must submit to background checks. Officers with Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, must interview each Mexican citizen to evaluate his claim and submit the case to a supervisor for a decision.

According to the report, the process can take up to four months and is very expensive. U.S. taxpayers ultimately pay protective custody costs for asylum-seekers while their cases are managed. 

While Mexicans are rarely eligible for asylum status, overall asylum approvals have doubled from 61 in 2006 to 123 in 2008.

The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 states that asylum-seekers must face persecution in their home country based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinions.

However, escaping from the bloodshed of Mexico's drug war doesn't qualify a person for U.S. asylum, Kathleen Walker, immigration attorney and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers' Association in El Paso Texas, told Fox News.

"Fleeing violence in a particular region of Mexico doesn't provide me a basis to claim asylum under our immigration laws," she said.

According to the report, asylum applicants must show that they are being persecuted, they have "credible fear" of persecution and that they have no place to go if they return to their home country.

"If I can go to another area of Mexico, and it's not something that is countrywide, then the element of persecution is not going to be established," Walker told Fox News. "CBP has to assess whether or not this person belongs to a particular class, they have a particular political belief, or whatever it may be that one can fall into the grounds that one can be granted asylum on. Just because you're fleeing generic violence is not a grounds to seek asylum and have it granted."

Some activists believe the U.S. should welcome Mexican asylum-seekers

"If there is a need from a very vulnerable population, such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, I think there's just this most basic moral, ethical responsibility to help people who have, who are in a dire situation like that," said Cynthia Buiza of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

But others disagree, including Al Garza, president of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps.

"This is going to be part of their ploy, part of their plan," he said.

Garza said he believes Mexicans will abuse the asylum process just to cross the border into the U.S.

He said, "They use all these excuses that they come up with – that would obviously be one of them."