The film was made during a time when movies featuring undocumented Mexican migrants (or "wetbacks") and Chicanos were in vogue, largely dedicated to cater to the Spanish-speaking U.S.
[3] The film's theme of migration to the United States was one of the few times Mexican director Arturo Ripstein stepped outside the strictly national framework of his filmography.
[4][5] In Cinema of Solitude: A Critical Study of Mexican Film, 1967-1983, Charles Ramírez Berg called the film "evidently a quick-and-dirty commercial outing—a good indicator of the kind of work Nuevo Cine auteurs were forced to accept during the López Portillo sexenio.
Most wetback films are cautionary tales about the dangers of traveling north; La ilegal, in contrast, depicts Mexicans' betrayal of one another.
By again externalizing the problem and ignoring the state's culpability, La ilegal becomes yet another system-affirming fantasy.