By The Numbers: Immigration Reform

There are approximately 10.8 million illegal immigrants right now in the United States. And about 90 percent of those individuals have lived in the United States for more than five years.

92 percent to 98 percent of the people attempting to cross the border keep trying until they make it. 5,607 migrants have died trying to cross the border in the last 15 years—that's more than one person a day every day for 15 years.

Last year's U.S. Border Patrol budget was $2.7 billion. That's a 714 percent increase since the "enforcement-only" policy began in 1992.

The combined budgets of the primary immigration enforcement agencies—U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—increased from 9.5 billion in FY 2005 to $17.1 billion in FY 2010.

That 80 percent budget increase over five years was accompanied by a 300,000-person increase, which brought the illegal immigrant population to 10.8 million people.

The U.S. Border Patrol spent $3,102 per apprehension at the border in fiscal year 2008 and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent $18,302 per apprehension inside the country during that period.

These alarming numbers put into sharp relief the failure of the U.S. government's "enforcement-only" approach to illegal immigration. It's time to re-evaluate why the government's efforts have failed. It's time to abandon the idea that we can simply enforce our way out of a broken system. And it's time to get serious about solving this problem in a way that helps all workers, honest employers, and American taxpayers.

The solution is comprehensive immigration reform. We need to strengthen our borders and crack down on dishonest employers, but we also we need to require illegal immigrants to register, learn English, pass background checks, pay taxes, and earn the privilege of citizenship.

A mass deportation strategy would cost the federal government $285 billion in direct immigration enforcement resources over five years. And it would cost the U.S. economy $2.6 trillion in lost, cumulative GDP over 10 years. Yet a comprehensive reform that legalizes the undocumented population and revamps our broken system would bring about a 10-year $1.5 trillion cumulative boost in GDP, which would expand nearly every sector of the U.S. economy.

Comprehensive reform will transform an integrated, but unregulated labor market into an orderly system that levels the playing field for U.S. workers and honest employers. The increase in personal income will generate $4.5 billion to $5.4 billion in additional tax revenue in the first three years alone.

The increase in personal income will also create consumer spending that will support 750,000 to 900,000 jobs in the first three years.

Comprehensive immigration reform will help lay the foundation for robust, just, and widespread economic growth. The alternative? Continuing our failed enforcement-only strategies that have brought us to this point or injecting those strategies with steroids and trying to deport 11 million people. That boils down to a $4 trillion policy choice.

By the numbers, it's time to make the smart one.