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An estimated 7 million illegal immigrants were residing in the United States in January 2000. This is double the size of the illegal immigrant population in January 1990 and constitutes 2.5 percent of the total U.S. population of just over 281 million.

But last year there were 540,000 people, roughly, detained coming across the border illegally. Forty-five thousand of them came from countries other than Mexico, demonstrating the fact that Mexico itself now is a pathway into the United States for people all around the world, and we don't know what their intentions are.

There are 12 million illegal immigrants in this country - drawing welfare benefits, sending their children to public schools, and pushing down wages for American workers - but the problem extends well beyond amnesty and open borders.

California has the highest number of illegal immigrants residing in its borders. The estimated number of illegal alien residents in California was about 2.2 million, or nearly 32 percent of the total number of illegal immigrants in the United States.

An estimated 9,000 American citizens are killed every year by illegal aliens. That's 25 American citizens per day killed by illegal aliens, averaging 12 by stabbings and shootings and 13 by DUI and related crimes.

Births to illegal immigrants now account for nearly one out of every ten births in the United States.

Illegal immigration costs taxpayers $45 billion a year in health care, education, and incarceration expenses.

Here's the thing about Texas - and the thing about the border. We all know undocumented immigrants. They sit in our churches, are friends with our children, and work all around us. They are just like us.

America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government's refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists 'comprehensive' immigration reform.