Securing Our Border

With the talks of immigration reform, one of the pieces that appears will be part of the deal (if one happens) is increasing the number of border patrol agents. So how do those numbers look over the last few decades?



That's a pretty big increase. Meanwhile, the number of illegal immigrants in America is estimated to have risen from 3.5 million in 1990 to around 11 million now (link). So has increasing the number of agents really stopped illegal immigration at all? Border control agents cost money, and we have a Congress that is supposedly looking for ways to shrink our deficit. So yea... let's not spend more money on this.