Efforts to tighten homeland security have failed to stem illegal immigration into America. Eleven million immigrants now live illegally in America, and that number grows by roughly 485,000 a year, according to a study released yesterday.

An analysis of government data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a private research group in Washington, found unauthorized Mexicans are largely responsible for the growth. According to their study, of the 11.2 million Mexicans in America as of March 2004, 5.3 million are in the country legally. According to the study, 85% of the 2.4 million Mexicans who immigrated to America in the past four years have entered illegally. This is four times the percentage between 1980 and 1984, when only 1.1 million Mexicans came across the border.

“The truth is we don’t know exactly how many undocumented immigrants are in this country. There are millions in this country illegally, and we don’t know who’s here, where they are, or what they’re doing, “a spokesman for Senator Cornyn, John Drogin, said. Mr. Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, is the chair of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Citizenship. “This is yet another indication that comprehensive immigration reform is needed. Doing nothing is not an option.”

New York, with 7% of the national total, is the fourth-largest recipient of illegal immigrants after California, Texas, and Florida. While these traditional poles continue to draw large numbers of illegal immigrants, Arizona and North Carolina – fifth and eight on the list – have emerged over the last decade as important destinations for illegal immigrants. The shift has caused a redistribution of the illegal-immigrant population. New York’s share of the country’s illegal immigrant population dropped by more than half between 1990 to 2004, even as the state’s undocumented population rose to an all-time high of 650,000.

“There’s been a greater amount of lip service, but there hasn’t been a greater amount of attention to border security,” the president of the union representing Border Patrol agents, T.J. Bonner, told the Associated Press. “It’s a shell game, and the American public are the losers in this game.”

Secretary of State Rice and other governmental officials have raised border security as an issue amid the recent intelligence reports that Al Qaeda operatives have considered using the porous Southwestern border as an entry point to America.

The deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, James Loy, testified to Congress earlier this year that “several Al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico, and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operation security reasons.” Last month, the new director of central intelligence, Porter Goss, provided similar testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

President Bush’s proposed 2006 budget nonetheless funds only one tenth of the budget needed to provide 2,000 new Border Patrol agents called for by the intelligence reorganization bill he signed last-year. The budget includes $37 million to support 210 Border Patrol agents and $20 million for Border Patrol aircraft. This is not adequate to assist the fewer than 11,000 agents patrolling the 6,000 miles of the nation’s perimeter, Mr. Bonner said.

Many immigration specialists say even with increased manpower at the border, it is unlikely federal efforts to stem illegal entry will be successful.

“The build-up of enforcement resources along the Mexico-U.S. border has not reduced the probability of undocumented entry or increased the likelihood of apprehension, but it has raised the out-of-pocket costs and physical risks of crossing,” a professor at Princeton University and specialist in border issues, Douglas Massey, said. “The paradoxical effect of border enforcement is that it does not reduce the rate of undocumented entry – rather, it lowers the rate of returning home. As a result, our border policies have served to increase the size of the undocumented population of the United States and accelerated its growth over the past two decades.”

Controlling the flow of illegal immigrants will be a topic of conversation when the Mexican president, Vicente Fox, meets with President Bush in Texas tomorrow.

Mr. Bush has introduced a guest worker program, which he says will make the country’s immigration system more humane, while helping the country to regain control of its border. Under the plan, immigrants could work legally in America for three years with a possibility of renewal.

Critics say the president’s program would drive down wages without making the country safer.

More than three-quarters of Mexicans living illegally in this country would support such a program, according to another study released by the Pew Center this month. The survey of nearly 5,000 Mexicans found that 79% of those in New York were in favor of a temporary-worker plan like what Mr. Bush is proposing. The highest percentage in the country.

The president introduced the program in January of 2004. Senators McCain, a Republican of Arizona, and Kennedy, a Democrat of Massachusetts, are in the process of drafting legislation.