On Thursday, Jim Steele, lead reporter on the Time magazine story, told Los Angeles radio host George Putnam that illegal immigration into the U.S. is now equal to 22,000 fully loaded Boeing 737 jets arriving every year. That's 60 planeloads a day.

The story was old news to Putnam, a longtime immigration policy critic whose show is now heard daily on KSPA/KCEO and the CRN Radio Network, after he was forced to abandon his former station to an all-Spanish format.

But for most of the rest of America, the Time report was a real eye-opener.

Indeed, after declining for a while after the 9/11 attacks, the immigration torrent is once again on the rise, with 4,000 illegal aliens per day now penetrating the 375-mile border between Arizona and Mexico.

The national security risk posed by the illegal invasion is staggering, notes Time.

"While the vast majority [of illegals] are Mexicans, a small but sharply growing number come from other countries, including those with large populations hostile to the U.S. From Oct. 1 of last year until Aug. 25, along the southwest border, the Border Patrol estimates that it apprehended 55,890 people who fall into the category described officially as other than Mexicans, or OTMs."

The flood of illegals is now so overwhelming that immigration officials say the U.S. no longer has the capacity to process all the lawbreakers.

Asked whether Homeland Security would initiate criminal proceedings against a person who, say, is picked up on four occasions coming into the country illegally, a Border Patrol representative told Time that if it did, the immigration legal system would collapse.

Some of the blame for the recent increase can be laid squarely on the doorstep of the White House.

Notes Time:

"Last January, George W. Bush proposed 'a new temporary-worker program that will match willing foreign workers with willing American employers when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs.' ... In Mexico that statement was widely interpreted to mean that once Mexican citizens cross illegally into the U.S., they would be able to stay and eventually gain permanent residence. Even though the legislation shows no signs of getting through Congress this year, a run to the border has begun."

But Bush's Democratic critics have shown no interest in exploiting the issue, despite polls pointing to a political bonanza for any candidate bold enough to take up the border security cause.

In the meantime, America's illegal immigration time bomb continues to tick away.

Editor's note: