When you examine the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform in any detail the one thing that strikes is the recurring theme of numbers. The big number is the estimated number of illegal and undocumented in the country. The smaller number, though no less crucial, is the numerical breakdown in Congress any time that reform is posted on the daily agenda.

In recent days there have been conflicting signals in this latter category. Excluding the president for a moment, the White House seems to think that there are not enough votes in the House of Representatives and Senate right now to pass a meaningful reform bill. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill apparently disagree and seem to believe that they can muster enough votes even in the face of hostile Republicans and skittish Democrats – as many as 40 of the them in the House, who are worried what the folks back home in the district might do in November of next year should they back legalization of an undocumented population that roughly matches the population of the Netherlands.

Add to all this a third number, or set of numbers. That's the number of unemployed Americans. Most unfortunately, it's rising at an alarming rate.

It would have to be the case that the White House takes this jobless number into close consideration when it contemplates reform because it is an obvious argument against it as far as not a few legislators are concerned.

It's likely the case that unemployment will continue to rise into 2010. President Obama now says he wants to see a reform bill by the end of this year or early next. That means that a bill potentially surfaces against the backdrop of jobless figures that may be the worst for decades.

But it may not be the total number that the White House takes its cue from so much as the trend. If the growth in unemployment begins to slow down, the White House will argue that the economy is starting to mend, at which point it will add in the argument that reform will, in one especially significant way, speed up recovery by adding millions of people to the tax rolls, while reducing the internal cost of pursuing the undocumented.

So it's numbers, numbers and more numbers.

And there's a fourth number now coming into view. It is two. The two are the members of the Senate most likely to combine to pen a bill that will bring in reform. The Democrat of the pair will be Chuck Schumer, who now chairs the Senate's immigration subcommittee.

The Republican? Well, John McCain is being mentioned, though he is lately taking an increasing strong stance on border control. But of course McCain has been reform's champion before in the context of the ultimately doomed McCain/Kennedy bill.

So, at the end of this long and tortuous process, if there is an end at all, will we be talking about the McCain/Schumer reform bill.

Time, which of course is all about numbers too, will tell.