What We Should Fear Most

I’m guessing (actually hoping) that readers don’t know who Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt is.  On his show tonight he interviewed acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and “border czar” Tom Homan, and asked his guest, “How many illegal aliens are there in this country?  Are there 50 million? 150 million?”

Homan estimated 20 million.

According to the groups that study this closely and whose data is highly regarded, e.g. the Pew Research Center:  The unauthorized immigrant population in the United States grew to 11.0 million in 2022, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on the 2022 American Community Survey, the most recent year available. The increase from 10.5 million in 2021 reversed a long-term downward trend from 2007 to 2019. This is the first sustained increase in the unauthorized immigrant population since the period from 2005 to 2007.  However, the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2022 was still below the peak of 12.2 million in 2007.

Whatever.

Yes, the MAGA crowd is completely convinced that criminal immigrants are flooding our borders and ruining our society.  But that’s not my point.

Rather, it’s this: Newsmax is suggesting to its dimwit viewers that the 150 million figure, about half of the nation’s population, might be plausible.  They want us to believe that when we leave our driveways, shop for groceries, and drop our kids off at school, for every actual citizen we meet, there is an approximately equal number of illegal aliens.

That’s the level of ignorance we live around.