The Immigration ‘Clown Car’ – While Hardly a Laughing Matter, the Joke Is on Us

We have all seen the “clown car” at the circus where a compact car rolls into the center ring. A car door pops open and many clowns emerge, cavorting around the ring and eventually disappearing behind the center scene.

The point to the gag is to entertain the audience. The entertainment is provided through the impossibility of what the audience witnesses, a seemingly endless stream of clowns exiting a diminutive car.

News reports about the number of illegal aliens who are purportedly present in the United States sometimes strike me as a variant of the circus clown car, but there is nothing entertaining about this.

For years, even after numerous accounts of floods of illegal aliens, including unaccompanied minors charging across the U.S.-Mexican border, the number of aliens reported to be present in the U.S. has never increased.

During the administration of George W. Bush, it was estimated that there were approximately 11 million illegal aliens present in the country. Now more than a decade later, the number of illegal aliens reported to be present here remains unchanged. We are being played for fools.

Here is what you need to consider.

It has been estimated that nearly half of all illegal aliens present in the U.S. did not run our borders and enter without inspection.

Not long ago an official government report noted that annually approximately 500,000 aliens who were admitted into the country as nonimmigrants – that is, aliens who were supposed to remain for a limited period of time – overstayed their authorized period of admission or otherwise violated the terms of their admission. My September 3, 2015, article, “Keeping Track of Visa Violators,” addressed this aspect of the dysfunctional immigration system.

In the mid-1980s as the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was being proposed, it was reported that about 1 million illegal aliens would emerge from the “shadows” to participate in that wrong-headed amnesty program. IRCA was enacted in 1986, and between 3.5 and 4 million illegal aliens ultimately gained lawful status through that program.

Some were criminals and some went on to become involved in terror attacks, including the first World Trade Center bombing of 1993.

If history were to repeat itself, it is entirely possible that more than 30 million illegal aliens would participate in any massive legalization program. Many of these aliens are likely not even present in the U.S., but would enter long after the cutoff date and falsely claim to have been physically present by whatever date such legislation would establish.

There would be no way to determine when these aliens actually entered the country, because there would be no way to conduct in-person interviews with so many “undocumented” individuals who claim to have no official identity documents. There would be no way to conduct any field investigations either. Our officials would be forced to take the information contained in their applications as being truthful and accurate.

We may never know their true identities, including their true countries of citizenship or backgrounds. This would create a nightmare for national security and public safety. And as bad as all this is, there is another factor not discussed in the media.

Each and every alien who would be granted lawful status would have the absolute right to petition the U.S. government to allow their spouses and minor children to legally and immediately enter the country. The newly admitted children, most of whom lack English language abilities, would likely number in the millions and would all be enrolled in already beleaguered schools across America.

With all of the justifiable concerns about “sustainability,” imagine the impact that adding potentially tens of millions of lawful immigrants would have on schools and education, our crumbling healthcare system and various components of critical infrastructure of towns and cities from coast to coast and border to border, including water supplies, public transportation and overcrowded highways.

The economic impact would similarly be devastating as more workers competed for scarce jobs, further displacing American workers and suppressing wages. Ever more people would come to depend on economic safety net programs as the deficit climbs still higher.

These are hardly “laughing matters” and could not, in fact, be more serious. The only “clowns” to be found where immigration is concerned are the politicians who lack the integrity to represent the best interests of America and Americans.