Kerby Anderson

Most Americans do not know how bad the border crisis is, and that may also explain why the recent omnibus spending bill provides funding for the wrong cities. A Harvard-Harris poll asked Americans a simple question: “How many border crossings by illegal immigrants do you think are occurring each year?” The correct answer would be 3 million.

Unfortunately, 16 percent guessed fewer than 100,000 illegal border crossers entered the US in a year. Another 21 percent estimated that somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 entered the US. If you add all the numbers up, you find that 87 percent of Americans underestimated the number of illegal border crossers.

These percentages invite two questions. First, how are so many Americans so ignorant of the actual crisis at the border? The answer is simple. Most news organizations rarely cover the border crisis.

Second, would more Americans favor different policies if they understood what was happening at the border? After the pollsters gave them the accurate information, two-thirds (67%) then said they would favor “newer, stricter policies to reduce the flow of people coming across the border.”

This might also explain why in the omnibus spending bill, much of the funding will apparently go to places like New York City to reimburse them for services provided to the 30,000 migrants that ended up there. By contrast, the mayor of El Paso, Texas declared an emergency after 80,000 migrants were released into the region.

When the establishment media fails to cover the border crisis, the American people are ignorant of the problem and politicians often allocate funds in the wrong way.