"Call any journalist, pundit, anchor, strategist or lobbyist and ask:
1. How many illegal immigrants are in the United States?
2. What is your source for that number?
Almost without exception he or she will answer:
1. 11 million.
2. The Pew Research Center.
For a decade now, no number has been given greater certitude and less investigation than that.
Not even the number of planets in our solar system has enjoyed such constancy and acceptance.
Since so much of the national discourse, debate, culture and treasure hinges on the accuracy of the number 11 million, one would think that some enterprising reporter would seek his Pulitzer by validating or debunking it.
Nope.Just unquestioned faith.
No curiosity as to the source for that iconic value, or the methodology creating it.
So the correct answers are:
1. Nobody really knows.
2. It’s not Pew.
Suppose you were tasked with determining how many left-handed Swedes are in the U.S.
A good statistician would come up with a survey asking:
Are you a Swede?
Are you left-
handed?
Simple, no? You’d come up with a pretty good number after a few adjustments such as discounting the too-many Vikings in Minnesota and excluding the ambidextrous and amputees.
Now let’s give the task to the U.S. Census Bureau, a congressionally funded agency headed by a political appointee.
That simple survey takes on new impedimenta..."
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