A critical bit of “conventional wisdom,” long treasured by the Leftmedia, the Democrat Party, and the RINO wing of the GOP, has been debunked. Three college professors, Yale’s Edward Kaplan, colleague Jonathan Feinstein and MIT’s Mohammad Fazel-Zarandi, conducted a study and discovered what most Americans unpersuaded by progressive propaganda have suspected all along: The number of illegal aliens residing in America is likely double the long-stated estimate of 11 million.

And no one was more surprised by this “discovery” than the professors themselves. “Our original idea was just to do a sanity check on the existing number,” said Kaplan, an operations research professor. “Instead of a number which was smaller, we got a number that was 50 percent higher. That caused us to scratch our heads.”

Head-scratching inevitably occurs when “sanity” — along with common sense — takes a back seat to ideology. For the last decade, Americans have been brow-beaten with that estimate of 11 million, and those who dared to question it were labeled as nativist, xenophobic, and/or hysterical. Yet how that number became the “conventional wisdom” is indicative. “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,” wrote columnist William Campenni in 2015.

Media echo-chamber, anyone?

Pew gets its data from the Department of Homeland Security, which gets its data from the Census Bureau — the one Barack Obama shifted control of from the Commerce Department to the White House prior to the 2010 census. The Census Bureau bases its calculations on its annual American Community Survey. “It’s been the only method used for the last three decades,” says Fazel‐Zarandi.

A survey? How many illegal aliens would willingly admit their illegality to a government bureaucrat? Leftists must know the answer, because they’re furious that Donald Trump’s administration might include a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census. The Census determines the proportional number the of seats in the House and the level of federal funding each state would receive, and those states where illegals pad the population — and diminish the value of citizenship — would undoubtedly take a hit.

“Immigration itself was weaponized,” explains columnist Victor Davis Hanson with regard to the machinations perpetrated by the Obama administration. “Notions of legality, meritocracy and diversity in adjudicating immigration gave way to welcoming in as many as possible who might empower the Obama political agenda of ethnic tribalization.”

Better known as “fundamental transformation.”

The professors’ data was extrapolated from the number of deportations, border apprehensions, visa overstays, death rates, and immigration rates from the years 1990 through 2016. The professors insist the number of illegals is higher than expected (by whom?), due to the cheap-labor policies embraced by Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Moreover, they insist the inflow of illegals leveled off following the economic meltdown in 2008.

Leveled off? Does that mean three straight years of record-breaking “border surges” during the Obama administration, at least two years (2016 and 2017) where an average of 600,000 people overstayed their visas, this year’s record breaking border surge of 16,000 “family units” in August alone, and the more than 2,000 illegals apprehended during a three-day period at a single Texas border crossing, have been offset by an equal number of illegals who have died or repatriated themselves?

More ambiguity? A 2016 DHS report insists 54% of those who entered America illegally between border crossings got caught in FY2015. How does one compute the number of people who have completely avoided scrutiny?

Everything is an estimate for the simplest of reasons: Our borders remain sieve-like, tracking visa overstayers is a technological nightmare, and America’s ruling class remains beholden to the globalist agenda. It is an agenda that champions “comprehensive immigration reform” — which looks far less palatable when an ostensibly “benign” total of only 11 million illegals suddenly mushrooms to double that number.

Or more. The figure of 22 million is the mean estimate between 16 million and 29 million.

Despite what amounts to a de facto invasion, professor Kaplan reveals the utter bankruptcy that remains the prevalent mindset of far too many elitists. “You have the same number of crimes but now spread over twice as many people as was believed before, which right away means that the crime rate among undocumented immigrants is essentially half whatever was previously believed,” he declared.

Not undocumented immigrants, professor. Illegal aliens. And if there is a more repugnant argument than the notion that there is some “palatable” number of wholly avoidable murders, rapes, etc., Americans should abide to accommodate progressive ideological sensibilities, one is hard-pressed to imagine what it could be.

Kaplan uses the same argument with regard to jobs. “Whatever job displacement there has been happened with twice as many undocumented immigrants as we thought. That causes you to rethink just how much pressure there is.” Or maybe it causes millions of Americans who’ve endured flat wages for more than 20 years, who’ve been “downsized” in favor of foreigners who’ll work for less money, or can’t find a job altogether, to become infuriated by the reality that their life-altering problems can be trivialized with weasel words like “displacement” and “pressure.” Maybe they wonder why so many of their fellow Americans would not only marginalize their futures but tell them they’re bigoted if they don’t buy into that marginalization.

Last week, the New York Post ran a story about a stabbing spree at a Queens boarding house, one that accommodated “tourist babies” — as in places where pregnant foreigners go to have children who will automatically become Americans, and eventually bring their extended family here via chain migration. This adds an estimated 40,000 babies per year to the nation’s citizenship rolls in a nation with an already record-breaking foreign-born population of 55 million.

So what’s Congress up to? The House is attempting to pass a resolution stating that “allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of United States citizens.”

Disqualifying the vote totals of such renegade states in national elections? Funding for a wall or E-Verify? Defunding sanctuary cities and holding politicians in those cities civilly or criminally liable for defying federal immigration law? Precipitating a challenge as to whether or not “birth tourism,” a.k.a. “anchor babies” comports with the 14th Amendment?

Nowhere to be found.

Chris Chmielenski, deputy director of the low-immigration advocacy group NumbersUSA, believes the study is an outlier. And if it’s not? “If you’re looking at doubling the illegal immigration population every 10 years, you’ve got serious, serious problems,” he said. Not serious. Catastrophic — and wholly self-inflicted by elitists who never bear the consequences of the policies they impose on the “little people.”