If you’ve ever wondered what kind of busy work the U. S. Government assigns its bloated number of employees to keep them on the rolls, here’s one example.

Aside from anyone who might reside beneath a rock, there is no mystery to any thinking person why America has an illegal immigration problem. But apparently my assessment was incorrect because the Obama administration asked that very question recently, and with that, an investigation had to ensue.

Coincidentally another topic that has been emerging from the shadows of any thoughts of mystery would be accurate, clarified reporting from the mainstream media, especially reporting from large well-known agencies like the Associated Press.

Last month, according to multiple news outlets, the AP attempted to report illegal immigration inscrutability under the title “Illegal Immigrant Families Caught at Border Believe They Can Stay in U.S.”

The Obama administration would have us believe it needed to “understand what might be driving a puzzling surge in the numbers of border crossings that started over the summer.”

The “over the summer” comment would indicate the summer of 2015. That’s very interesting because, for one, FactCheck.org, an Annenberg Public Policy Project, reported in July 2014 that the administration knew of a vast increase in illegal border crossings because the numbers doubled in Fiscal Year 2012 over FY 2011. For FY 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services reported the figures “continued to experience” increases.

The feds predicted 8,200 in 2011, but by 2013 their projection was 60,000. Those statistics hardly support any theory of an unexpected surge that needed to be studied in 2015.

The ordered survey’s facts were collected from interviews between the illegal immigrants and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Intelligence, which reported that “hundreds of people traveling as part of families consistently cited opportunities to obtain permission to stay in the U.S., claim asylum and receive unspecified benefits. Immigrants spoke of ‘permisos,’ or a pass to come into the United States.”

The report also disclosed that while this administration professed that the ones to be saved are “unaccompanied children,” the interviews were done with “345 illegal immigrants in family units.” That confirms and coincides with videos and pictures from news reports of the many adults seen among those trespassing to our country.

On Oct. 30, 2015, U. S. News and World Report cited an AP report stating, “By the end of the 2014 budget year, more than 136,000 people traveling as families and unaccompanied children had been caught crossing the border illegally.”

While it wasn’t nightly news, there are several outlets that publicized the Department of Homeland Security’s formal notice, Solicitation No. BERKS-RFI for “Escort Services for Unaccompanied Alien Children” in 2014. More precisely, on Jan. 29, 2014, the Department of Homeland Security posted under “sources sought:”

* transportation, travel and relocation services;

* transit and Ground Transportation/485991 – Special Needs Transportation;

* via Contract Office Address (provided the Washington D.C. location);

* Primary Contact: Tony Ross (cited his email address and phone number);

* Secondary contact Rachel Ali (same).

The details of compensation are not stated on the posting.

While there is some distracting minutia over the posting being a “request for information” versus a “request for proposal,” the message is unmistakable.

The AP article on the interviews and resulting conclusions did not fail to meet a common standard of ambiguous reporting these days.

After telling of the aforementioned interviews and being told the people are coming to America to reside and receive benefits, the AP stated, “The interviews did not focus on what prompted the immigrants to leave their home countries.”

It’s feeble and duplicitous for the Obama administration to pretend it had to have research to yield what everyone knows: Illegal immigrants cross our borders because they think they’ll be allowed to stay and collect social welfare benefits and sustain their residencies.

America is hailed as the “land of the free” — it just used to have a different interpretation.

Betty Arenson has lived in the SCV since 1968 and describes herself as a conservative who’s concerned about progressives’ politics and their impacts on the country, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She says she is unashamed to own a gun or a Bible, couldn’t care less about the color of the president’s skin, and demands that he uphold his oath to protect and follow the Constitution of the United States in its entirety.