The Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler awards “Four Pinocchios” today to the claim made by the Obama administration, and by several media outlets, that George H. W. Bush shielded 1.5 million illegal aliens, or 40 percent of the illegal-alien population, from deportation with a 1990 executive action.

President Obama reiterated the talking point, which he cites as precedent for his own action, in an interview airing on This Week Sunday:

George H.W. Bush — about 40 percent of the undocumented persons, at the time, were provided a similar kind of relief as a consequence of executive action.

But, as Mark Krikorian pointed out last week on NRO, this number is wildly inflated. (The action Bush took is also not comparable to Obama’s for other reasons that Mark outlines.)

Kessler notes that the only source of the claim seems to be an inaccurate estimate from an official who now claims he was misquoted “that appeared on Page 3 of the metro section of the New York Times nearly a quarter-century ago.” In reality, the number of people who applied for protection under Bush’s “family fairness” policy was about 50,000; when the program was supplanted by legislation that broadened the criteria, 140,000 more people took advantage of it.

Kessler sums it up:

The 1.5 million figure is too fishy to be cited by either the White House or the media. . . .
The number was buried in a single news article — and just because it was in the New York Times does not mean it was true. . . .
In the end, 200,000 amounts to about 6 percent of the illegal immigrant population at the time, not 40 percent. Small wonder the White House prefers the larger number.