> Your comment might be correctly phrased as "leaving > the hairy question of illegal immigration aside..." No, it really couldn't. I'm replying to your e

> Your comment might be correctly phrased as "leaving > the hairy question of illegal immigration aside..." No, it really couldn't. I'm replying to your economic fallacy of asserting that "[a] program for a million people will cost more [than a program for one person]". Of course that's literally true in terms of absolute dollar amounts, but it's not true in the sense that actually matters. I.e. if you had a million extra people in your country would they be a net drain on your economy, or net contributors? To answer that question it doesn't matter that they're illegal immigrants or legal immigrants. You can't assume that just because someone's illegal they're more likely to be a net drain on the economy, actually the reverse is probably likelier to be true, since an illegal immigrant will seek work but can't make use of social services provided to people legally in the country. > I'm not assuming that [illegal immigrants are a > net drain on the economy] at all. I really hate to put words into someone's mouth, but the most generous reading of what you're saying really does sound like that's what you're actually saying. You're asserting that having X number of "illegal" immigrants is going to have some linear drain on the economy as a function of X, it's not at all clear that that relationship exists in any sense, i.e. it could be a gain not a drain, and it could be non-linear.