And that immigrants do not get most entitlements because the system doesn't work that way seems flawed. The official numbers say that there are 14 million illegal immigrants in the US, and the trustworthiness of those numbers is questionable. It is clear the system is not working properly.

And if Cato wants to talk in public Twitter they should expect questions and answers. And I'm not talking about trolls and haters, but when they respond to intelligent, respectful, high-quality comments from people who know about the subject, with snark and arrogance, with emotional arguments, and sleazy and disingenuous replies, pretending to not understand simple concepts, I don't believe that they are acting in good faith or care about the truth.

I understand that the US has Jus Solis and as such the children of immigrants are legally equivalent to the children of citizens, but that doesn't mean that the economic effect of the children of immigrants should be attributed to all citizens. There is an implicit question and answer of whether immigration is economically beneficial, and the effects of immigration include the children. If the child of every immigrant raised the deficit by a hundred million one would be crazy to support immigration, even if the parents reduced the deficit by a million. Not so in Cato's analysis. It would in fact make increasing immigration look better. For this reason separating between the children of immigrants and non-immigrants would be the correct thing to do, even if legally they are the same. It would be more difficult to do but not impossible at all. If Congress does not collect the data, Cato could do it themselves, or convince Congress to collect it. It is not impossible, they just refuse because it would harm their favored proposal.

Changing the methodology would lead to greater clarity. If in reality it's the opposite of what I believe and the second generation is better than non-immigrants, it wouldn't show with this methodology. If the second generation is better than even the first, we wouldn't know. If the second gen is equal to non-immigrants we don't know. More knowledge is always better. Data may support infinite hypothesis, but more data will lead to more correct ones.

As for my belief that the second generation is a drain, I know it's not very scientific, but it's based on a few things: I believe at least 30% of people are net taxtakers, though I've seen claimed up to 80%(probably due to pensions and elderly healthcare). Stereotipically latino immigrants, who would be farm workers, meat packers and construction workers would have children with similarly low socioeconomic status, and they are more than let's say, software developers with H1B. And Cato's behaviour: If the whole truth benefitted them they would use it. It's very reasonable to suspect they are a net drain, enough that any studies should not assume without looking that they aren't.

It is not the same as if citizens had children, because no matter if their children are fiscally beneficial or not, we have no option but to accept them. For immigrants it is different, one would only allow immigration if it benefits the citizens, and their children might change the answer. In this case, you can say that the costs of increasing the number of children of such socioeconomic status is greater than the benefits brought by their immigrant parents.

But in this analysis, the worse the children of immigrants are, the better raising immigration looks. This would not be a problem if this article instead of citizen/non-citizen used first, second gen, and non-immigrant, as is the standard. It would be more clear and informative. But Cato refuses.

Such analysis generally distinguish between non-immigrants, first generation immigrants, and second generation immigrants. Rarely third generation too, and also separates based on the education level, legal or illegal, and country of origin.

Given than in western countries immigrants generally remain and have children who will get government assistance such as free education, one should take into account second generation data as part of immigration.

I am no erudite who has read a million papers, but I haven't seen any analysis for Europe that compares citizens and non-citizens, and for good reason, it's not informative. Here for example two different groups are mixed, non-immigrants and second generation immigrants. Given the lower socioeconomic status of most immigrants, the greater aid given to the second generation might eliminate any savings caused by the first generation, but in this article the cost of second gen is used to make the first generation look better compared to non-immigrants.

This might have been a mistake, but people on Twitter explained it to senior Cato members, and their answers make it clear that it was not a mistake but a deliberate decision. So they are deceivers, even if they do not technically say anything false.

As for aid, the arrogance in assuming the aid was mandatory and failing to give what you want the way you want is wrong and evil, does not endear people to aid you. And besides, any delays in aid had a much lesser effect than the EU countries buying russian gas at exorbitant prices. The sanctions imposed were immediately sabotaged by buying russian gas.

Most illegal immigrants are only in the US for economic reasons. Don't give them any welfare, make hiring them actually illegal and punish the companies that hire them. When this happens, many of them will just go back to their country.

Then if somehow their countries refused to take in their own citizens, they can just be sanctioned, or stop being given foreign aid by the US.

The only reason you believe that mass deportations are impossible and would cause an apocalyse, is because you really want it to be true.

Through the ages people tried to answer the great mysteries with great answers, but they didn't achieve anything. Truth should have predictive power, and understanding of great enigmas should help explain lesser ones, like the laws of gravity can calculate the fall of an object, but these answers haven't done something useful. But lesser questions have been answered with lesser and less interesting answers, and they successfully predicted stuff. Through answering many small questions, we now know why rain happens, why the seasons change, or how eels and flies come into existence. And the domain of the great mysteries was reduced, bit by bit.

Trying to answer the great mysteries, like the origin of existence, is building a house from the roof. Religious experiences and the numinous can be better explained by psychiatry and medicine than by theology.

There might still be something not more, but greater, than our understanding. It is probable, since our intuition and our senses are limited. But if there is, it would be equal to a colour we don't see due to lacking color cones. We might be unable to intuitively explain how it's like to see color to a colorblind person, but it's not divine or magical, greater than the material world and what we can measure and calculate; it's just greater than our eyes or our vocabulary.

That is at least my belief. It was hard to write somewhat concisely my beliefs, but I think I did a good enough job. I must say I'm not opposed to trying to answer the great mysteries, it's very similar to when the ancient greek philosophers tried to find the origin of matter. But I do not believe real truth can be obtained that way.

Also, I must say that your comments in this post were great. A perspective very different to the common HN point of view, thought-provoking and in-depth. I also learned the word numinous, which makes me happy as I have now a word to describe something I couldn't before.

Also, was he actually a fun sophist? You seem to have read a lot so I would ask for your opinion. Is he worth reading for entertainment?

The same happens with the other team.

It's disappointing but predictable.