Personally, I think the bulk of the existing illegal population is comprised of economic migrants and their chain migration families.

Perhaps you are confusing your terminology? "Chain migration" is the practice of coming here, getting your citizenship, and then sponsoring family members legally. 1poorlady is doing this with her sister (which, for her preference rating, was expected to happen in about 18 years...she still has about 8 years, though I haven't checked the preference recently). For the record, Melania did that for her parents, IIRC.

That is most certainly NOT illegal, and therefore not "existing illegal population". Also, the asylum-seekers are NOT illegal. So the "bulk of the illegal population" isn't really illegal. They are asylum-seekers (legal). Hopefully you're just a bit sloppy with your terminology, and not back-sliding after all the work albaby did to explain where most of the statistics coming from.

Whether or not you believe the standards for asylum are appropriate is a different topic, even if a valid topic.