Yes it would; because the housing boom in Vegas, at it’s height, acted as a self-perpetuating houses=jobs=houses=jobs machine, until the bubble burst, making the local construction trades the hardest and deepest hit segment of the local economy and those trades had a very high component of illegal employment. It is difficult to imagine the reduction in construction jobs NOT comprising a very high percentage of Vegas increases in unemployment.
Where they worked etc. is beside the point of what I said. If there were very few drawing food stamps before the crash then it would not take many new cases to account for a 173 percent increase. It is like the guy who brags that he made three times as much money last year as the year before but he leaves out the part where he only made five hundred dollars the year before so three times that is only fifteen hundred. It makes no difference about the details, I am only referring to mathematics. Without knowing the base figure the fact of a 173 percent increase tells me very little. Capice?
You may very well know the situation and be able to estimate how many illegals are on food stamps but that has no bearing on my statement which concerns only simple arithmetic.