They also suffer from massive poverty and hence rely on a lot of free public services funded by the US taxpayer.

We are talking about illegal immigrants here, right? How in the world can they "rely on a lot of free public services funded by the US taxpayer"?

I’m truly wondering about that; that’s simply not possible, is it? If you’re illegal in a country, you can’t possibly ask the government of that country to help you out financially. At the moment you do, the government sees you’re there illegal, and you may be deported.

No?

If we look at the total amount of illegal immigrants, the % is higher, in both cases; 5% in the US (15 million of 300 million), and that would be the equivalent of 800,000 illegals living in the Netherlands (population; 16 million).

High, very high numbers indeed, but that doesn’t take away my post in itself.

As for low wages: sure, but without those low wages, many businesses would go broke. Those are the facts as well. Your economy needs those people. You want to compete in a constantly globalizing world, don’t you?

Now, personally I believe that it should be easier for people to migrate legally and that the government should stop telling employers what to pay their employees, that would also eradicate the problem, but we all know that’s not going to happen.

Illegal Immigrations overall lead the US taxpayer to spend hundreds of billions annually since they don’t have car insurance (so can’t pay if they collide with anyone — this happened to my friend), don’t pay income taxes, easily escape criminal investigations, and get free healthcare at hospitals without any payments.  They also suffer from massive poverty and hence rely on a lot of free public services funded by the US taxpayer.  Yes, many leftists like to use some dubious math to conclude that there is a "net gain" of having illegals and they still pay sales taxes but there are often dishonest tactics used in such statistics because they end up including and excluding various other immigrants at will (remember, legal immigrants to the US are often highly educated and successful) to fudge the numbers.

Looking at all this, an ‘experience’ costing millions is hardly a blip on the screen and definitely worth it.

Cheers.

You under-estimate the number of illegals that are in the United States.  We most probably (according to estimates) have between 12-20 million (or maybe even more) illegals in the US currently.  This figure was recently approaching almost the rate of a million a year.

That is the size of the entire population of the Netherlands living illegally in the US.  Scary thought!  Can you blame them?  Don’t also forget that only the poorest section of society with no prospects for jobs in their respective countries will immigrate illegally through trenches, desert, and run past border patrol.  One thing here would be certain — most of them are uneducated, many illiterate, and quite a few are criminals (since it really pays to be able to transport illegal substances into the US through a porous border).

I don’t think we need to import mass poverty, crime, or a huge class of people whose labor is only sustainable at wages below minimum wage.  The moment they’re legalized, as the lefties are advocating, McCain notwithstanding, many of them will be unsupportable at minimum wage levels and there will be a massive increase in unemployment.

Cheers.