Dangerous Health Issues Associated with Illegal Immigration

"America is fast becoming a Hispanic Zimbabwe."

 

A very sweet and polite lady I do not know, posted a heart-breaking comment to my recent statement that entitlements are benefits that Social Security recipients and veterans collect after having earned and paid for them during a life time of work. On the other hand, welfare such as food stamps, WIC, SNAP, EBT, and earned income tax credit are not entitlements; they are taxpayer-funded handouts or, as economists call them, “negative income taxes,” aimed at funding the “war on poverty.” We have lost this war on poverty in spite of trillions of dollars spent because handouts disincentivize humans to work. Additionally, unskilled jobs or jobs requiring lesser training are harder to find because illegal competitors work for less.

She stated that a Christian nation such as ours should take care of its poor, the sick, and the elderly. I could not agree with her more. She lamented that her disability benefits, after a lifetime of work, $1,200 a month, barely covered her medications and expenses, and she had to go hungry sometimes. She did not qualify for food stamps.

Basic economics teaches that every nation, including one as rich as ours, has finite resources that must be spread to its population, to foreign aid, and to all illegal immigrants currently residing in our country, including the invading waves of unaccompanied illegal minor children and not-so-minor and innocent 18 year olds.

If unearned benefits were denied to illegal aliens, including non-monetary benefits such as free basic education, free or subsidized college education, free medical care, free housing, free phones, then money would be freed to help American citizens who are in dire need of help.

She failed to understand how helping foreigners who cross our borders illegally non-stop hurts our citizens. We must first help the poor in this country. Yes, we are a nation of legal immigrants and we used to be rich, but the horn of plenty is running dry.

We are generous to a fault. Americans and Christian churches provide for the poor around the world who are exploited economically and politically by their own dictatorial governments. Yet these same people, who manage to escape from unbelievable hellholes and tell indescribable stories of horror, vote and elect individuals who keep them dependent on big government. Why would they do that? Because they’ve been conditioned to believe that their families’ wellbeing depends on big government handouts.

We also have the responsibility to care for medically and to educate our own citizens first. We treat our veterans very poorly and with substandard health care but we offer free first class care to illegal aliens. Why exactly have our vets risked their lives to defend our freedoms when we fail to deliver on the promise to care for them?

We waste billions of dollars each year translating everything imaginable in the public arena into many languages, including manuals, textbooks, road signs, voting records, directions, tests, medical services, driver licenses, ESL education, in order to accommodate those who refuse or claim that they cannot learn English.

Adding to the financial burden placed upon American citizens by illegal immigration, the spread of unchecked communicable diseases remains a very serious threat to our public health.

Mexico and Central America harbor TB, malaria, yellow fever, food and waterborne diseases, dengue fever, filariasis, leishmaniasis, onchocerciasis, American trypanosomiasis (Chagas’ disease), and myasis (various forms of intestinal parasites). Mexico’s six border states have over 27 cases of TB per 100,000 people. Legal immigrants have to be evaluated for TB and other diseases before they are allowed into the U.S. Illegal aliens escape such inspection.  CDC Border Infectious Disease Surveillance (BIDS) was established in 1997 with Mexico in order to identify illegals with hepatitis and febrile exantehm (skin rash which accompanies Rubella). “Immigrant women may be at risk for disease such as rubella (due to lack of vaccination) or listeriosis (due to food preparation practices)” - read poor hygiene in food preparation such as not washing dirty hands. In 2003 the CDC stated that 53 percent of reported TB cases were “persons born outside the United States and Mexico had the most numbers of TB cases of the top five countries. http://www.emergencyemail.org/newsemergency/templates/templatestandard1.asp?articleid=91&zoneid=1

According to Titles 8 and 42 of the U.S. Code, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services has the statutory responsibility to prevent the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases into the United States.

For legal immigrants, the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine operates quarantine stations at ports of entry to prevent the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases in the United States.

According to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Secretary of Health and Human Services determines which communicable diseases of public health significance would make a foreign national inadmissible into the U.S. on health-related grounds. There are seven such diseases: chancroid, gonorrhea, granuloma inguinale, lymphogranuloma venereum, syphilis (sexually transmitted diseases), infectious leprosy, active tuberculosis, and infectious syphilis.

Foreign nationals who are not vaccinated against vaccine-preventable diseases, mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, influenza type B and hepatitis B, are also inadmissible into the United States.

Other diseases that would prevent a foreign national from entering the United States are: cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers (Lassa, Marburg, Ebola, Crimean-Congo, South American, and others not yet isolated or named), SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), and “influenza caused by novel or re-emergent influenza viruses that are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic.” (Ruth Ellen Wasem, “Immigration Policies and Issues on Health-Related Grounds for Exclusion,” Congressional Research Service, R40570, April 28, 2014)

Foreign nationals who petition to become legal permanent residents must be tested by civil surgeons chosen by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CDC and the Customs and Border Protection from the DHS operate 20 quarantine stations with doctors on call for all ports of entry.

If foreign nationals who enter our country must go through such a strict health inspection before they are allowed into our country or permitted to become legal permanent residents (LPRs), why then are we turning a deliberate blind eye to the massive exodus from Central America into the U.S.? Who is checking the health of these illegal aliens? What kind of diseases are they bringing in?

The recent manufactured “humanitarian crisis” on the southern border has brought into Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma, thousands of unaccompanied illegal minor children and teenagers, creating chaos and an inability to deal with the mass of humanity that has no place to go. The fact that these foreign nationals are used as political pawns and parents sent their minor children across Mexico is incomprehensible to rational Americans. Many of these children are sick and too young to understand their precarious and perplexing predicament.

ABC 15 reports that in McAllen, Texas, border agents are concerned about contagious infections and viral outbreaks. Reports include scabies, chicken pox, MRSA staph infections, and different viruses. Border agents have actually contracted scabies while coming in contact with these children. A 7-month old baby was shaking with fever. “It's contagious, we are transporting people to different parts of the state and different parts of the country,” Rio Grande Valley Union representative, Chris Cabrera, said. http://www.abc15.com/news/national/immigrants-bringing-diseases-across-border

Whether these children are brought here under an overt plan of social engineering to accelerate the changing demographics in America, it remains to be seen. It is evident that they are not here to provide the cheap labor demanded by farms and companies alike. Worse yet, some of these “children” are gang members with easily identifiable tattoos.

Federal, state, and local governments will have to spend a lot of money to shelter, provide homes, raise, and educate these minors or repatriate them through lengthy and expensive legal battles to reunite them with parents in their home countries. If the regime’s plan is to bring their extended families from Central America here, exacerbating the illegal alien problem, the U.S. welfare rolls will be overwhelmed, and the perennial Democrat voter pool will alter irreversibly the fabric of our society.