- 'We are overwhelmed'
-
- SELLS, Ariz. -- The Tohono
O'odham Nation here, the second largest Indian reservation in the United
States, is facing a medical crisis.
-
- Every month, more than 50,000 illegal aliens cross the
reservation, which is located in the harsh desert regions of southern Arizona
and shares 76 miles of the international border with Mexico. The illegal
aliens are pushed to the remote regions of southern Arizona by a U.S. border
enforcement strategy aimed at taking control of established ports of entry.
-
-
- The hundreds of illegal immigrants who have been injured
or have fallen victim to dehydration or heat stroke on the reservation
have overloaded its only hospital. The medical costs of illegal aliens
seeking to enter the country have also affected dozens of other hospitals
along the U.S.-Mexico border, at a cost to taxpayers of millions of dollars
a year.
-
-
- "We are a small rural hospital fund4 after the U.S.
Border Patrol initiated a new enforcement strategy to control the flow
of illegal immigrants at urban ports of entry in California. That plan
has since been expanded to Arizona and Texas and has resulted in what the
General Accounting Office said in a recent report was a "shifting
of the illegal alien traffic" to other, more remote areas of the border.
-
- Under federal law, hospitals with emergency-room facilities
are required to treat anyone who shows up for care, including illegal immigrants,
although the government has been silent on who pays the bill for the illegal
immigrants swamping hospitals all along the border.
-
- "We need help," Mr. Rumley
said.
-
- School overcrowding
-
- A similar crisis exists in public education, where illegal
immigration has had a major effect on elementary and secondary school enrollments,
particularly tional right to a free public education. The high court prohibited
schools from adopting policies or taking actions that would deny illegal
aliens access to education based on their immigration status.
-
- The ruling, in a case known as Plyler vs. Doe, overturned
a Texas law that at the time allowed school districts to bar illegal immigrants
or require them to pay tuition.
-
- "By denying these children a basic education,"
the court said, "we deny them the ability to live within the structure
of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that
they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our nation.
-
-
- "It is difficult to understand precisely what the
state hopes to achieve by promoting the perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates
within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment,
welfare and crime," the majority opinion said.
-
- The Urban Institute and others have estimated that 15
percent of all kindergarten through high school children in California
are illegal immigrants, who cost the taxpayers $1.6 billion annually. Elected
officials and education and immigration experts do not have specific numbers
for New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, but believe that between 10 percent
and 15 percent of the total enrollment in those states are illegal aliens.
-
- The high cost of educating illegal immigrants is one
reason California voters passed Proposition 187 in 1994, which called for
the state's schools not to admit illegal aliens. The courts, so far, have
blocked implementation of Proposition 187 and schools in that state still
provide a free public education for school-age children regardless of their
immigration status.
-
- The cost of providing federally mandated health care
and education to illegal immigrants has been estimated at more than $5
billion a year, although Congress lacks any accurate assessment of the
actual costs borne by the states.
-
- Those expenses do not include other mandated costs, including
funds required by the states, cities and counties to prosecute illegal
aliens who commit crimes. One study in 2001 said the 28 border counties
spend $125 million a year to process and prosecute illegal aliens.
-
- It also costs more than $500 million annually to incarcerate
illegal immigrants. Much of that financial burden is being borne by California,
where one in every seven inmates is an illegal alien.
-
- "Not much attention is being paid to the tremendous
costs of mandates imposed on states and local governments that must provide
care to a swelling nu" has been able to keep up with the rising number
of illegal aliens, but he is not optimistic about the future.
-
- "We already have begun discussions on what services
we can cut back, and have deep concerns on how this flood of illegal aliens
will [affect] the services we can offer our own community," Mr. Rumley
said. "This community is very interested in health care and is knowledgeable
about the services we provide.
-
- "We can only squeeze so much out of our program
before it impacts on them," he said.
-
- Last year, 579 illegal immigrants were taken to the Sells
Indian Hospital, compared with 90 in 1990. During the first four months
of 2002, the hospital has treated 200 illegal aliens at an estimated and
uncompensated cost of $500,000.
-
- "The doctors here are doing a very good job with
very limited resources," said Dr. Lois Steele, who supervises the
hospital's medical staff. "It can be fens; and the University Medical
Center in Tucson faces up to $10 million this year "in uncompensated
care to foreign nationals."
-
- Also, Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Tucson
has lost $1 million because of its treatment of illegal immigrants in the
first quarter of fiscal 2002; and the Regional Medical Center Hospital
and Pioneers Memorial Hospital, both in El Centro, Calif., lost more than
$1.5 million last year in their treatment of illegal immigrants..
-
- Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego was forced to
close after losing more than $5 million a year in unreimbursed medical
care, much of it for illegal immigrants.
-
- Many of the problems, however, are not confined to the
border areas.
-
- A Medicaid emergency services program in North Carolina
averages 221 new cases every month involving immigrants, many of them illegal,
at a cost of about $32 million, and a Chicago hospital they want to be
reimbursed for their mounting ó and often debilitating ó
financial losses.
-
- James J. Dickson, head of the Copper Queen Community
Hospital in Bisbee, Ariz., has referred to the rising financial burden
facing hospitals that treat illegal immigrants as "a tragic and contentious
situation."
-
- In testimony earlier this year before a House Government
Reform subcommittee, Mr. Dickson said uncompensated costs attributed to
"Border Patrol apprehensions" and "compassionate entry trauma"
had risen more than 400 percent during the past four years.
-
- Rep. Jim Kolbe, Arizona Republican, and Rep. Ed Pastor,
Arizona Democrat, are trying to win support for a bill to ease the situation.
Introduced last year, the bill called for the Department of Health and
Human Services to set up a five-year pilot program for reimbursements to
hospitals and other health care outlets for emergency treatment given to
illegal immigrantees.
-
- "We are overwhelmed and we need help," he said.
"While I try to be compassionate in my job, the impact of illegal
immigration on our community has been devastating. We are billing the people,
billing the government and getting nowhere."
-
- He added: "Is there a responsible authority out
there?"
-
- Part Three:
- <http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020925-11624656.htm>
- Mexican police join drug lords in border trade
-
- Part One:
- <http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020923-17055898.htm>
- New strategies to slow the flood of illegal immigrants.
-
- http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020924-8536150.htm
-
- ___
-
-
- Comment
-
- From Angel Armando Torres
9-25-2
-
- My family legally emigrated to the US three generations
ago. We are all proud citizens of the United States and love and respect
our national heritage, the Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
-
- It is now estimated there are at least 15 million ILLEGAL
IMMIGRANTS in the US. Our border is a joke. And all the politicians can
talk about is trying to pour more money into services for this massive
army of invasion and occupation. It is a policy of national suicide!
-
- The ONLY responsible action is to call a REAL national
emergency, not like Bush's oil wars, and to deploy the military at the
border and shut it down to this flood of people -- millions who couldn't
care LESS about our nation or its history. Next, we must begin to locate
and expel every single one of the 15 MILLION who are hiding out in this
nation. America is finished unless we act, NOW.
-
- And don't give me any talk about 'racism' -- that's utter
bullsh*t. I don't care what color or nationality these people are, let
them go through the process of legal immigration like my grandparents did.
And don't give me any trash talk about them 'taking jobs Americans don't
want or won't do.'!! What a crock of refried beans!!
-
- And every bi-lingual balllot, driver's license, form,
or other effort to 'make our visitors feel more comfortable' (!) is just
more encouragement...letting them know they can do what they damn well
please here! I hear them talking in stores and many of them are arrogant
and they mock and sneer at our country and its complete lack of backbone.
America is like a fat, dying animal....and these ants have come to feed
on it.
-
- This article from the Times gives you a glimpse at the
size of the problem. Is there one politician of influence who has the strength
and integrity to stand up and act to save America? Sadly, I doubt it.
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