- If anyone needs another reason to oppose illegal immigration,
to which the Bush Administration continues to turn a blind eye, how about
the spread of a deadly communicable disease?
-
- According to an essay in the current issue of the Journal
of the American Medical Association, a form of tuberculosis that has shown
itself resistant to several drugs has invaded California and is present
primarily in the state's "foreign-born" population, a politically
correct euphemism for illegal aliens.
-
- Dr. Reuben Granich, a lead investigator for the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), writes that treatment for multidrug-resistant
TB, called MDR-TB, is expensive, costing between $200,000 and $1.2 million
per person over a period of 18 to 24 months.
-
- The CDC's Web page says TB was in decline in the United
States, but that it increased between 1985 and 1992. Nearly 15,000 cases
of TB were diagnosed last year, with California reporting the largest number
of cases. Although the total number of TB cases has declined in recent
years, the study says the drug-resistant cases "did not significantly
change over the study period," causing concern among medical professionals.
-
- The official administration position is that America
welcomes the "foreign born" into this country, even those who
have broken our laws to get here. We give their children free education
supplied by law-abiding taxpayers and we give them free medical care at
our hospitals, which is subsidized by legal residents through rising prices
for health insurance and increased hospital costs (or the closing of hospitals,
as is occurring in California).
-
- Granich, who works for a federal agency and might be
expected not to disagree with the Bush Administration's line on illegal
immigrants, cannot tiptoe around the obvious. He writes that those illegals
found to have drug-resistant TB were mostly (84 percent) "foreign
born" and were twice as likely to transmit the disease to others.
-
- The study did not characterize the "foreign born"
patients as illegal aliens, but what other conclusion is to be reached
when the study specifies that most of them came from Mexico or the Philippines
and were in the U.S. less than five years when their infection was discovered?
-
- In 1993, 29 percent of TB cases in the U.S. were diagnosed
among the "foreign born." Last year that figure had risen to
53 percent. The disease isn't coming by wire transfer, but by human carriers
coming across our borders.
-
- Granich says the presence of this highly communicable
disease, which is transmitted through the air mainly by coughing and sneezing,
does not warrant the closing of the borders.
-
- If the threat of terrorism and a contagious disease like
TB is not sufficient to get the government to stop harassing native-born
Americans at airports and begin concentrating on shutting down the flow
of illegal aliens across our borders, what is?
-
- Do politicians so crave the votes of people who break
our laws and the approval of Mexican President Vicente Fox that they are
willing to jeopardize the health and welfare of the legally residing citizens
of this country?
-
- More of us seem interested in seeing that the laws are
obeyed, even if government officials who are sworn to enforce them will
not. In addition to the recent efforts by members of the "Minutemen
Project," who stationed themselves along the Arizona-Mexico border
and reduced the flow of illegals to a trickle, the police chief of New
Ipswich, N.H., has come up with a novel idea.
-
- W. Garrett Chamberlain, 36, is arresting illegal Mexican
aliens on charges of trespassing. Chamberlain told The Washington Post,
"I'm just saying: 'Wait a minute. We're on heightened alert and it's
post-9/11, and I'm going to let an illegal immigrant who I don't know from
Adam just walk away? . If I find you are in my country illegally, I'm not
going to worry about political correctness. I will detain you."
-
- Let's put Chief Chamberlain in charge of the Department
of Homeland Security.
-
- Illegal immigration is a political, social and medical
issue that could come back to bite Republicans in the 2006 elections and
in 2008 if they don't get a grip on it.
-
- ©2005 Tribune Media Services
-
- Patricia A. Doyle, PhD
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at: http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?
Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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