- The risk to the US population and Public
Health is of utmost importance regarding Illegals. A country has an obligation
to its citizens to protect the health of all of its people. In my opinion,
the US is not protecting the population. At what point must compassion
for our fellow human beings end and protection of a legitimate populaton
begn? When we have facts, such as shown below, that infectous diseases
are spreading due to illegals aliens, it is time for the government to
stop the influx of people carrying those infections.
-
- I would have no objection to Doctors
Without Borders or other international and US organizations helping infected
people around the world in their own countries, but I do object to those
infected being allowed to simply walk in to the US and freely spread disease...and
bankrupt much of our public
- health care infrastructure in the process.
-
- Humanitarian help is wonderful and most
Americans favor the efforts of those who go abroad and help the millions
of afflicted people. We are only objecting to infected people entering
the US illegally and putting the US population at risk.
-
- Our health care is in crisis and many
people who become infected in the US as a result of contact with illegals
cannot afford health care themselves. What happens when a US citizen contracts
an illness like TB or HCV and cannot afford to seek treatment? How many
middle class Americans will lose everything they own, homes, cars etc.
to pay for health care and expensive medication for diseases that they
contract from illegals?
-
- Patricia Doyle
-
-
-
- Illegal Immigration And Public
Health
- Fairus.org
- 5-4-6
-
- The impact of immigration on our public
health is often overlooked. Although millions of visitors for tourism and
business come every year, the foreign population of special concern is
illegal residents, who come most often from countries with endemic health
problems and less developed health care. They are of greatest consequence
because they are responsible for a disproportionate share of serious public
health problems, are living among us for extended periods of time, and
often are dependent on U.S. health care services.
-
- Public Health Risks
-
- Because illegal immigrants, unlike those
who are legally admitted for permanent residence, undergo no medical screening
to assure that they are not bearing contagious diseases, the rapidly swelling
population of illegal aliens in our country has also set off a resurgence
of contagious diseases that had been totally or nearly eradicated by our
public health system.
-
- According to Dr. Laurence Nickey, director
of the El Paso heath district "Contagious diseases that are generally
considered to have been controlled in the United States are readily evident
along the border ... The incidence of tuberculosis in El Paso County is
twice that of the U.S. rate. Dr. Nickey also states that leprosy, which
is considered by most Americans to be a disease of the Third World, is
readily evident along the U.S.-Mexico border and that dysentery is several
times the U.S. rate ... People have come to the border for economic opportunities,
but the necessary sewage treatment facilities, public water systems, environmental
enforcement, and medical care have not been made available to them, causing
a severe risk to health and well being of people on both sides of the border.1
-
- "The pork tapeworm, which thrives
in Latin America and Mexico, is showing up along the U.S. border, threatening
to ravage victims with symptoms ranging from seizures to death. ... The
same [Mexican] underclass has migrated north to find jobs on the border,
bringing the parasite and the sickness"cysticercosis"its eggs
can cause[.] Cysts that form around the larvae usually lodge in the brain
and destroy tissue, causing hallucinations, speech and vision problems,
severe headaches, strokes, epileptic seizures, and in rare cases death.2
-
- The problem, however, is not confined
to the border region, as illegal immigrants have rapidly spread across
the country into many new economic sectors such as food processing, construction,
and hospitality services.
-
- Typhoid struck Silver Spring, Maryland,
in 1992 when an immigrant from the Third World (who had been working in
food service in the United States for almost two years) transmitted the
bacteria through food at the McDonald,s where she worked. River blindness,
malaria, and guinea worm, have all been brought to Northern Virginia by
immigration.3
-
- Contrary to common belief, tuberculosis
(TB) has not been wiped out in the United States, mostly due to illegal
migration. In 1995, there was an outbreak of TB in an Alexandria high school,
when 36 high-school students caught the disease from a foreign student.4
The four greatest immigrant magnet states have over half the TB cases in
the U.S.5 In 1992, 27 percent of the TB cases in the United States were
among the foreign-born; in California, it was 61 percent of the cases;
in Hawaii, 83 percent; and in Washington state, 46 percent. The Queens,
New York, health department attributed 81 percent of new TB cases in 2001
to immigrants.
-
- Costs of Medical Care
-
- Immigrants are often uninsured and underinsured.
Forty-three percent of noncitizens under 65 have no health insurance. That
means there are 9.4 million uninsured immigrants, a majority of whom are
in the country illegally, constituting 15 percent of the total uninsured
in the nation in the mid-1990s.6 The cost of the medical care of these
uninsured immigrants is passed onto the taxpayer, and strains the financial
stability of the health care community.
-
- Another problem is immigrants, use of
hospital and emergency services rather than preventative medical care.
For example, utilization rate of hospitals and clinics by illegal aliens
(29 percent) is more than twice the rate of the overall U.S. population
(11 percent).7
-
- As a result, the costs of medical care
for immigrants are staggering. The estimated cost of unreimbursed medical
care in 2004 in California was about $1.4 billion per year. In Texas, the
estimated cost was about $.85 billion, and in Arizona the comparable estimate
was $.4 billion per year.8
-
- One of the frequent costs to U.S. taxpayers
is delivery of babies to illegal alien mothers. A California study put
the number of these anchor baby deliveries in the state in 1994 at 74,987,
at a cost of $215 million. At that time, those births constituted 36 percent
of all Medi-Cal births, and they have grown now to substantially more than
half or the annual Medi-Cal budget. In 2003, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies
born in San Joaquin General Hospital,s maternity ward were anchor babies.
Medical in 2003 had 760,000 illegal alien beneficiaries, up from 2002,
when there were 470,000.9
-
- Endnotes
-
- Statement on behalf of the American Medical
Association to the Committee on Public Works and Transportation, U.S. House
of Representatives, May 7, 1991.
- Houston Chronicle, November 3, 1992.
- Influx of Exotic Diseases Keep Doctors
Hopping, Fairfax Journal, May 8, 1992.
- "Health officials say there is a
correlation between increases in tuberculosis cases in recent years and
the influx of residents from countries where disease prevention is substandard.
"36 Students in Alexandria Test Positive for TB Exposure, Washington
Post, June 8, 1995.
- "Taking it to the Streets"
Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1993.
- Employee Benefit Research Group study,
January 1995. "The study suggests the very high degree to which that
population [illegal aliens] is contributing to uncompensated costs. EBRI
President Dallas Salisbury, Washington Post, January 25, 1995.
- Assessment of Potential Impact of Undocumented
Person on National Health Reform, National Health Foundation, April 14,
1993.
- See FAIR publications.
- Madeleine Peiner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.
"Illegal Aliens and American Medicine, Journal of American Physicians
and Surgeons, Spring 2005.
-
- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
-
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases"
message board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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