Illegal Immigration Can Make You Sick

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by Lynn Woolley
Illegal Immigration Can Make You Sick
June 05, 2007 01:52 PM EST



Let me be the first to thank Andrew Speaker – the man who has seemingly put hundreds of people in contact with his drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis. Mr. Speaker has accomplished what the late Dr. Madeleine Cosman couldn’t do. He has made this nation conscious of re-emerging diseases.

Before she passed away some months ago, Dr. Cosman, a medical lawyer, campaigned tirelessly to warn us about old diseases making comebacks in the United States. Diseases common in third-world poverty and medical ignorance are returning, she explained, at the same time that hoards of illegals crash our border without medical screenings. Among them: tuberculosis, Chagas disease, leprosy, Dengue fever, polio, malaria, hepatitis, and Marburg disease.

It’s tuberculosis, though, that’s now embedded in the national consciousness, thanks to Andrew Speaker’s recent travel odyssey during which he spent almost two weeks moving about the United States, Europe, and Canada while fully aware that he had the disease.

What Mr. Speaker has is known in medical circles as MDR. It stands for Multi-Drug Resistant tuberculosis or Extensively Drug Resistant (XDR) which is rare in the United States with just 49 cases detected since 1993, 12 of those being fatal, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The World Health Organization (WHO) web site states “Essentially, drug-resistance arises in areas with poor TB control programs.”

Exactly.

Tuberculosis in the United States, if not eradicated, has been under control for years because of standards of hygiene in this country and due to the correct use of such wonder drugs as Isoniazid and Rifampin. But when drugs are used improperly, MDR strains can result. According to Dr. Cosman, 66 percent of all TB cases coming to America originate in Mexico, the Philippines, and Vietnam. We may never know where Mr. Speaker became infected with his MDR, but that information would certainly be of interest.

What’s so scary about tuberculosis is that it is spread through the air. All an infected person must do is talk, cough, or sneeze – and droplet nuclei containing “tuburcle bacilli” are expelled into the air.

That’s why, under United States immigration law, legal immigrants have to undergo screening, demonstrating that they are free of communicable disease. As Dr. Cosman wrote, “When my grandpa came to America, he kissed the ground of New York’s Ellis Island, then he stripped naked and coughed hard.” Immigrants in those days were tested for disease – especially tuberculosis and those who were infected went back to the old country.

How different things are today with our porous borders and hundreds-of-thousands of “migrants” streaming in each year with no criminal background checks and certainly with no health screenings. Perhaps most are basically honest, free of disease, and are sneaking in just to “do the jobs that Americans won’t do.”

But how do we know?

The illegal immigrants – the ones that are trying to escape third-world poverty, are the ones that end up in service jobs. They clean our hotel rooms, make our beds, pick our fruit, and cook our meals. If an illegal alien infected with MDR-TB coughs or sneezes in the kitchen – or anywhere else, for that matter – there is no way to know how many people might become infected. The symptoms will not show up instantly, and so, like Andrew Speaker, those infected go about their daily lives until such time as the disease reveals itself.

And it’s not limited to tuberculosis. According to The Los Angeles Times, Chagas disease has become a major threat to the blood and organ supplies in LA. Why? According to The Times, it’s because so many organ donors have traveled to affected countries – predominately in Latin America where up to 12 million people are infected. Last year, two heart transplant patients contracted Chagas causing health authorities to issue a national bulletin. Neither patient survived.

Meanwhile, our government refuses to control our borders so that disease entering our country can be discovered and turned back. Up until now, there have been only a few voices sounding the alarm. So, thank you, Andrew Speaker, for causing a bit an uproar in a nation that hasn’t been paying attention and watches untested millions come across our border without so much as a peep.

Lynn Woolley is a Texas-based talk show host. Contact him at lynn@belogical.com.



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