Tim Dunkin
July 31, 2014
Illegal immigration is creating a public health catastrophe
By Tim Dunkin

America is rapidly approaching the precipice when it comes to not just the quality, but even the availability, of health care in this country. ObamaCare has largely succeeded in its goal of undermining our health care system to the point where it will no longer be able to function effectively in almost any capacity (purposefully done so as to create the "need" for single-payer socialized medicine – which is what the Left has really wanted all along). If one wonders what American health care under ObamaCare will look like ten years from now, one only need look at the current state of the Veteran's Administration. Veterans dying while waiting months or years for life-saving treatments. Incompetence and mismanagement from the highest levels down to the lowest paper-pusher. Uncaring bureaucrats who are more interested in protecting their turf and their pensions than in providing quality health care to those who served our country.

So the very, very last thing that the American health care system needs right now is the shock of a public health crisis that has the potential to explode within the next few years.

Yet, this is what we could be looking at – thanks to illegal immigration, which the current administration as well as a sizeable number of legislators from both parties are actively trying to protect and encourage while completely failing to protect our borders.

Unknown to many Americans is the fact that over the past ten years, as illegal immigration across our southern border has surged thanks to the lax policies of both Bush and Obama, we have seen the return of many diseases that were once thought to have been eliminated from the United States. I'm talking about diseases like polio and the plague (yes, that plague). Further, illegal immigrants (including the "children" in this recent rush across our border), most of whom are not being caught and detained by the Border Patrol, have been bringing with them staph infections, scabies, and other infectious diseases.

Additionally, we're also starting to see the presence of vectors for diseases that are completely non-native to the United States, found only in...Central and South America. A primary example of this would be the so-called "kissing bug," or Triatomid bug, native to countries ranging from Honduras to Bolivia. The "kissing bug" is the carrier for Chagas disease, a parasitic disease that is spread by the insect's bites, and which attacks the digestive system and heart, creating conditions such as an enlarged colon or enlargement of the ventricles of the heart, which leads to heart failure with symptoms similar to those of a heart attack. Often a person infected with the parasite that causes Chagas can display no symptoms for years or even decades, allowing them to carry it with them wherever they go, unknown, so that it can be transmitted through the bites of any kissing bugs that happen to also be present.

Chagas is already here in the USA; back in 2012 seven cases had already been reported in California and Arizona, where the kissing bug has been found. The insect has also been found at several locations across Texas. Even more recently, the kissing bug has been found as far from the border as Northern Virginia. I'm sure that left-wingers and other open borders apologists will try to argue that we can't be sure that illegal immigrants are bringing in the kissing bug and Chagas disease, but let's use a little common sense here. Both the insect and the disease are entirely non-native to the United States. Instead, both are native to a large swathe of geography (Honduras, El Salvador, Bolivia, etc.) where many of the illegal aliens coming across our border are from. They first appeared in the border states where most of these illegal aliens initially settle before they begin to work their way out across the rest of the country. The insect (and hopefully ONLY it) have appeared in a place far from the border, but which is home to a large community of illegal immigrants. You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure out that something is going on here. The kissing bug prefers warm, dark places and thus can easily hide inside clothing or personal possessions and be transported across international borders.

Knowing all of this, the wisdom of our ancestors in requiring immigrants to go through Ellis Island becomes much more apparent. While Ellis Island is often viewed by open borders advocates with a starry-eyed nostalgia, the reality is that this processing station was primarily a quarantine zone designed to allow U.S. customs officials to weed out undesirable immigrants, including those with obvious signs of diseases. Far from being the symbol of wide-open immigration that many today think it was, Ellis Island was actually the world's biggest delousing station. It, and other entry points like it, were there to protect us, not promote multiculturalism.

And this really gets to the crux of the issue, which is that the United States is in serious need of "immigration reform" that takes the health, safety, and well-being of Americans into account first and foremost.

Jobs are important. The safety of our streets and cities is a necessity. But the health and welfare of the American people is also a vital interest – one which is not served by settling thousands of undocumented "children" (which many of them are not) all across the country with practically no efforts to screen them out. It's almost like Obama wants to reintroduce these diseases into America as widely as he can.

Let's face it – the type of immigrant you bring to your country is largely determined by what it is that induces them to come in the first place. If the inducement is opportunity, freedom to work hard and make something of one's self without government interference, entrepreneurship, and the like, then you will get immigrants who want to do those things, and who are just looking for the freedom to do so. If, on the other hand, the inducement is generous welfare benefits, "free" health care, social security for family members who chain migrate, and all the rest of the goodies bag, then you will get people who are primarily interested in cashing in on those things.

We used to get almost exclusively the former type of immigrant – and we generally benefited from this. Now, unfortunately, we're getting a larger and larger proportion of the latter – and are being swamped by the dregs of foreign societies as a result.

It stands to reason – those who are of the former type are the kind of people who will go through the process of coming here legally. They tend to be more law-abiding, they tend to be more interested in taking care of themselves and those around them. They tend to be the folks who are more "with it" anywise – have more foresight, are more self-reliant, are better educated because they're more motivated and self-starting, etc. These are the kind of folks that we're discouraging from coming here by making it more difficult to come here the right way. I know a guy from Liberia, a law-abiding born-again Christian with an advanced degree in computer engineering, who has been trying to get his permanent visa (the next step toward citizenship for him) for over a decade, only to be stonewalled by bureaucrats at every step. Meanwhile, thousands jump our border every month and are pretty much allowed to stay without any hindrance whatsoever.

Just as those who abide the law tend to be one sort of person (the kind of person we want in America), the border jumpers tend to be the other type – they tend to be poorly-educated, lack critical reasoning skills and foresight, and tend to be law-breaking, rather than law-abiding. After all, if someone will break another country's laws to come there illegally in the first place, it's not a stretch to imagine that they'll be willing to break other laws if they think it's to their benefit. This is why illegal aliens contribute grossly and disproportionately to the rates of all kinds of socially-detrimental activities ranging from violent crime to drunken driving (which, if you think about it, is another way in which they're piling on to the impending public health catastrophe). Nevertheless, this type of person is also going to be the kind who is less likely to have regular health care, or even take care of themselves properly for that matter, and who thus is more likely to be a carrier for scabies, measles, polio, or tuberculosis. And let's face it, the illegal immigrants crossing our border are not exactly the cream of the crop from their societies back home.

We need to get a handle on the illegal immigration problem, and that right quickly. If the Republicans are going to contribute to the problem so that they can curry favor with their Chamber of Commerce buddies, rather than do what the large majority of the American people want, then the GOP needs to disappear and be replaced by a genuinely pro-American party that places the interests of law-abiding Americans ahead of those of law-breaking illegal aliens. Build the wall. Deport illegals as you find them. Rigorously enforce the laws against employing illegal aliens. Cut off all welfare and other benefits for those who cannot prove citizenship. No driver's licenses for illegals. Severely punish so-called "sanctuary cities" that aid and abet the law-breaking.

Every other nation in the world gets to guard its borders and decide who gets to come in and who doesn't. Mexico does it. Canada does it. Australia does it. Japan does it. European countries are even starting to figure it out. Why can't we be just as free to assert our nation's sovereign right to affirm and defend our own borders? I say we can, and I say we must.

© Tim Dunkin

 

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Tim Dunkin

Tim Dunkin is a pharmaceutical chemist by day, and a freelance author by night, writing about a wide range of topics on religion and politics. He is the author of an online book about Islam entitled Ten Myths About Islam. He is a born-again Christian, and a member of a local, New Testament Baptist church in North Carolina. He can be contacted at patriot_tim@yahoo.com. All emails may be monitored by the NSA for quality assurance purposes.

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