Public Health Put at Risk

Illegal immigration brings old diseases, now more dangerous

A sleeper issue in immigration is that of public health. Recent reports of more than 11 million illegal aliens in the country portend a potential disease disaster. None of these millions have had the requisite pre-entrance physical exam that legal immigrants must have. And most of these foreigners come from countries where little attention is paid to public health and infectious disease runs rampant.

Diseases thought to have been nearly eradicated in the United States are making a comeback, mostly due to increasing immigration, travel and economic globalization. One of the most dangerous of these is tuberculosis, now increasing in America among the foreign born.

Tuberculosis Is Back in the USA
Tuberculosis is an airborne pathogen, propelled through tiny droplets via sneezing, talking or coughing. The disease is extremely widespread: one person in three worldwide has the infection and two million die annually from TB. The nature of how TB is passed means that crowded living conditions, e.g. among farm laborers or in refugee camps, are likely areas for infection. Also problematic is the ability of TB to remain dormant and undetectable in the body for long periods.

The World Health Organization warns that poorly managed tuberculosis programs threaten to make TB incurable. The problem is that the rapid improvement following the start of medication may convince uneducated patients that they are cured and no longer need to continue the full regimen of antibiotics. A WHO Fact Sheet remarks, “From a public health perspective, poorly supervised or incomplete treatment of TB is worse than no treatment at all.” WHO emphasizes that an effective public health approach is very serious business, requiring “political commitment, microscopy services, drug supplies, surveillance and monitoring systems and use of highly efficacious regimes with direct observation of treatment.”

Parents wishing to expose their children to cultural diversity in their educational experience may be additionally exposing them to infectious disease such as tuberculosis. Lengthy contact in an enclosed space is generally the recipe for the TB bacteria to pass between people. There have indeed been cases of TB being passed in classroom situations. In 1995, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed a case that an eight-and-a-half hour domestic airline flight caused four passengers to be infected with TB by one infectious passenger. In March, OSHA cited the Immigration and Naturalization Service's Houston office for not protecting its workers from the danger of TB infection from immigrants, stating that workers needed respirators and training to avoid the illness (AP 3/18/01).

Political Correctness versus Health
One would hope that political correctness would have no place in a subject as serious as tuberculosis. Sadly, the ignorance about public health and the nature of the threat have put Americans' safety into jeopardy. Fresno County has been sued twice for jailing persons who refuse to take their tuberculosis medication, the most recent being a Laotian immigrant in April of this year.

A March 23 editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune bemoaned the re-emergence of tuberculosis in the U.S. and noted that four out of five Minnesota TB patients were foreign born. The writer continued, “How to control this crisis? Cracking down on immigration is no answer. America is a land of immigrants... Besides, the United States is largely to blame... several decades back it slashed funding for global TB control — leaving frail nations to cope with the inevitable resurgence.” Evidently the writer has forgotten the history of Ellis Island, where all immigrants were given physical examinations precisely to prevent the entrance of tuberculosis-infected persons, with one to three percent sent back to their home countries every year because of health concerns.

Of course, more public health programs mean more taxpayer expense; for example, Franklin County, Ohio, approved nearly $1 million in 2001 to deal with additional TB. Increased screening on populations more at risk would be sensible, but one can predict the ACLU response. And why does the Diversity Visa program still include countries that have very high levels of TB? The public health of Americans should be paramount to officials, but we hear nothing about it where immigration is concerned.

— by Brenda Walker
 

 
FURTHER READING:

Rep. Rodriguez on Border Health
A Congressman from a border district discusses at length the health problems in his area.

Report details reasons for Arizona physician shortage
Doctors are not locating in the state because of federal policies on “emergency care, health insurance and immigration,” according to a report from the Goldwater Institute.

Timebomb: The Global Epidemic of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis
Information based on the book Timebomb which highlights in particular the terrible public health practices in Russia and how they have increased the prevalence of TB which cannot be treated by previously effective methods. Russian drug-resistant tuberculosis has been found in the United States.

Trends in TB among the Foreign Born
The Johns Hopkins Center for Tuberculosis Research presents two graphs showing the growth, prevalence and country of origin of TB cases in the U.S. For a capsule of TB current information, see Tuberculosis News on the same website.

Major Screening for TB Shows Contrast in Conditions Since Days of Ellis Island
Public health authorities in the U.S. again fear tuberculosis, as millions of unscreened illegal aliens fill the nation's fields, restaurant kitchens and classrooms. Legal immigrants still must pass a health examination to determine that they are not carrying any communicable diseases but public health is threatened because the government regards the problem with a wink and a nod.

U.S. Increases Screening of Immigrants for Tuberculosis
TB is rampant in the developing world, so we shouldn't be surprised that it is being transported into the U.S. by unscreened illegal aliens. "In 1998, immigrants accounted for nearly 42 percent of the 18,361 tuberculosis cases reported nationwide, although they represented just over 10 percent of the total population."

Worm on the Brain
Dawn Becerra ate a pork taco during a visit to Mexico. As a result, she developed neurocysticercosis, a brain lesion that caused frequent seizures, and needed brain surgery to remove the cyst. The infection can also be passed when food workers do not wash their hands after using the restroom.