Mass immigration is a threat to our nation’s health. Diseases nearly eradicated are breaking out again. Tropical diseases, previously unknown in the United States but prevalent in Third World countries, including Dengue fever and Chagas disease, are appearing for the first time. Medieval ailments, such as leprosy, are resurfacing.
Among the diseases carried into the U.S. by immigrants are:
TUBERCULOSIS: Thought conquered by the early 1970s, the federal Centers for Disease Control reports TB is making a deadly comeback and “immigration is a major force sustaining the incidence of tuberculosis in the United States.” TB in the countries from which most immigrants to the U.S. originate is 10 to 30 times greater than in this country.
HIV/AIDS: a deadly virus that originated in Africa and spread throughout the Caribbean (especially Haiti), Latin America, and large parts of Asia. Immigrants are circulating AIDS. Hispanics, 13 percent of the U.S. population, account for 19 percent of the reported number of new cases, more than three times the rate for other Americans.
CHOLERA is a communicable disease that re-emerged in the early 1990s, brought to the United States by Latino migrants. People become infected with cholera by contact with water contaminated by fecal matter. Scientific American magazine reports migrants expose others to the disease in the fields, factories, and restaurants where they work.
MEASLES: a disease virtually stamped out by 1990, the CDC reports it is reappearing. Immigrants have brought almost all of the new cases into the U.S.
HEPATITIS A and B: highly contagious, these diseases attack the liver and can lead to death. It is often transmitted through unclean food and water and spread by infected food handlers and processors.
SARS (SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY SYNDROME): A deadly, easily spread, pneumonia-like ailment imported to the U.S. from China and Hong Kong in early 2003.
Illegal aliens bypass health tests and legal immigrants are poorly screened for disease. The clean, healthy environment Americans worked hard to achieve is being threatened because federal officials refuse to curtail mass immigration. The United States is in danger of experiencing a public health calamity.
– Wayne Lutton, Ph.D. (History)
Editor, The Social Contract Quarterly (www.TheSocialContract.com)
Endnotes:
1. www.cdc.gov/nchstp/tb/faqs/qa.htm.
2. www.cdc.gov/hiv/pubs/facts.htm.
3. Eric Niiler, “Diseased Passage,” Scientific American (July 2000), pp. 23-24.
4. www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hepatitis/index.htm.
5. www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/; David Hasemyer, “Doctors Prepare for Return of SARS,” San Diego Union-Tribune (December 8, 2003).
For more information on this topic, see the report, Immigration and the Public Health Crisis, by Robert Howard and Wayne Lutton (Americans for Immigration Control, P. O. Box 738, Monterey, VA 24465) and the article, “Immigration and Public Health,” by Wayne Lutton, The Social Contract, Vol. XIV, No. 1, Fall 2003, pp. 12-20 (www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/fourteen-one/xiv-1-12.pdf).