Posted on 03/13/2005 8:40:59 AM PST by hope
Sunday, March 13, 2005
INVASION USA
Illegal aliens threaten
U.S. medical system
Docs journal reports hospitals being closed, previously vanquished diseases being spread
Cristobal Silverio emigrated illegally from Mexico to Stockton, Calif., in 1997 to work as a fruit picker.
He brought with him his wife, Felipa, and three children, 19, 12 and 8 – all illegals. When Felipa gave birth to her fourth child, daughter Flor, the family had what is referred to as an "anchor baby" – an American citizen by birth who provided the entire Silverio clan a ticket to remain in the U.S. permanently.
But Flor was born premature, spent three months in the neonatal incubator and cost the San Joaquin Hospital more than $300,000. Meanwhile, oldest daughter Lourdes married an illegal alien gave birth to a daughter, too. Her name is Esmeralda. And Felipa had yet another child, Cristian.
The two Silverio anchor babies generate $1,000 per month in public welfare funding for the family. Flor gets $600 a month for asthma. Healthy Cristian gets $400. While the Silverios earned $18,000 last year picking fruit, they picked up another $12,000 for their two "anchor babies."
While President Bush says the U.S. needs more "cheap labor" from south of the border to do jobs Americans aren't willing to do, the case of the Silverios shows there are indeed uncalculated costs involved in the importation of such labor – public support and uninsured medical costs.
In fact, the increasing number of illegal aliens coming into the United States is forcing the closure of hospitals, spreading previously vanquished diseases and threatening to destroy America's prized health-care system, says a report in the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
"The influx of illegal aliens has serious hidden medical consequences," writes Madeleine Pelner Cosman, author of the report. "We judge reality primarily by what we see. But what we do not see can be more dangerous, more expensive, and more deadly than what is seen."
According to her study, 84 California hospitals are closing their doors as a direct result of the rising number of illegal aliens and their non-reimbursed tax on the system.
"Anchor babies," the author writes, "born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income."
In addition, the report says, "many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease."
While politicians often mention there are 43 million without health insurance in this country, the report estimates that at least 25 percent of those are illegal immigrants. The figure could be as high as 50 percent.
Not being insured does not mean they don't get medical care.
Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985, hospitals are obligated to treat the uninsured without reimbursement.
"Government imposes viciously stiff fines and penalties on any physician and any hospital refusing to treat any patient that a zealous prosecutor deems an emergency patient, even though the hospital or physician screened and declared the patient's illness or injury non-emergency," says the report. "But government pays neither hospital nor physician for treatments. In addition to the fiscal attack on medical facilities and personnel, EMTALA is a handy truncheon with which to pummel politically unpopular physicians by falsely accusing them of violating EMTALA."
According to the report, between 1993 and 2003, 60 California hospitals closed because half their services became unpaid. Another 24 California hospitals verge on closure, the author writes.
"American hospitals welcome 'anchor babies,'" says the report. "Illegal alien women come to the hospital in labor and drop their little anchors, each of whom pulls its illegal alien mother, father, and siblings into permanent residency simply by being born within our borders. Anchor babies are citizens, and instantly qualify for public welfare aid: Between 300,000 and 350,000 anchor babies annually become citizens because of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside."
Among the organizations directing illegal aliens into America's medical systems, according to the report, are the Ford Foundation-funded Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the American Bar Association's Commission on Immigration Policy, Practice, and Pro Bono, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the National Council of La Raza, George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Migration Policy Institute, the National Network for Immigration and Refugee Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Because drug addiction and alcoholism are classified as diseases and disabilities, the fiscal toll on the health-care system rises.
When Linda Torres was arrested in Bakersfield, Calif., with about $8,500 in small bills in a sack, the police originally thought it was stolen money, explained the report. It was her Social Security lump sum for her disability -- heroin addiction.
"Today, legal immigrants must demonstrate that they are free of communicable diseases and drug addiction to qualify for lawful permanent residency green cards," writes Cosman, a medical lawyer, who formerly taught medical students at the City University of New York. "Illegal aliens simply cross our borders medically unexamined, hiding in their bodies any number of communicable diseases."
Many illegals entering this country have tuberculosis, according to the report.
"That disease had largely disappeared from America, thanks to excellent hygiene and powerful modern drugs such as isoniazid and rifampin," says the report. "TB's swift, deadly return now is lethal for about 60 percent of those infected because of new Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. Until recently MDR-TB was endemic to Mexico. This Mycobacterium tuberculosis is resistant to at least two major anti-tubercular drugs. Ordinary TB usually is cured in six months with four drugs that cost about $2,000. MDR-TB takes 24 months with many expensive drugs that cost around $250,000 with toxic side effects. Each illegal with MDR-TB coughs and infects 10 to 30 people, who will not show symptoms immediately. Latent disease explodes later.
TB was virtually absent in Virginia until in 2002, when it spiked a 17 percent increase, but Prince William County, just south of Washington, D.C., had a much larger rise of 188 percent. Public health officials blamed immigrants. In 2001 the Indiana School of Medicine studied an outbreak of MDR-TB, and traced it to Mexican illegal aliens. The Queens, New York, health department attributed 81 percent of new TB cases in 2001 to immigrants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ascribed 42 percent of all new TB cases to 'foreign born' people who have up to eight times higher incidences apparently, 66 percent of all TB cases coming to America originate in Mexico, the Philippines and Vietnam."
Other health threats from illegals include, according to the report:
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons report includes a strong prescription for protecting the health of Americans:
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One merely has to look at what happened to Rep. Bob (B-1, God luv'em)Dornan (R) CA . He used to be in a rock solid Republican district.
One merely has to look at what happened to Rep. Bob (B-1 Bob, God luv'em)Dornan (R) CA . He used to be in a rock solid Republican district.
Well, Kerry would have taken care of this problem by now if only he had been elected.
Picking at scabs does no good.
She was not turned away, she was seen and sent home. Big difference.
They're just giving the diseases that Americans won't give.
A great read and one that highlights all the problems that the illegal immigration issue is causing the medical industry and ultimately, the tax payers. When are we going to take our own country back? I am glad that the docs are starting to speak out more about the illegal immigration problem from their perspective, but so much more needs to be done.
i'm neither shocked nor surprised - I'm just relating what's been going on. I am, however, disgusted. And we do live in a "safe area" in the San Francisco east bay area, and paid a premium to do so. Property values of the homes here have done nothing but go up. When homes in my neighborhood go up for sale, they are snapped up in days, and at continually higher prices.
Yeah Bob had his office stolen from him and what republican cared.?.
It was obvious and ham-handed but republicans sat on their hands.. I don't want to know where their fingers were.. Same with ALL the voter fraud.. especially lately.. Republicans look at their watches and say NEXT... No time for pursuing it.. Which only encourages MORE of it.. Republican ain't too smart..
Does this make republicans narcissic.?. Probably..
Too busy looking into the pond at their reflection..
To see the guy ready to push them in..
After being PUSHED in they would then apolize for being so clumsy.. ANYWAYS..
as someone who went through the immigration process legally I was required to submit to a medical examination, which made a lot of sense.
Who knows what diseases these illegals bring into the country.
WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY? WHY is nothing being done about this? How bad does it have to get? It's INSANE.
The only necessary phrase you needed to know in Spanish was "¡Empuje, Mama!" (Pronunciation- 'Em-poo-yay'; Translation- "Push, Mama!") as an instruction to the illegal woman giving birth.
American's Palestinians are only here looking to do the jobs Americans refuse to do...
Much the same way as Islam is a Religion of Peace
Mucho gracias Jorge
Let'sw face it, this country is in the ash can. The lid just hasn't been slammed on it yet.
Without $15,000 UP FRONT
Actually this is a small price to pay so liberals can have that inflated ego of world messiah.
>What will happen to us as a nation?<
Well, perhaps those of us who escape annilhilation will be moved into those instant apartment complees while all th illegals move into our homes, and America will be called by a different name. :-( That is unless we decide to do something about it!
Here is a very interesting statistic, considering that people on both sides of the Atlantic are furious about illegal immigration. Illegals constitute 3% of the European population and 2.5% of American. Isn't it amazing that such small percentages could seem to jeopardize the whole society and its institutions. Amazing but true.
Not so amazing when you realize that illegal immigration is only a small section of the orchestra. America, wake up and listen to the "symphony!"
It sends my blood pressure too high.
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