This is a frightening statistic.
Not only do we get cheap labor, our school children also get the life-threatening diseases the children of these illegal aliens bring with them.
Yet another reason to TEAR DOWN THE BORDER.
(If leprosy spread from illegal aliens to U.S. born Americans has MORE THAN DOUBLED just in the past five years (200% increase), then this disease is set to infect THOUSANDS of American children over the next five years.)
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"Americans should be told that diseases long eradicated in this country tuberculosis, leprosy, polio, for example and other extremely contagious diseases have been linked directly to illegals," Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., told the Business Journal of Phoenix. "For example, in 40 years, only 900 persons were afflicted by leprosy in the U.S.; in the past three years, more than 7,000 cases have been presented."
"This emerging crisis exposes the upside-down thinking of federal immigration policy," he continued. "While legal immigrants must undergo health screening prior to entering the U.S., illegal immigrants far more likely to be carrying contagious diseases are crawling under that safeguard and going undetected until they infect extraordinary numbers of American residents."
The number of cases of leprosy, now known as Hansen's disease, among immigrants to the U.S. has more than doubled since 2000, according to a news report from Columbia University.
Dr. Denis Daumerie, head of the World Health Organization's leprosy-elimination program, thinks claims of immigrants causing a spike in U.S. leprosy are overstated.
"There is no risk of an epidemic of leprosy," he told Columbia. "There's absolutely no risk that the few immigrants who are affected by the disease, if they are diagnosed and treated, will spread the disease in the U.S."
eh....if those statistics are true..than Dr. Denis is very confused and does not know what he is talking about...