Disease Creeps In Along With Illegal Aliens

Across the country this week, hundreds of bus loads of illegal immigrants are bringing a message to Washington DC that they want better treatment and instant citizenship. What they don't mention is their reckless disregard for legally immigrating into the USA has created a growing health care crisis in America. They demand their rights, but they disregarded our rights by illegally crossing into our country without being health screened. It's what they are carrying that we don't want. There is another ticking bomb crossing our borders daily by the thousands--entirely unregulated, unscreened and untracked in our nation. Their numbers average two per minute and over 800,000 annually, according the Center For Immigration Studies in Washington, DC. SARS and West Nile virus make big news, but other diseases are creeping into the heartland unnoticed.

In the past 40 years, the US incidents of leprosy stood at 900 recorded cases. Today because of massive immigration from Third World countries, we have more than 7,000 people suffering with leprosy, "And those are the ones we know about," said Dr. John Levis, physician at Bellevue Hospital's Hansen's Disease Clinic in New York. "There are probably many, many more and they are spreading." Most of those infected in the United States are immigrants from global leprosy hot spots, places: Mexico, Brazil, India and the Caribbean. But, in the past six years, Levis and his colleagues have proved that a few of his patients — including a 73-year-old man from Queens who had never been out of the country and an elderly Jewish man from Westchester County, New York — have contracted leprosy in the United States. Leprosy's symptoms--bumpy rashes, skin indentations and loss of feeling in hands and feet. As a result, The disease is now officially endemic to the Northeastern United States for the first time ever.

Another bug riding in the bodies of newcomers to America is tuberculosis. In a recent article from 'THE PATIENT PREDATOR', Dr. Reichman of New Jersey TB Clinic, "In the 1990s, cases among foreign born Americans rose from 29 percent to 41.6 percent. Anti biotic resistant strains from Mexico have migrated to Texas. Since three years ago, 16,000 new cases of TB were discovered in the United States. Half were foreign born. Strains of TB once found only in Mexico have migrated to border states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. It will move north as illegal aliens work in restaurants as cooks, dishwashers and food handlers. We sit on the edge of a potential catastrophe."

Disease is another crisis 'sneaking' across our borders in the form of unrestricted illegal immigration. Once it's inside our country, it's our problem and we will be forced to pay for it. If American political leaders okay the matricula consular card, give them drivers licenses and assist illegal immigration by not enforcing our Homeland Security laws, American citizens and their children are susceptible to more diseases. Hepatitis A,B and C run rampant in fast food workers. These diseases kill. It's that simple and that harsh.

Source - http://www.frostywooldridge.com/articles/art_disease_creeps_in_along_with_illegals_2003.html

Norwood, Sessions advocate get-tough approach to illegal aliens

WASHINGTON -- Dentist Charlie Norwood has spent most of his congressional career typecast as an expert in medical law. But since writing one of the toughest plans to deal with illegal aliens, Norwood has become public enemy No. 1 for those seeking a softer approach.

Critics of the Georgia Republican's Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal Act envision a nightmare scenario in which local police departments are strained and racial profiling runs rampant.

Norwood argues he's not really changing the law, just clarifying the right state and local law enforcement officers already have to arrest suspected illegal immigrants.

"We're just making very clear - you do have the responsibility and the authority to arrest people," Norwood said. "They help us in everything else, but this one area they're really skittish about. Part of it is they're fearful of lawsuits and part of it is that they do their job and the feds don't do theirs."

As was the case with his signature Patients Bill of Rights, Norwood has been rather methodical in promoting the immigration bill - rounding up 93 co-sponsors but not yet even seeking the support of Republican leaders or President Bush. Swift movement in Congress seemed unlikely, and may still be, but the Senate could change that this week.

Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, is crafting a Senate companion version he expects to have ready by Thursday's hearing on immigration and border security. Foes of the approach are mobilizing in case the bill gets some traction at the hearing and makes its way to the congressional calendar next year.

"It sounds good - 'we're trying to enforce immigration laws,"' said Charlie Mitchell, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It has the flashy headline, but that's not really what it does."

Norwood's bill, which he says mainly targets potential terrorists, requires the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to either take custody of suspected illegal immigrants or pay the local police department to house them.

More controversial, however, is its stipulation that all immigration violations - even minor ones - must be included in a federal computerized crime database available to law enforcement officers at all levels of government. If a police officer comes across an immigrant suspected of being illegal, that person would be arrested. Failure to follow the mandate could cost a state or city some of its federal grant money.

"It makes no sense," said Judy Golub, spokeswoman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "It will hurt enforcement, make community policing more besieged and more difficult."

Sessions says he doesn't understand the outrage about the plan. States and localities already can detain immigrants for questioning, he says, but they often don't for fear they'll be accused of racism. Further, over-stretched immigration officials often refuse to pick up the suspects in a timely manner, if at all.

"I think they have that authority now," Sessions said. "A state police officer or state trooper can arrest the bank president for fraud. He can arrest burglars. He can arrest another police officer. The mentality that has come down is we're not going to come and get them if you detain them, and you're not capable of handling this."

Earlier this month, Alabama became the second state that the federal government officially deemed capable of handling the arrest of suspected illegal immigrants. At Sessions' request, state troopers received formal training on immigration law, and through a process he says was far too bureaucratic, the state and federal government signed a document certifying the troopers. Florida also has completed the process.

While the Sessions and Norwood proposals include grant money for training, they mandate that law enforcement officers - regardless of whether they're trained - would automatically be able to arrest immigrants.

Critics say that is risky because the laws are some of the most complicated on the books and officers will target anyone they think looks like an illegal immigrant. Law enforcement is largely divided on the bill, but Toccoa, Ga., police chief Bill Grant - a supporter - says that won't happen.

"I cannot imagine a chief of police in this country - small town, large town, any town - that would take his resources and go look for illegal aliens," he said.

The bill is H.R. 2671.

Source - http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2003/09/15/met_387690.shtml