Illegal Aliens' Impact on Public Health and Environment

The immigration debate in the United States over proposed legislation is history repeating itself.

The only difference in 2006 is that U.S. citizens finally are waking to the scope of the problems posed by over 20 million illegal aliens residing in the country.

These lawbreakers, these non-voters, mean to seize the rights of U.S. citizenship by taking to the streets to demonstrate against any legislative measure with enforcement teeth. At the same time, these same lawbreakers wrap themselves in foreign flags and carry signs demanding that, "Gringos, leave our land" and "Europeans, be deported."

Meanwhile, yet another weak-kneed U.S. Congress follows in the footsteps of the Congresses of 1965 and 1985, whose muddled legislation set the stage for the current immigration free-for-all. United States citizens finally are waking to the failure of congressional Democrats and Republicans to protect U.S. borders.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed legislation that would make it a felony to aid and abet illegal aliens; but as soon as the illegal aliens took to the streets, the Republicans caved, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert stated that the "felony" provision for aiders and abettors was negotiable.

United States culture, ethos, and heritage are besieged by belligerent non-citizens, who dare to rewrite the national anthem; but Congress, especially the Senate, does nothing.

These elected officials are more concerned with the rights of illegal aliens than with national security and well-being. Some critics refer to Congress as "the whores on the Hill" for selling out the American people in exchange for the votes of illegal aliens, who do not have the right to vote, but who are, in increasing numbers. One of the signs carried in demonstrations on May Day 2006 read, "Today the streets, tomorrow the vote."

Even worse, the current immigration debate fails to address two life-or-death issues – the impact of 20 million illegal aliens on public health and on the environment.

Impact of Illegal Aliens on Public Health
The men, women, and children who are sneaking across the border into the United States do so without medical inspection, which in itself is a criminal offense and a public health travesty.

Unexamined, they are free to spread out through the country carrying any infectious diseases they may have. In the past, when Europeans made up the majority of immigrants in the United States, each person who sought to enter the country was subject to a health examination. Those diagnosed with an unacceptable health condition were immediately returned to their port of origin.

They were allowed no elongated appeal process, no asylum claims, no refugee provisions, and no street demonstrations demanding entitlements and decrying any effort to secure U.S. borders.

Section 212 of the 1954 Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1182) defined the classes of aliens ineligible for visas or admission into the United States.

The Public Health Service Act as amended (42 U.S.C., Section 264) authorized the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make and enforce regulations necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its various divisions are the protectors of U.S. borders with regard to diseases.

The CDC Division of Global Migration and Quarantine (DGMQ) is the agency that has the mission to enforce measures to stop the introduction, transmission, and spread of diseases from outside the United States. Executive Order 13295, April 4, 2003, signed by President George Bush, sets forth that regulations for the apprehension and detention of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of suspected communicable diseases.

These include cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis (TB), plague, leprosy, smallpox, malaria (yellow fever), and viral hemorrhagic fevers. Among these fevers are Lassa, Marburg, Eboli, Crimea-Congo, South American, and others not yet isolated or named. Add to these, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and sexually transmitted diseases (STD), among them HIV/AIDS.

Vaccine preventable diseases include mumps, measles, rubella, polio, influenza type B, and hepatitis B. All of the listed diseases have been introduced and transmitted into the United States.

The numbers of these diseases that have been carried by illegal aliens cannot be determined, as no accurate records are kept, denoting the citizenship of the infected or the carriers.

Because of political correctness or more accurately lack of backbone, U.S. political entities and agencies purposely have failed to determine the citizenship or lack thereof for persons obtaining federal, state, or local services, welfare, and entitlements, such as the following: Medical services from emergency room to long-term children's hospital needs; welfare payments; social security payments; food stamps; Aid to Dependent Children (for anchor babies (children of illegal aliens) or illegal minors; HHS housing benefits; and public education.

The lemming response by most state and local government agencies is, "That is the federal government's job!" They thus abdicate their responsibilities to the rule of law in their country. Just as there is no accurate count of illegal aliens in the United States, there is no accurate data of any kind that correctly reflects services to citizens and services to illegal aliens.

This is meant to hide the costs to U.S. taxpayers, who are unknowing enablers of illegal aliens. Despite what immigrant special interests say, few illegal aliens pay income taxes.

The National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID) states that infectious diseases are a continuing danger to everyone in the United States. SARS, malaria, TB, and other bacterial pneumonias are now appearing in forms resistant to drug treatment. TB is a significant problem among foreign-born persons in the United States, with foreign-born persons accounting for 53 percent of the 14,874 U.S. cases in 2005. Of these, 26 percent of the cases were from Mexico.

The 2005 NCID report estimates that 30 percent to 60 percent of adults in developing countries have TB. "From 1985 through 1992, the number of new TB cases in the United States increased from 22,201 in 1985 to 26,673 in 1992, an increase of 20 percent."

The report mentioned that up through 1984, the number of TB cases reported in the United States actually had been decreasing by an average of 6 percent a year." Note that 1986 was the year of the Reagan amnesty for illegal aliens.

An increasing proportion of TB cases in the United States are among foreign-born residents (legal and illegal). In 1987, in part because of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), in part to the immigrant rights groups and in part to the Sanctuary Movement, illegal aliens crossing U.S. borders successfully averaged 1.1 million a year – a conservative estimate.

With no medical examination, illegal aliens brought their medical problems with them. NCID, similar to other government agencies, uses political correct speak – listing illegal aliens as foreign-born persons–knowing full well that all legal foreign-born persons would have had medical examinations; if found to have communicable diseases, the foreign-born persons would have been denied entry into the United States.

SARS is an example of a disease introduced into the United States by foreign carriers. It is believed to have originated in southern China. A large contributor to the U.S. illegal alien population, China and especially Fujian province have so many immigrants (legal and illegal) in New York City that, in the main Chinatown, Fujian dialect has surpassed Mandarin as the most spoken Chinese dialect.

In 1994, when the alien smuggler's ship, Golden Venture went aground on Long Island, many of the illegal-alien Chinese aboard had TB. While in Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detention awaiting asylum hearings, these illegal aliens received medical treatments (at taxpayers expense), which controlled most of the cases.

Only a third of the Golden Venture illegal aliens were deported to China and other countries. The majority now resides in the United States; and we trust they are taking their medicine.

Typhoid fever, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is a life-threatening illness caused by the bacterium, Salmonella typhi, and is common in developing areas of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Mexico. Typhoid is the result of unsanitary conditions. United States citizens traveling to high-risk areas can take antibodies and avoid eating raw vegetables or drinking local water.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health determined that recent outbreaks of typhoid have been attributed to food handlers who had recently emigrated from countries where the disease is common. The CDC and the pharmaceutical companies that supply vaccines estimate some 2,000 typhoid carriers are present in the United States at any given time. No data is available on the number of carriers who are illegal aliens.

Poliomyelitis (polio) was eradicated in the United States and other industrial nations in the mid-1950s thanks Dr. Jonas Salk and his vaccine. The last indigenous transmission of wild polio in the United States occurred in 1979. Note that CDC uses the politically correct term "indigenous" to separate the cases among illegal aliens. Again, legal immigrants have medical examinations before their entry into the United States.

Mumps recently reared its infectious head in the Midwest. In April 2006, an outbreak of mumps started in Iowa, the largest in 20 years, according to Dr. Julie Gerberding, CDC Director.

More than 1,000 cases have been reported.

While not necessarily life-threatening, the disease can cause sterility in young adults, who happened to be the main victims of this outbreak. It is speculated that the disease may have been transmitted during air travel; however, a large new illegal alien population now calls Iowa and Nebraska home.

Among other dreaded communicable diseases, cholera, smallpox, and eboli are now appearing in U.S. medical facilities.

Impact of Illegal Aliens on the Environment
Immigration is an environmental issue. For more that three decades, congressional Democrats and Republicans have been briefed repeatedly by three separate presidential commissions on the need to stabilize the U.S. population by limiting immigration.

The President's Commission on Population Growth and the American Future (1970-1972), chaired by John D. Rockefeller III, called for border enforcement, the curbing of illegal immigration, and recognition of the link between an ever-increasing immigrant population and environmental degradation.

The Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy (1978-1981), chaired by Father Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame, repeated these admonitions; as did the Jordan Commission on Immigration Reform (1990-1997), originally chaired by former Rep. Barbara Jordan.

The chairs of these commissions were as diverse as the American people – a billionaire businessman, a president of a Catholic university, and a former member of Congress, who was a prominent black woman.

In 1972, the Rockefeller Commission reported to Congress that the growth of the U.S. population (then at 205 million people) as the result of immigration (legal and illegal) was threatening the environmental legacy of future generations of Americans. These commissions, one after the other, called for immigration policies to address the real harm that unregulated growth was doing to the ecology of the United States.

Repeatedly, Congress has rejected the correlation between an uncontrolled, uncounted immigrant population and environmental degradation. Instead, members of Congress have played to the special interest groups that advocate open borders.

The 1986 immigration legislation granted cover of legitimacy to illegal aliens under the guise of "amnesty," just as some senators and representatives want to do again in 2006.

Nothing has changed except the number of illegal aliens residing in the United States, and that number continues to escalate along with the harm being done to natural resources in the United States by this uncounted and unaccounted for ghost population – a ghost population that has taken to the streets with signs and foreign flags.

The findings of the three commissions were validated in 2001 when the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that two-thirds of the future growth of the United States will result from immigrants (legal and illegal), immigrants who have arrived since 1994 plus their off-spring and extended families.

The estimated population of the United States in 2005 was 298.2 million up from 243.1 million in 1980. Part of this increase can be traced to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), another piece of muddled legislation that granted amnesty to an estimated 2.7 million illegal aliens, but this was just the beginning. Amnesty served as a pathway for the legal entry of an estimated 4 million family members of the previously illegal aliens.

Scientific consensus supports the findings of the presidential commissions on the direct relationship between population and environmental degradation. Air pollution, increased human waste, destructive pressures on the oceans, forest conversions, habitat destruction, reduced agricultural land and productivity, soil erosion, water consumption, and energy demands will impact the environmental landscape, including desert and mountain ecosystems, and ultimately the quality of life as we know it – the very quality of life that drew the immigrants.

Population stability both in the United States and worldwide is threatened by migrations from underdeveloped countries to developed countries. Migration from the majority of the world's countries to Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Canada, and the United States is economically based.

The United Nations in a 2002 report estimated that 91 million people are living as migrants in Europe and North America, which doubles the 1975 estimate. The new immigration agencies in the Department of Homeland Security estimate that 60 percent of migrants residing in the United States are from Mexico.

This, in turn, creates a new paradigm of demographics – highly fertile young migrants supplanting an aging native population.

In 1864, George Marsh, a diplomat and New Englander, wrote the book, "Man and Nature," linking human action with deforestation, desertification, avalanches, wildlife extirpation, and additional environmental degradation.

The link between population and environment was introduced to the public by such works as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" (1962), Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" (1968), and Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" (1968).

Although Ehrlich's widespread famines have yet to occur, natural disasters are on the rise. In 2005, damage caused by hurricanes Stan, Wilma, and Beta in Central America and especially Mexico sent a new wave of environmental immigrants to the United States. The damage to Cancun and the Mayan Riviera shattered the tourist, fishing, and agricultural industries and dislocated skilled and semi-skilled workers.

The entrenched politicians of Mexico and Central America encourage migrations to the United States, using suggestions of climate change, natural disasters, environmental changes, over-population, and unhealthy conditions to urge a northward migration.

March 22, 2006, was World Water Day, and the 4th World Water Forum met prior to it in Mexico City. This United Nations-sponsored meeting addressed the link between water and culture, concluding, "Cultural traditions, indigenous practices, and societal values determine how people perceive and manage water in the world's different regions." The message was that the United States and other developed countries must acquiesce to the new cultural and societal values of immigrants, legal or illegal.

Considering the environmental aspects of immigration, why are the environmental groups not more vocal on the subject? Why do prestigious groups, such as the National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club, waffle on the impact of the illegal alien population on the environment?

The Green Party and most environmentalists remain silent on the subject. As with Congress, most environmental groups show no profiles in courage.

There are, however, exceptions. In February 2006, the Defenders of Wildlife issued a report acknowledging the vast damage caused by illegal aliens crossing the fragile ecosystem of the U.S. Southern border.

With an average of 1 million illegal aliens apprehended each year since 1988 and another 1.1 million illegal aliens entering the country uncaught, the damage to the desert ecology is increasing.

The presence of 12 million to 20 million (perhaps up to 30 million) illegal aliens in the United States has consequences. This uncounted, unplanned for population of lawbreakers is affecting the quality of life in the United States. Air pollution, water pollution, energy consumption (gas, coal, wood, and electricity), deforestation, soil erosion and agricultural degradation, over-fishing, and ocean exhaustion threaten the sustainability of natural resources.

As natural resources become scarce and prices rise, the economic stability of the country is undermined.

The U.S. immigration system is broken and has been for decades. The U.S. Congress, now in session, in its legislative attempts to fix the malfunctioning immigration system, must address protecting public health, sustaining natural resources, and improving environmental quality.

Congress must cast aside timidity and the lobbying efforts of special interests and act to stabilize the U.S. population by limiting the number of legal immigrants admitted each year and by stopping illegal immigration at the border. A stable population and sustainable environment depend on congressional action.

It is all well and good for the president to sign strict public health executive orders, but they are meaningless if Congress continues to counteract them with muddled immigration legislation that perpetuates weak enforcement.

For the last 40 years, the U.S. Congress has failed to protect the nation's public health and environment from a foreign-born population explosion.

With the current rate of illegal immigration worldwide, public health and environmental quality in developed nations could approach the levels of disease and environmental degradation in many Third World countries.

The United States of America can best help developing nations by staying strong and healthy itself. With the survival of the United States – as united states – at risk, U.S. citizens must demand the government they deserve.

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/5/8/230000.shtml