By Capt Joseph R. John, May 18, 2019 Op Ed #568 

At one time, mumps, chicken pox, and measles were eradicated in the United States.  Over the last year, over one million Illegal Aliens from 160 countries have flooded across the wide-open Southern Border with no medical screening to determine if they have infectious diseases.  US Immigration Law requires infected and contagious Illegal Aliens to be quarantined; the Biden/Obama Administration stopped complying with US Immigration Laws on the day Biden was inaugurated.    

US Customs and Border Patrol Agents have identified Illegal Aliens entering the United States with multiple infectious diseases such as COVID, tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, polio, typhus, measles, mumps, dengue fever, rubella, scabies, influenza, and HIV.   

US Immigration Law requires that Illegal Aliens “must” be medically screened for infectious diseases, and those infected Illegal Aliens must be quarantine in one of the 39 Immigration and ICE Detention Facilities nationwide.  The US Nationality Act requires that the Biden/Obama Administration must enforce US Immigration Laws with regard to quarantining infected Illegal Immigrants.  Those quarantine provisions were once enforced meticulously on Ellis Island, when every single immigrant was screened for infectious diseases before they were allowed to enter the US.  

The crisis occurring on the wide-open Southern Border with over 200,000 Illegal Aliens entering the US every month; it is unlike anything the nation has ever faced.  According to Customs and Border Protection, on May 23, 2022, the Trump-era Title 42 Regulation will be canceled by the Biden/Obama Administration.  Then the number of Illegal Aliens entering the US through the Southern Border will then increase to over 18,000 Illegal Aliens per day.  That will result in 540,000 Illegal Aliens entering the US each month, resulting in over 6.5 million Illegal Aliens projected to enter the US in one year; that is a larger population than 15 individual states.    

The increasing number of Illegal Aliens crossing the wide-open Southern Border has severely impacted the morale of US Border Patrol Agents and is exposing them to infections.  Border Patrol Agents who have contracted infectious diseases from being exposed to COVID, influenza, chicken pox, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, scabies, etc., results in the loss of US Border Patrol Agents available for patrol.  Infected Border Patrol Agents are required to spend many weeks in hospitals or convalescing at home instead of patrolling the border. 

With no proof to back up the following unproven and unsubstantiated allegations, the Progressive/Marxist/ Communist-controlled liberal media establishment has tried to blame the scourge of infectious diseases spreading throughout the United States on parents for refusing to inoculate their children.  It is a well-known fact that very few Illegal Aliens have been inoculated to protect themselves from contagious diseases.  Since the entering Illegal Aliens infected with contagious disease are not medically screened or quarantined, infectious diseases that were once eradicated by the vaccinating American children, are now spreading throughout the United States.        

Massive numbers of Illegal Aliens violating Federal Law, crossing into the US through Southern Border towns such as Eagle Pass and Del Rio seeking asylum, are not medically screened for contagious diseases, instead they are being dumped on the streets of San Antonio, Laredo, Austin, Dallas, and Houston.  Then to avoid detection, in the darkness of extremely late hours, Illegal Aliens from 160 countries in groups of 30-50, numbering close to one thousand per night, are flown from small airports near the Southern Border to small airports adjacent to hundreds of various communities across the nation.       

The Illegal Alien Resettlement Program has been working with nine non-governmental religious or community-based organizations.  Those organizations are funded by the State Department in the amount of $1,850 for each Illegal Alien (including for each child) who entered the US through the Southern Border and are resettled by them.  

Those nine religious or community-based organizations, referred to as voluntary agencies (or volags), are the Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the  World Relief Corporation.  They help resettle Illegal Aliens by: 

Providing Reception Upon Arrival: support with housing, food, and clothing. 

Providing Community Orientation: enrollment in English lessons, enrollment in various benefits, and welfare programs. 

Providing Referrals to Social Service Providers: including health care, and employment placement.

Congress under Schumer and Pelosi’s leadership continues to deny that there is a public health crisis or an Illegal Alien immigration humanity crisis at the wide-open Southern Border.  The dangers posed to the Nation’s Public Health System, and to America citizens (especially to public school students), from the spread of infectious diseases by entering Illegal Aliens, is being covered up by the irresponsible Progressive/Marxist/ Communist-controlled liberal media establishment.  

Congress has continued to refuse to pass legislation to fund the expansion of the 39 Immigration and ICE Detention Facilities used to quarantine Illegal Aliens with contagious diseases, or to complete the building of the secure border wall to stop Illegal Aliens from entering the United States.  Those refusals have prevented the US Border Patrol Agents from interdicting and screening hundreds of thousands of Illegal Aliens with contagious diseases, and it is being covered up by the Socialist Democrat Party, Progressive/Marxist/Communist-controlled liberal media establishment, and the Biden/Obama Administration. 

Epidemics of infectious diseases that normally sweep across Central America are now sweeping across Mexico because of the numerous caravans streaming north across Mexico toward the US Southern Border.  Mexican Health Care professionals have been warning their population about the spread of the influenza, measles, mumps, typhus, syphilis, tuberculosis, and chicken pox.  Some Illegal Aliens who haven’t been inoculated for infectious diseases can be infected with influenza, measles, mumps, typhus, chicken pox, tuberculous, scabies, rubella, smallpox, and even malaria.   

Some Illegal Alien children entering the US transport mosquitos in their clothing, and some of those mosquitos carry infectious diseases such as yellow fever, and the deadly enterovirus, EV-D68.  Other infectious diseases are also transmitted by insects in the clothing of Illegal Aliens, with some insects that spread dengue fever.  

An unknown number of Illegal Aliens who escaped detection at the Southern Border, and who should be quarantined because they have contagious diseases, enter the US daily.  The number of undetected Illegal Aliens entering the US across the Southern Border is estimated by the US Border Patrol to be one half of all the Illegal Aliens who are interdicted.  Since 200,000 Illegal Aliens are interdicted entering the US each month, another 100,000 Illegal Aliens are entering the US undetected.

DHS officials have stated that the sheer volume of Illegal Aliens entering across the Southern Border has overwhelmed the US Customs and Border Patrol Agents, who have lost control at the border; the Mexican Drug Cartels now control the wide open Southern Border.  Unfortunately, the Biden/Obama Administration and Socialist Democrat controlled Congress refuse to take any action, at all, to stop the massive influx of Illegal Aliens, and to prevent a very serious Public Health crisis with the spread of infectious diseases in the US.  

Every American Citizen should contact their elected Congressional Representative and Senator, and demand that they take immediate action to force the Biden/Obama Administration to close the wide-open Southern Border.  The Biden/Obama Administration must abruptly stop the flow of over 200,000 Illegal Aliens arriving each month, and over 540,000 Illegal Aliens after May 23rd.  Those Illegal Aliens have been bringing COVID, tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, polio, typhus, measles, mumps, dengue fever, rubella, scabies, influenza, HIV, and other communicable diseases into the US, to infect Americans. 

 Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author 
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Times-News

Walter Williams

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The Immigration and Nationality Act mandates that all immigrants and refugees undergo a medical screening examination to determine whether they have an inadmissible health condition. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has technical instructions for medical examination of prospective immigrants in their home countries before they are permitted to enter the U.S. They are screened for communicable and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, polio, measles, mumps and HIV. They are also tested for syphilis, gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted diseases. The CDC also has medical screening guidelines for refugees. These screenings are usually performed 30 to 90 days after refugees arrive in the United States.

But what about people who enter our country illegally? The CDC specifically cites the possibility of the cross-border movement of HIV, measles, pertussis, rubella, rabies, hepatitis A, influenza, tuberculosis, shigellosis and syphilis. Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent in South Texas, warned: "What's coming over into the U.S. could harm everyone. We are starting to see scabies, chickenpox, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections and different viruses." Some of the youngsters illegally entering our country are known to be carrying lice and suffering from various illnesses. Because there have been no medical examinations of undocumented immigrants, we have no idea how many are carrying infectious diseases that might endanger American children when these immigrants enter schools across our nation.    

According to the CDC, in most industrialized countries, the number of cases of tuberculosis and the number of deaths caused by TB steadily declined during the 100 years prior to the mid-1980s. Since the '80s, immigrants have reversed this downward trend in countries that have had substantial levels of immigration from areas where the disease is prevalent. In 2002, the CDC said: "Today, the proportion of immigrants among persons reported as having TB exceeds 50 percent in several European countries, including Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. A similar proportion has been predicted for the United States." The number of active TB cases among American-born citizens declined from an estimated 17,725 in 1986 to 3,201 in 2015. That was an 80 percent drop. Data reported to the National Tuberculosis Surveillance System show that the TB incidence among foreign-born people in the United States (15.1 cases per 100,000) is approximately 13 times the incidence among U.S.-born people (1.2 cases per 100,000). Those statistics refer to immigrants who are legally in the U.S. There is no way for us to know the incidence of tuberculosis and other diseases carried by those who are in our country illegally and hence not subject to medical examination.

This public health issue is ignored by all those Americans championing sanctuary cities. The public health issue is also ignored by Americans clamoring for open borders, and that includes many of my libertarian friends. By the way, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when masses of European immigrants were trying to enter our country, those with dangerous diseases were turned back from Ellis Island. Americans hadn't "progressed" to the point of thinking that anyone in the world has a legal right to live in America. Neither did they think that it was cruel or racist to take measures to prevent our fellow Americans from catching diseases from foreigners.  But aside from diseases, there is the greater threat of welcoming to our shores people who have utter contempt for Western values and want to import anti-Western values to our country, such as genital mutilation, honor killings and the oppression of women. Many libertarian types make the argument that we would benefit from open borders when it comes to both people and goods. That vision ignores the important fact that when we import, say, tomatoes from Mexico, as opposed to people, to the U.S., they are not going to demand that we supply them with welfare benefits.
The bottom line is that we Americans have a right to decide who enters our country and under what conditions. If we forgo that right, we cease to be a sovereign nation. But that may not be important to some Americans.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.