Immigrants and disease

Immigrants are bringing diseases to the United States:

Contagious diseases are entering the United States because of immigrants, illegal aliens, refugees and travelers, and World Health Organization officials say the worst could be yet to come.

In addition to a list of imported diseases that includes tuberculosis, sickle cell anemia, hepatitis B, measles and the potentially deadly parasitic disease Chagas, officials fear what could happen if the avian flu, which is flourishing among poultry in Southeast Asia, mutates so that it is capable of human-to-human transmission through casual contact.

The bird flu has killed at least eight Asians since early January. Several of those deaths — in Vietnam and Thailand — were believed to have been caused when the virus passed between people who had sustained contact. If the avian flu mutates so that it can be transmitted with only casual contact, WHO authorities predict at least 7 million and as many as 100 million would die in a worldwide pandemic.

Another concern with Asian immigrants in this country is the link between Asians and hepatitis B, said Jordan Su, program manager for the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University. She said the link is alarming enough to warrant action on its own.

Hepatitis B is a "very common epidemic in Asia" and more than half of the 1.3 million cases in this country are among Asians, who make up only 4 percent of the U.S. population, she said.

"We hope the government will pass a bill that requires every immigrant to be tested for hepatitis B," Ms. Su said.

And it is not just bird flu and hepatitis that we have to worry about:

According to international health officials, about a third of the world's population is infected with the bacteria that cause tuberculosis. TB that is resistant to multiple drugs is rampant in many parts of the world, including Peru, Russia, the Baltic nations, Hunan province in China, the Dominican Republic and parts of South Africa, according to Dr. Castro. Some of the cases of TB diagnosed among Hmong refugees resettled in this country are drug-resistant, which makes them far more difficult and costly to treat.

Personnel with the CDC's Division of TB Elimination have said in various reports that "immigration is a major force that sustains the incidence of tuberculosis" in the United States and other developed countries.

"TB cases among foreign-born individuals remain disproportionately high, at nearly nine times the rate of U.S.-born persons," researchers said in a 2004 report in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The report found that people from outside the United States accounted for 53.3 percent of all new tuberculosis cases in this country in 2003. That was up from fewer than 30 percent in 1993. In 2003, nearly 26 percent of foreign-born TB patients in the United States were from Mexico. Another third of the foreign-born cases were among those from the Philippines, Vietnam, India and China, the CDC report said.

At least one Republican is trying to do something about the situation but it isn't the one living in the White House:

The fear of imported disease has led to a push by Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, for a moratorium on immigration.

In a recent statement, Mr. Tancredo, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, cited the "serious consequences" associated with the "smuggling" of illegals into the United States without proper medical screening.

"Among them are the possibilities of the spread of diseases for which we have few, if any, antidotes," he said.

Mr. Tancredo's worries were prompted, in part, by the rising migration of Hispanics to the United States and a potential increase in the number of cases of Chagas disease, which is spread by insect bites in South America and which can be spread through blood transfusions. It is curable in its early stages, but kills about a third of the people infected if it is not caught in time.

And let us not forget the financial costs that are created by this immigrant-related health crisis:

Immigrants, particularly illegals, also impose "huge costs" on the U.S. health care system, especially in states bordering Mexico, says Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

According to a survey by the American Hospital Association (AHA), hospitals in 24 Southwest border counties in Arizona, California, Texas and New Mexico reported uncompensated care totaling nearly $832 million in 2000.

A subsequent report prepared for the U.S.-Mexico Border Counties Coalition determined that about 25 percent of those nonreimbursed costs resulted from emergency medical treatment provided to undocumented immigrants.

Ray Borane, mayor of Douglas, Ariz., says he knows about those financial burdens firsthand.

"The city of Douglas is the major crossing point for illegals ... and there have been some people who have come over here specifically to get dialysis or complicated eye surgery. They've established illegal residency in this country in order to thrive off the health care system," he said, adding, "Illegals and undocumented immigrants don't have any health insurance. We've never been reimbursed for their care, and the federal government has looked the other way, so they are not held responsible."