Posted on December 28, 2015

Why Are Many Diseases Back, Decades After Being Wiped Out in the U.S.?

Tom Tancredo, Breitbart, December 25, 2015

An E. coli epidemic in Seattle and Kansas City and 19 other states? TB in New York and Manassas, Virginia? Leprosy in New Hampshire? Dengue Fever in Laredo? What’s going on here?

If you think data about illegal alien crime is hidden from public, just try to find information on the contagious diseases brought across our borders by illegal aliens from nearly 100 countries. If we survey the anecdotal and sporadic official data of the past fifteen years, there is no doubt we are being invaded daily by dangerous diseases.

There is good reason to believe the government is minimizing this risk as part of its disinformation campaign to sanitize illegal immigration and to portray all critics as “anti-immigrant.” Although the U.S. Border Patrol publishes frequent reports on the number of individuals apprehended crossing the border, no agency publishes reports on the diseases they bring with them and then carry into our communities.

And the threat is increasing, not shrinking, because the cross-border traffic is coming from places beyond Mexico and Central America. {snip}

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A February 2015 report of the Southern Medical Association cautioned that, since none of the 700,000 illegal entries have been screened for infectious diseases, “Illegal immigration may expose Americans to diseases that have been virtually eradicated but are highly contagious, as in the case of TB.” The association concluded that despite the efforts of the CDC, “There’s a growing health concern over illegal immigrants bringing infectious diseases into the United States.

A year ago, the head of the Texas state medical association called for a quarantine of children arriving at the border from Central America. Instead, the Obama administration ordered the processing of the children to be expedited.

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Does anyone think it strange that public health officials have been slow to find the cause of the E. coli contamination in food served at the Chipotle fast food chain serving Mexican food, a scandal that has closed the company’s restaurants in 21 states? The FDA and CDC have joined forces with state health officials to identify the source of the contamination. This outbreak involves an especially dangerous strain of E. coli that can cause death in extreme cases. Is it only a coincidence that the company markets itself as serving on “organic, non-GMO” foods from local farms? And would anyone be surprised if it turns out that the “progressive” Chipotle restaurant chain has never been audited for the presence of illegal workers?

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Among the most common diseases found among illegal immigrants are the new multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB), Chagas Disease, Leprosy, and Dengue Fever.

  • TB was largely unknown in Virginia until 2002, when it spiked 17% statewide and 188% in Prince William County, a suburb of Washington, DC. Public health officials blamed illegal immigration.
  • Indiana University School of Medicine in 2001 studied an outbreak of MDR-TB and traced it to illegal immigrants from Mexico.
  • Queens, NY public health officials have attributed 81% of new TB cases to immigrants.
  • In 2002, the U.S. CDC attributed 42% of all new TB cases to “foreign born” persons, which includes both legal and illegal immigrants. THE CDC report suggested that 66% of all new TB cases in the U.S. originate in Mexico, the Philippines and Vietnam.
  • Leprosy was so rare in this country that only 900 cases were reported in the 40 years 1960-2000. Suddenly, from 2002 to 2005, we had 7,000 cases and is now endemic in the northeastern United States. Most of the cases are traceable to Brazil, Mexico, Caribbean nations and India.
  • Dengue Fever is extremely rare in America, but recently there was a sudden outbreak in Webb County, Texas, on the Rio Grande.

In July of 2014, Georgia Congressman Phil Gingrey, M.D., sent a letter to the CDC citing reports that the tens of thousands of “unaccompanied children” arriving at the border pose a public health risk when resettled across the country. He voiced concern for the safety of Border Patrol personnel and the adequacy of CDC vaccination programs. Unfortunately, the CDC has not seen fit to share more information with the public on the children’s health condition and the treatments provided.

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