2/13/2005 08:59:00 AM|||Toni|||The Washington Times - Special Report

This is not news to me but The Wash Times does do a great job of accumulating and disseminating in context the costs and dangers of illegal immigrants, legal refugees without sponsors or even with sponsors and travels of immigrants to their home countries.

Excerpt:
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.

And:
Concerns about imported disease prompted the State Department on Jan. 21 to temporarily suspend travel to this country by Hmong refugees from the Wat Tham Krabok camp in Thailand. The order came after federal health officials learned of at least 25 confirmed cases of TB among refugees from that camp who had resettled in California, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
And: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.

And:
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:
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.
And:
A report by CIS, using 2004 data, "found that 35 percent of [all] immigrants don't have health insurance, and an estimated 65 percent of illegals don't have it," Mr. Camarota said. In contrast, fewer than 13 percent of U.S. natives and their children lack health insurance, the analysis showed. In 2002, he said, the federal government spent $2.5 billion to provide families of illegal immigrants with Medicaid and another $2.2 billion to provide medical treatment for uninsured illegals.
"State and local governments probably spent another $1.6 billion on top of that providing health insurance for illegal aliens," said Mr. Camarota, whose group analyzes Census Bureau data.

The next time someone tells you that illegal aliens fill a gap for workers and that it is a cost saving to consumers is full of it. We are paying for these workers in the form of taxes!!

Read the whole report and weep. In addition to the costs there is the frightening aspect of diseases which had virtually been eliminated from our shores. No more.|||110830675963781207|||Disease, unwanted import