Deadly diseases crossing border with illegals

Mycobacterium tuberculosis
A flood of illegals has massively surged at our southwestern borders. The economic impact of
medical care, education and incarceration for illegals forced on taxpayers is bankrupting Arizona.
Why are such swarms entering the U.S. illegally NOW, particularly children? Newspapers in Mexico
and Central and South America are actually describing U.S. "open borders," encouraging people to
come with promises of food stamps or "amnesty." It is textbook Cloward-Piven strategy to
overwhelm and collapse the economic and social systems, in order to replace them with a "new
socialist order" under federal control.
Carried by this tsunami of illegals are the invisible "travelers" our politicians don't like to mention:
diseases the U.S. had controlled or virtually eradicated: tuberculosis (TB), Chagas disease, dengue
fever, hepatitis, malaria, measles, plus more. I have been working on medical projects in Central and
South America since 2009, so I am aware of problems these countries face from such diseases.
A public health crisis, the likes of which I have not seen in my lifetime, is looming. Hardest hit by
exposures to these difficult-to-treat diseases will be elderly, children, immunosuppressed cancer-
patients, patients with chronic lung disease or congestive heart failure. Drug-resistant tuberculosis
is the most serious risk, but even diseases like measles can cause severe complications and death in
older or immunocompromised patients.
TB is highly contagious - you catch it anywhere around infected people: schools, malls, buses, etc.
The drug-resistant TB now coming across our borders requires a complex, extremely expensive
treatment regimen that has serious side effects and a low cure rate.
Chagas, or "kissing bug" disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, is carried by the
triatomine bug that transmits disease to humans. Although "kissing bugs" are already here, they are
not as widespread as in Latin America. Right now, Chagas disease is uncommon in the U.S., so many
doctors do not think to check for it.
Chagas causes debilitating fatigue, headaches, body aches, nausea/vomiting, liver and spleen
enlargement, swollen glands, loss of appetite. When Chagas reaches the chronic phase, medications
will not cure it. It can kill by arrhythmias, congestive heart failure or sudden cardiac arrest.
Vaccine-preventable diseases like chicken pox, measles and whooping cough spread like wildfire
among unvaccinated children. Other illnesses, along with scabies and head lice, also thrive as
children are transported by bus and herded into crowded shelters - courtesy of the federal
government. Treatment costs are borne by taxpayers.
Our public health departments complain of being overtaxed by a dozen cases of measles or
whooping cough. How will they cope with thousands of patients with many different, and uncommon,
diseases? Americans, especially Medicaid patients, will see major delays for treatment.
Delays to see doctors at the Phoenix VA hospital cost the lives of 58 veterans while waiting for care.
This is just a portent of far more deaths to come from delays for Americans' medical care as
thousands of sick illegals swamp already overcrowded emergency rooms. How will these facilities
stay open at all under the financial burden of this huge unfunded federal mandate to provide "free"
treatment?
People express concern about child endangerment from illegal minors dumped on Arizona streets in
hundred-plus degree heat, with no support. A bigger concern is American endangerment from life-
threatening diseases added to social and economic collapse from costs of treating hundreds of
thousands of illegals.
GOP physician-lawmaker offers common-sense prescription for healing health-care system in his
book, "Doctor in the House"