Along with Illegal Immigrants, Infectious Diseases are Crossing America’s Border
By Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.
For the past four years, our national borders have been as porous as a sieve, allowing thousands of illegal aliens to cross into America every day. Few are screened for criminal backgrounds, useful skills, intentions toward America, or infectious diseases.
The criminal toll from invading gang members is significant, but not every border crosser is a thief, rapist, pedophile, or murderer.
However, everyone crossing the border could be a carrier of an infectious disease — a walking petri dish of bacteria and other microorganisms that may cause far greater problems than the criminal aliens.
I am using the description “illegal alien” instead of the more woke terms of “migrant,” “refugee,” “visitor,” “undocumented,” or “immigrant” as a hat tip President Bill Clinton, who, in his 1995 State of the Union address, stated, “All Americans … are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be occupied by citizens or legal immigrants.”
He was spot on, so I honored him by using his words. I suspect most Democrats and their media stenographers will object to the term “alien” despite it being used by one of their party’s heroes.
Most corporate media portray illegal aliens as pure and innocent as the wind-driven snow, overlooking the significant public health implications.
Fortunately, Fox News has demonstrated the courage to report honestly about the infectious diseases crossing America’s borders (emphasis mine).
Open borders allow deadly narcotics and criminal gangs to invade our country. But there’s a silent killer also making its way across the border: tuberculosis.
America’s woke public health authorities are more concerned with equity — redistributing health resources among racial groups — than with keeping a disease the U.S. once nearly eradicated from becoming a threat again.
Reported cases of TB shot up 34% from 2020 to 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and continue to rise. More than three quarters of the cases are foreign-born people who picked up the disease in their home countries or traveling through countries with high TB rates. The TB incidence rate is 60 times higher in Haiti than in the U.S.