Disease at the Border

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

In 2014 when reporters asked me why I was participating in the protests against the busloads of illegal aliens being brought into Murrieta, California, which eventually we turned the buses around, my response was that my granddaughter had come down with hand-foot-and-mouth disease, and when the doctor said he didn't understand why there was a sudden spike in the disease in the area, I knew immediately what was going on.  After being interviewed by a number of news networks, Al Jazeera America told me there was no known correlation, essentially telling me it was all in my head.  They, then, essentially accused me of being a racist by asking me if I was "against immigration, or against Hispanics?"

"Neither," I replied.  "My wife was born in Mexico, immigrated here legally, naturalized in 2007, and is more conservative on this issue than I am."

In other words, she was talking about building a wall long before Donald Trump was, except hers would have gun turrets, a mote, and alligators.

Here we are, four and a half years later, and the illegal alien issue has become violent, deadly, and an invasion in the form of a caravan slamming against America's southern border.

Every country in the world has a duty to guard their borders for the same reason we check who is at the door before we open it when someone knocks.  We lock the doors of our houses, and we carefully vet who we allow in our houses not because we hate everyone that comes to our porch, or lives outside our homes, but because we love everyone on the inside and we wish to protect them from the potential dangers that lurk beyond our front porch.  The reality is, there are bad people out there, and it doesn't matter what the percentage of bad people there are out there, the very fact that they are out there gives us a good enough reason to put locks on our doors.

The sovereignty of my home demands that I take the proper actions to ensure my home is safe from outside invasion.

Our country is our home.  The border is our front door.

Statistically, the influx of illegal aliens challenge our sovereignty, hurts our economy with lowering wages and higher public assistance dollars being spent out of our tax dollars, and on top of all of that, many of those claiming they have a right to raid our country are arriving with diseases we have eradicated for the most part on this side of the border.  According to The New American, when sifting through the caravan of Central Americans pounding on the border at Tijuana, "at least 30 percent of them are sick with communicable diseases they might spread to Americans in schools, hospitals, welfare and employment offices, and other public places."

We are talking serious disease.

"A third of the 6,000 or so in Tijuana [are] coughing and breaking out in blisters...That’s because the diseases many of the migrants carry are deadly — or can be."

"Out of 6,000 migrants currently residing in the city, over a third of them (2,267) are being treated for health-related issues," Fox News reported.

Officials have confirmed that among those diseases are tuberculosis, AIDS, and chickenpox.

They are also crawling with bugs.  At least 101, Fox reported, carry lice and “skin infections” like "scabies."

And that can lead to a typhus epidemic.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the body louse is the vector for the typhus bacterium, Rickettsia prowazekii.

“Epidemic typhus is spread to people through contact with infected body lice,” CDC says. It noted the disease is uncommon these days, although “epidemic typhus was responsible for millions of deaths in previous centuries.” But cases continue to occur, in areas where extreme overcrowding is common and body lice can travel from one person to another.”

The Benito Juarez Sports Complex, where the migrants are housed, is one such overcrowded area: 6,000 are packed into an area meant for 1,000.

Another disease is chagas, which is spread by blood-sucking triatomine bugs:

"These blood-sucking bugs get infected by biting an infected animal or person. Once infected, the bugs pass T. cruzi parasites in their feces. The bugs are found in houses made from materials such as mud, adobe, straw, and palm thatch. During the day, the bugs hide in crevices in the walls and roofs. During the night, when the inhabitants are sleeping, the bugs emerge. Because they tend to feed on people’s faces, triatomine bugs are also known as 'kissing bugs.'"

Some eight million people in Mexico, Central America, and South America have it, and most don’t know it.

Officials also worry about a hepatitis outbreak because of the filth in the Benito Juarez Sports Complex. “The location also has only 35 portable bathrooms,” Fox reported. “A sign reading ‘No Spitting’ was put up, as coughing and spitting by migrants are rampant in the shelter.”

When it comes to tuberculosis, many of the migrants carry a particularly virulent form of TB that is resistant to multiple antibiotics.

Last year it was reported that 37,684 immigrants with TB entered the United States between 2005 and 2009. The most, 24.1 percent, or 9,098, came from Mexico. Another 1,154, or 3.1 percent, came from Guatemala, while 853, or 2.3 percent, came from Honduras, where the migrant invasion began.

482 of those cases were the multi-drug resistant cases.

MDR TB is a pressing concern, CDC reports, because “it is resistant to ... the two most potent TB drugs ... used to treat all persons with TB.”

Another 2,000 migrants are headed for Tijuana, making quarters tighter, and body to body contact more common at the sports complex where they are gathering.  If the 33-percent figure for sick migrants in Tijuana now holds true for those on the way, the town will be faced with another 660 very sick people.

And that's just talking communicable diseases.

What about the criminals.  Murderers.  Rapists.  Gang members.  Jihadists.

We saw the violent rock throwing at the border, and the complete disregard for the law.

When Candidate Donald Trump said that these kinds of people were among the illegal alien population in 2016, he was called a racist, and "anti-immigrant."

The thing is, Trump was right.

U.S. Federal agents arrested a convicted murderer who was attempting to enter the U.S. illegally while a member of the caravan. The Daily Caller reports:

U.S. authorities arrested a Honduran national who illegally entered the United States after joining the migrant caravan and who is a convicted murderer, DHS announced Friday. 

“Border Patrol agents arrested a convicted murderer from Honduras Saturday night after he illegally entered the United States with other members of the migrant caravan,” DHS said, adding that the man was arrested along with three others while trying to illegally enter the United States.

DHS continued: 

“Agents discovered documents indicating one of the men, 46 year-old Miguel Angel Ramirez, was recently released from prison in Honduras. Ramirez later admitted he was arrested and convicted for murder in Honduras and was released just four months ago … The San Diego Sector Border Patrol’s Foreign Operations Branch corroborated the man’s admission with the Honduran Consulate in Los Angeles and discovered that Ramirez served 16 years in a Honduran prison for his crime.”

We need to put up the wall, and vet who comes in.  There is nothing wrong with turning away people who want to come into the country who are not good for the country.  I get it.  If I lived somewhere else I would want to be here, too.  But, our system can only handle so many coming in, and if they don't add to the melting pot, and instead take away from our society without contributing through government assistance because they are low skilled, or have no interest in assimilating into our culture, we can't admit them.

You wouldn't let them into your house, so why should we let them into our country?

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary