Illnesses entering our country

The economic disaster of illegal immigration is just the tip of the iceberg. Not only are our fortunes in danger of being stolen and our lives taken by criminals allowed to illegally enter our country, our health is in danger from both the legal and illegal immigrants allowed to enter our country with undiagnosed and unquaarantined illnesses. Our airports have become an entry point for a variety of exotic microbes poised to take our health and even our lives.

The ill who enter our country are supposed to be quarantined for a period of time adequate to avoid spread of contagious disease. However, a study by USA Today compared airport ambulance calls with quarantine records and found absolutely no connection between the two. Even in what one might expect to be the nation's most germ conscious site, Atlanta's International Airport, there were only 102 quarantine reports for 2009 compared to 473 ambulance calls for passengers entering our country with fever, diarrhea, vomiting and flu symptoms.

Airlines are supposed to notify the CDC to quarantine ill passengers, but few take that precaution. The CDC reported only 91 quarantine reports from Florida, Alabama and Mississippi combined, while Miami International Airport alone recorded 185 ambulance calls for travelers with fever, vomiting, severe diarrhea and flu-like symptoms. There are probably many more who enter with various illnesses not serious enough to require emergency care. They are then allowed to spread their diseases throughout the country in taxis, hotels, subways, museums and restaurants.

All a killer superbug needs to enter America is a human host with a passport and an international airline ticket. Thousands, of airline passengers with fever and other obvious symptoms of contagious disease enter the U.S. every day and almost none are quarantined to determine if they are carrying microbes to infect millions. Even those so ill as to require emergency care at the airport, are rarely quarantined. Instead, they are transported to a local hospital, often at taxpayer expense, where they could infect already ill patients before being dismissed to transmit disease the general population.