Worried about swine flu? The U.S. government isn't. Oh, sure, the World Health Organization classified the A(H1N1) virus - also known as Mexican flu or swine flu
depending on which group you're more worried about offending - as a Phase 5 pandemic, signifying human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one region. A(H1N1) has been spread to 21 countries, with more than 1,000 total cases so far. WHO chief Margaret Chan said that a second wave of infections couldbe the biggest of all outbreaks ... in the 21st century. Here in the U.S., 30 states have confirmed cases of the virus, and while the government has claimed that it has placed priority on states on the Southwest border, one cannot help but wonder if the flow of Mexican flu across the border could have been stemmed by stopping the flow of illegal immigrants across the border.
Some federal lawmakers, including Representatives Michael Burgess (R-TX) and Eric Massa (D-NY), as well as Senator John McCain (R-AZ) have called for the Mexican border to be closed to all traffic until the pandemic is contained. Massa is a member of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, and Burgess is the chairman of the House Health Care Caucus, as well as a member of the Health Care, Energy & Environment, and Oversight & Investigations subcommittees of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. None of the lawmakers calling for improved enforcement of this country's immigration laws are expertise lightweights. Yet in light of this, we're told that closing traffic over the border would not help slow the spread of the virus from Mexico to the United States.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, one-third of U.S. A(H1N1) cases were tourism-related. Certainly, if travel to Mexico had been curbed, that's a significant number of cases that may have been prevented. Also, the first A(H1N1) death was a Mexican toddler who was legally visiting Texas with his family. Had America - for the time being, at the very least - closed the border, the amount of cases in the Southwest may have been a lot lower.
It is not, as pro-illegal-immigration advocate groups such as the National Council of La Raza or America's Voice suggest, racist to reduce traffic as much as possible between Mexico and the United States until the pandemic dies down. But because immigration enforcement has been efficiently smeared as racist and nativist by liberal groups such as La Raza, it's laughable to expect the government to do anything beyond standing by passively while possibly infectious illegal immigrants traipse over the Mexican border. Then again, the negative effects of illegal immigration have long been denied by these enablers - you see, it's totally impossible that illegal immigrants take jobs that would otherwise go to lower-class Americans, or that each illegal immigrant without a high school degree costs the taxpayer almost $100,000 in government services, not even counting welfare checks. That's hardly a price to pay for liberal political correctness to sneeze at, even if you are sick with Mexican flu!
Ultimately, because of this country's long-standing obsession with having a lax immigration policy in the interests of being a good neighbor we hurt ourselves in a lot of different ways. We cripple our economy, run up unnecessary costs, and generally make our own home a worse place to live, in the hopes that we won't get be labeled racist. Now it's possible that we've made the A(H1N1) pandemic worse by refusing to even temporarily quarantine a highly infected region. Heckuva job, Baracky.
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Opinion
Jesse Hathaway
