Ill Mexican nationals go home
Ill Mexican nationals go home
Repatriation offered to those in Denver with serious medical needs
By Bruce Finley
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated:11/20/2006 06:21:48 AM MST
Hundreds of Mexican illegal immigrants are in Colorado not just for work but also for free medical care they say they can't get back home. Now, Mexican officials have agreed to bring some home and help them find doctors there.
But many of these illegal immigrants - including Eloina Meza, a single mother of a disabled boy featured in the Nov. 13 Denver Post - see little incentive to return to a country where comparable opportunities don't exist.
Juan Marcos Gutierrez, Mexico's consul general in Denver, confirmed a new deal negotiated with Dr. Patricia Gabow, chief of the Denver Health and Hospital Authority.
Under the agreement, Denver health workers who provide kidney dialysis to illegal immigrants are guiding those who are willing to Mexico's consulate in Denver.
The immigrants are told they can receive free travel home and help finding appropriate health care - though they get no assurance it will be free.
Mexican officials also will repatriate other illegal immigrants with serious medical needs besides failing kidneys, Gutierrez said. He said he didn't know how many immigrants might qualify.
"I won't repatriate someone with the flu or a cold," he said. "We are talking chronic diseases, difficult medical conditions."
The goal, Gutierrez said, is to "give an option to our nationals. But it is not my duty ... to relieve (U.S.) hospital budgets."
He pointed out that illegal immigrants often pay taxes that support public health care here.
Denver health officials are prohibited by law from checking the legal status of immigrants they serve. But records show about 1,500 emergency-room patients a year are unable to give a U.S. Social Security number for billing purposes.
Many still seek treatment here despite a new state law that bars hospitals from giving publicly funded, nonemergency health care to illegal immigrants. Those immigrants now are treated as uninsured, self-pay patients.
Gabow said several patients already have been sent to the consulate. Six were in the process of heading home to continue dialysis treatment in Mexico, according to Mexican officials.
Yet many illegal immigrants are reluctant to rely on Mexico's government, saying that Mexico's poverty, inequality and widespread lack of access to medical care drove many of them north in the first place.
"(The government's offer) is nice. I like the idea. But here, I trust the doctors more. I trust everyone here more," said a 32- year-old illegal-immigrant aircraft-maintenance worker who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing authorities would use his name to find him.
The worker's 7-year-old son was born with major deformities that blocked his breathing and required more than a dozen surgeries.
"I'd like to live in Mexico. It's my country," the man said. But his son "was born here, and he gets all the medical support."
His son now thrives at a Colorado Springs-area school. He and his father recently visited doctors in Leon, Mexico, to investigate possibilities for treatment in Mexico.
The father said the Mexican doctor told them, "I recommend you finish all the medical stuff in the United States. Your doctors there know him. He's got pretty serious problems with his jaw that will require plastic surgery."
In another case, a Denver-area family that includes several illegal immigrants - and a U.S.- born 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and heart trouble - initially refused to accept public benefits out of pride. But then they saw huge bills from Denver Health for brain scans the boy needed after seizures.
Now they rely on Medicaid to pay these bills, though the father holds a job that has allowed them to afford a home.
There's no way the family would return to Mexico, said Gisela, 21, the boy's sister.
"He's not going to get any of the medical services he needs there," she said, because he lacks a Mexican birth certificate. "And even if he was, they would not be as good as they are here."
The medical agreement was in the works before Eloina Meza came forward with her story in The Post, but Mexican officials revealed their new policy last week after learning of the plight of Meza and her son Edgar, a U.S. citizen who suffers from Down syndrome and congenital heart defects.
Illegally in the country for 12 years, Meza recently tried to surrender to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at their offices in an effort to have a judge review her case and allow her to stay legally in Denver. The agents refused.
Charged with hunting for criminal immigrants and terrorists, they were reluctant to divert energy to process Meza, ICE officials said, defending a policy against accepting "walk-ins" who seek permission to stay.
Under U.S. law, immigrants here illegally for more than 10 years who can prove a pressing humanitarian need can be allowed to stay in the country legally if a judge reviews their case.
Meza has stayed here to keep Edgar alive. He had a series of surgeries, and doctors say he needs regular checkups and drugs to survive and that returning to Mexico could threaten his life.
"We're very interested in helping this lady," said Jorge Gonzalez, chief of protection services at the consulate. "If she doesn't have the possibility to stay, I will try to arrange medical care in Mexico."
Meza has agreed to meet with Mexican officials. But she wants her lawyer, Francesca Ramos, to meet with them first. She's resolved that, no matter what, the fragile little boy she loves must survive.
"Why all of a sudden does the Mexican consulate take an interest in a case like this?" she asked. "Why didn't they offer help to Mexicans that are here in this situation before? I do not understand the motive behind this meeting and do not have much confidence."
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_4689690
Ill Mexican nationals go home
Quote:
Now they rely on Medicaid to pay these bills, though the father holds a job that has allowed them to afford a home.
Excuse me. I had no insurance when I ended up in the hospital last December ith a life threatening illness. In fact, my children were notified that I probably wouldn't live through the week-end. Well, I did. But because I had no insurance, I was forced to sell my home to pay for the hospital, doctor, radiology and laboratory bills. I no longer own a home, but the poor, illegal invader had to "rely on Medicaid". Why do they insist on having more privileges than the average middle class American who has worked and paid taxes for a lot more than "ten years."
