Thread: Illegal Fact and Fiction

The Immigrants: Myths and Reality



To hear many anti-immigration groups tell it, people who move to the United States from abroad these days are a pretty sorry lot.
Immigrants, these groups say, come here to suck up free social services, not to better themselves. If they do work, they steal jobs from Americans and increase unemployment.

They bring all kinds of diseases with them, and once here they despoil the environment for native-born Americans. To many people, these kinds of statements have the ring of truth.

But studies from an array of groups — from the conservative Cato Institute to the liberal National Immigration Forum to the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences — give the lie to these unfounded allegations.

Here is the truth about some of these myths:


MYTH: Immigrants use more government services than they pay for with their taxes.

REALITY: Actually, the National Academy of Sciences found that the average immigrant annually contributes $1,800 more in taxes than he or she receives in benefits. Over their lifetimes, immigrants and their children will each pay an average $80,000 more in taxes than they will receive in local, state and federal benefits combined.

Because states provide most services used by immigrants, they can be net financial losers, while the federal government is typically a net gainer.


MYTH: Immigrants increase unemployment and reduce wages.

REALITY: In line with a number of other studies, the Cato Institute found that immigrants do not increase joblessness, even among the lowest-paid workers. The institute studied the relationship of unemployment and immigration between 1900 and 1989 and found "no statistically reliable correlation" between the two.

Other studies have found that immigration either has no effect on wage levels or, at worst, a very slight effect on a very small number of the lowest paid jobs in high-immigrant areas.

There is a consensus among business leaders that immigration is vital to maintaining economic growth. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said recently that immigration is critical to mitigating "inflation pressures."


MYTH: Immigrants bring disease.

REALITY: Even though most immigrants come from countries poorer than the United States, recent immigrants are healthier than the U.S.-born population in virtually every particular.

The Cato Institute also found that general health indicators like birth weight and infant mortality are better among babies born to immigrants than to U.S.-born mothers.


MYTH: Immigrants degrade the environment.

REALITY: Since 1965, when the current high levels of immigration began, there is no evidence that the environment has worsened overall. In fact, many environmental indicators like air and water quality have generally improved.

The Cato Institute, citing the data's complexity, reported that it could not "prove a causal connection" between environmental problems and the number of immigrants entering the United States.


Intelligence Report
Spring 2001



http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelrep ... sp?sid=173

There is a significant difference between spring 2001 and spring 2006. I rest my case.

Really!

How Cato Is Funded
Contributions are received from foundations, corporations, and individuals.

well, what about Bird flu, I heard some southern states in Mexico have their own new version of the bird flue...

ARYANA,
let me say before you get started, that ALIPAC is concerned with ILLEGAL ALIENS. Legal immigration is welcome, within reason.

Nothing in that piece has any significant value. I'm sorry that you've wasted your time.

If you should decide that it would benefit you to gain knowledge concerning this situation that is criminal, against the Rule of Law and detrimental to the American people, may I suggest that you research ALIPAC's copious research and head your self over to the Heritage institute.

LOL,

Someone file this in the humor section.

I stopped reading when I read "REALITY: Actually, the National Academy of Sciences found that the average immigrant annually contributes $1,800 more in taxes than he or she receives in benefits. Over their lifetimes, immigrants and their children will each pay an average $80,000 more in taxes than they will receive in local, state and federal benefits combined. "

Yes, imagine that! illegal aliens being paid under the table or 4 dollars an hour will pay more in taxes than they consume.

That must explain why the state governments in our border areas, like California, are in such great financial shape!

Then I saw the SPLC at the bottom.

Gag.

Don't post this horsecrap on our site.

W

http://www.tballiance.org/2_1_2_MDR_TB.asp




The Ticking TB Timebomb
Complicating the TB epidemic is the rising tide of multi-drug- resistant strains or MDR-TB. MDR-TB, which is lethal when untreated, can break out in London or Lima, since its cause - interrupted, erratic or inadequate therapy – can happen anywhere. Up to four percent of all cases worldwide are considered multi-drug resistant - those resistant to the most effective drugs of the four-drug standard, isoniazid and rifampin.

Often a few months into a cumbersome and lengthy treatment process, patients feel better and may stop treatment altogether. Unfortunately, more than two- thirds of TB patients do not receive full and proper treatment, further fueling the spread of deadly multi-drug resistant strains (MDR-TB) have emerged. Other factors that contribute to MDR-TB’s spread include improper use of antibiotics, inadequate public health systems, poor quality "counterfeit" drugs and defaulting on treatment.




Challenges to Treating MDR-TB
The costs of curing MDR-TB are staggering – up to 1400 times the cost of regular treatment. Since MDR-TB can not be adequately treated through the standard short-course therapy, treatment entails up to 2 years of treatment with "second line" drugs. These are often toxic and ineffective since no new drug has been introduced in some 40 years. Many MDR-TB cases defy a cure.

In the absence of an effective therapy, infectious MDR-TB patients will continue to spread the disease, producing new infections with MDR-TB strains. Until we introduce a new drug with demonstrated activity against MDR strains, this aspect of the TB epidemic could begin to explode at an exponential level.

Moreover, MDR-TB and HIV might present an even larger problem, because research findings suggest HIV co-infection could increase the proportion of cases that are resistant.



A Global Problem
Epidemics of MDR-TB can spread quickly from city to city, country to country and even bridging continents. A survey in 72 countries suggested that the MDR-TB problem is more widespread than previously thought and likely is worsening. In some TB hot spots, at least 20 percent of all registered TB cases were due to MDR-TB. Some have estimated that between 185,000 and 415,000 new cases of MDR-TB will develop every year.

The complete magnitude of the global MDR-TB problem is unclear since only half of the countries with highest levels of TB cases have relevant data, and many national TB programs do not have the resources to screen all TB cases for resistance. Yet we do know where MDR-TB appears to be particularly serious.

Hotspots From Lima to London
While MDR-TB afflicts countries with poor health infrastructure, MDR-TB is just as likely to break out in industrialized economies. During the late 1980s and early 1990s outbreaks of MDR-TB in North America and Europe killed over 80% of those who contracted it. The major TB outbreak in New York in the early 1990s was primarily a MDR-TB epidemic, with one in ten cases being drug-resistant.

Another unlikely hot-spot is the Russian Federation, where MDR-TB has spread like wildfire, particularly in prisons. One-third of Russia’s TB population is in prison, and of 24% of those have MDR-TB. In parts of Eastern Europe, nearly half of all TB cases resist at least one first-line drug.

Other areas where MDR-TB is a serious problem include Estonia, Latvia, and China’s Henan Province. MDR-TB strains also are appearing in significant numbers in Mexico; cases also appear to be increasing in Denmark and Germany.

To Learn More about MDR-TB


- UN Wire, May 2, 2001, "Tuberculosis: Drug-Resistant Strains Pose Global Threat, WHO Says"

- Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance in the World: Report No. 2, Prevalence and Trends, prepared by the WHO/IUATLD Global Project on Anti-Tuberculosis Drug Resistance Surveillance.

- "Erasing the World’s Slow Stain: Strategies to Beat Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis" Science Magazine 15 March 2002

http://www.alamanceind.com/newfol~4/immig_22.html


WWW.ALAMANCEIND.COM

Matt Maggio, Publisher & Editor Email




Report illegal aliens to the INS - North Carolina 704-672-6938

"Neurocysticercosis" is the term for infection of the nervous
system - usually the brain - with the pork tapeworm; in the U.S.,
it is acquired by eating tapeworm eggs shed in human waste - not by
eating pork from an infected pig. It is endemic in Latin America, Africa, and Asia - but had been extremely uncommon in this country until recently; in the U.S., the main way it is transmitted is by aliens from areas where it endemic working as foodhandlers and not washing their hands when they use the restroom while at work. In non-Moslem countries in the Third World - where pork is a common food, meaning pigs commonly get infected from human waste, cysticercosis is responsible for one-third of epilepsy cases.
Most U.S. cases are in the Southwest and are among immigrants
from Third World areas where the disease is endemic. However, a
1992 Centers for Disease Control report noted that 7.3% of cases in
Los Angeles County were locally-transmitted; these patients were
native-born Americans who had never traveled to countries where the disease is common. Another CDC report, this one in July-September 1997, noted that the disease is increasingly common among Americans who have never left the U.S. The CDC notes that it is responsible for 2% of neurologic hospital admissions in Southern California., producing more than 1,000 cases yearly nationwide. In 2002, the CDC noted that
the brain-damaging worm disease caused 10% of all epilepsy cases in
Los Angeles emergency rooms.
The CDC noted that 3% of migrant farmworkers in North Carolina
who were from Central America were in the infectious stage of the
disease; that CDC report expressed particular concern about such
people working as food handlers or housekeepers - and suggested
that those in these occupations be tested for whether they were
infectious.
Showing both the typical transmission route in the U.S. - and
the risk cysticercosis poses to the general American public - the
CDC noted that food contaminated by immigrant cooks caused an
outbreak of the disease among Orthodox Jews in New York City. The fact that Orthodox Jews don't eat pork didn't prevent them from
getting the disease - nor did their distance from the Mexico
border.
A Texas Dept. of Health report in Aug. 1998 noted among
risk factors "employing a domestic worker from an endemic area" and eating food prepared by a "foodhandler with a tapeworm"; the report elsewhere explicitly blamed the increase in the disease inside the U.S. on immigration.
That Texas Dept. of Health report noted that this disease is
becoming endemic "in parts of the United States having a large
Hispanic population" and that "neurocysticercosis is a major health
problem along the United States-Mexico border."
In late May 2002, another CDC in-house medical journal article reported
transmission of the brain-damaging worm disease inside North Carolina
by infected aliens.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.a ... E_ID=44394



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INVASION USA
Are illegals making
U.S. a leper colony?
'This is a real phenomenon. It's a public health threat. New York is endemic now, and nobody's noticed'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 22, 2005
5:11 p.m. Eastern



© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com



Leprosy is curable with proper treatment (photo: Columbia News Service)

Leprosy, the contagious skin disease evoking thoughts of biblical and medieval times, is now making its mark in the United States, and many believe the influx of illegal aliens is a main factor.

"Americans should be told that diseases long eradicated in this country – tuberculosis, leprosy, polio, for example – and other extremely contagious diseases have been linked directly to illegals," Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., told the Business Journal of Phoenix. "For example, in 40 years, only 900 persons were afflicted by leprosy in the U.S.; in the past three years, more than 7,000 cases have been presented."

"This emerging crisis exposes the upside-down thinking of federal immigration policy," he continued. "While legal immigrants must undergo health screening prior to entering the U.S., illegal immigrants far more likely to be carrying contagious diseases are crawling under that safeguard and going undetected until they infect extraordinary numbers of American residents."


The number of cases of leprosy, now known as Hansen's disease, among immigrants to the U.S. has more than doubled since 2000, according to a news report from Columbia University.

While the overall figure is small compared to other countries, some researchers fear the trend could lead to the disease spreading to the U.S.-born population.

"It's creeping into the U.S.," Dr. William Levis, head of the New York Hansen's Disease Clinic, told Columbia News Service. "This is a real phenomenon. It's a public health threat. New York is endemic now, and nobody's noticed."

Levis thinks America could be on the verge of an epidemic.

"We just don't know when these epidemics are going to occur," he said. "But we're on the cusp of it here, because we're starting to see endemic cases that we didn't see 25 years ago."

According to Steve Pfeifer, head of statistics and epidemiology at the National Hansen's Disease Program, only about two dozen new cases are found each year in U.S.-born patients, with that number remaining stable for decades.

But Pfeifer suggests many aliens are coming to the U.S. specifically to get treated for their skin condition, due to the short time between many immigrants' entry to the U.S. and their diagnosis with leprosy.

"They're coming to be treated because they get treatment free and probably get better treatment here," he told Columbia. "Somebody down there diagnoses them and says, 'Hey, you've got leprosy, and your best course of action is probably high-tailing to the U.S.'"


The fear is that since the disease remains contagious until treatment is commenced, a surge of diagnosed-but-untreated patients could mean a spread of leprosy into the population of those born in America.

Pfeifer said he had not issued an official report on the dangerous trend, fearing that anti-immigration groups would become vocal against centers providing free health care for illegals.

"A lot of our cases are imported," said Dr. Terry Williams, who treats leprosy victims in Houston. "We see patients from everywhere – Africa, the Philippines, China, South America."

Williams confirms that some of his patients came to the U.S. specifically for treatment, telling Columbia, "Certainly we do see some of that. We've had even a couple of patients from Cuba who were put on a boat by Castro just to get them out of the country – they made their way here through Mexico and Central America basically just to get treated. ... We treat them; our job isn't to be immigration police."

But not all experts have such a gloomy outlook.

Dr. Denis Daumerie, head of the World Health Organization's leprosy-elimination program, thinks claims of immigrants causing a spike in U.S. leprosy are overstated.

"There is no risk of an epidemic of leprosy," he told Columbia. "There's absolutely no risk that the few immigrants who are affected by the disease, if they are diagnosed and treated, will spread the disease in the U.S."

You better stop confusing the troll with facts