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To the editor:

Did you know that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing our borders without being health-screened have brought us thousands of new cases of leprosy in the years since we opened the southern border?

Additionally, they brought tens of thousands of cases of incurable, i.e. multiple-drug resistant, tuberculosis; hundreds of thousands of cases of highly resistant hepatitis; blood parasites; head lice; and many other diseases.

Chagas disease is an inflammatory, infectious disease caused by a parasite found in the feces of the triatomine bug. Chagas disease is common in South America, Central America and Mexico, the primary home of the triatomine bug. Rare cases of Chagas disease have been found in the southern United States as well, but it is coming close to high levels now and can be passed from person to person.

Exotic Newcastle disease is another newcomer. A catastrophic outbreak of exotic Newcastle disease came from contact between chickens that were packed in crates and brought across an unguarded section of the border from Mexico. The chickens were raised in a farming district in California. Poor security at a chicken farm led to contact with the infected chickens and the commercial poultry business. The disease spread rapidly from 1971 through 1973 within the California poultry farms. The disease was eradicated after eight Southern California counties were quarantined and millions of chickens destroyed.

The cost to the taxpayers was $56 million (chicken feed to the U.S. Congress) in 1973 dollars. But it was not the illegal chicken immigrants that caused the problem — it was the “poor security” as our liberal friends would say. Liberals shed blame like water off of a duck’s back.

Don’t take this letter to mean that our country shouldn’t have an open-arms policy towards immigrants, but it should be the legal way. We cannot continue to let our leaders, and I use that term very loosely, keep this flood of people crossing the border unencumbered. It will shortly be costing us trillions of dollars to pay for their health-care costs and schooling even as they take jobs from Americans.

The liberal answer is: “Don’t worry, we always have “Obama’s stash” to fall back on.” But remember, that “stash” is our tax dollars, which was your stash for old age enjoyment, if there is such a thing. I’ll be 70 in May and don’t feel a day over 105. Even though I’m getting some of Obama’s “stash,” I’m still out there working, paying into Obama’s “stash,” also.

Remember, thousands of children that have never been vaccinated or even seen a doctor in their lifetime are now mingling with our children in all of the school systems in the country. I’d like to see their health/shot records that a school is supposed to require (or at least they used to) before they start school. Of course, in the liberal’s mind, that would be called the “bad ol’ days — it’s not progressive.”

I served my country for 28.5 years and got blood parasites and hepatitis from serving as a liaison on a Vietnamese patrol boat on the Mekong Delta. I had the best health care, yearly shots and check-ups, and I still came home with a host of diseases but no new holes. Those diseases still give me problems sometimes.

Don’t worry, I’m not Typhoid Mary, I am not contagious. I may be a bubble out of plumb, but I don’t want my country to go down the drain. I do worry about what my son, daughter, grandsons and granddaughters will have if this keeps going as it is.

I did have to go to Long Bien Hospital to be treated. That’s where there were a lot of guys that didn’t have the lack of holes, some had way too many. Somewhere along the line I got separated from my uniforms; all I had was one pair of “tiger greens,” — those that were there know what they look like.

I was told to report to Saigon. After I got there, they offered me a choice to go back to a Vietnamese boat or go back to the USA — I’ll give you 25,000 chances to get the right answer. So off to San Francisco, I went with orders to report to Alameda Coast Guard Base. After I got to the San Francisco airport, I called the base and told them I had enough money to fly to the East Coast where my family and next duty station were and report in there. They gave me the nod with verbal orders to go. Of course I had to borrow some money from another Coastie going to the East Coast — I’m still in tiger greens with a wallet with a service ID and a load of Vietnamese currency and military pay chits.

I had my wife meet me at Philadelphia airport where I paid off the guy for my plane ticket. Boy, I did get the weird eyeball and a wide berth in a number of places. I still don’t know if it was the way I looked, or was it how I smelled? My uniforms even arrived home before me.

It is time for you to wake up, open your eyes, get involved, pull your noses out of the roses (always like to throw in a rhyme when I can) and take back our country from that Pool of Fools in Washington, D.C.

Roma D. Wade
Beaufort

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