Let's play merit or no merit.
Came across a journalist/environmentalist called Frosty Wooldridge. Frosty?
He claims, among other things, that the pace of illegal immigration into America is unsustainable and that America is already witnessing the demise of itself through education and crime as a result of not securing its borders.
He further claims the diseases brought in from illegals will also pose as a potential medical catastrophe.
Sounds alarmist and xenophobic (although parts of his positions echo the scholar Samuel Huntington) but the last part intrigues me. Is it that crazy? Wasn't the single biggest killer of Natives the diseases Europeans brought to which they weren't immune to?
Who's to say that won't happen in America if the borders remain pourous as they are?
Assuming the illegal problem is as grave as being presented. Recall in a previous article it seems as though the number of illegals pouring in has subsided and even dropping. Dunno if these things run in cycles though.
So. Merit or no merit on all these claims being posited by people like Wooldridge?
Stats, real or presumed, can be twisted any which way so let us be careful how we look at that problem from a number crunching perspective.
ReplyDeleteAbout the disease brought over by the colonists, in 14945-95, the Carib Indians had, unknown to them, kind of a sweet revenge. C olumbus's men brought back to Europe a virus dormant over there for about a thousand year. The new strain spread and woke up the old strain and you had a very severe syphillis epidemic. It spread from Genoa where Columbus and his men disembarked and went all across Europe very rapidly. (CF 1491, by Charles C. Mann)
Not convinced. There are other ways illnesses arrive and the border between the U.S. and Mexico is only one.
ReplyDeleteThe bigger issues with illegal immigration are the poverty, crime, strain on the medical and school systems from people who are not able to pay into the tax system or even afford the out of pocket expenses. These are problems that need to be addressed somehow. A fear of some bugaboo illness doesn't sound like a way to get a coherent policy into place.