Since 2005, Americans have been warned about microscopic border crossers carried in with refugees and illegal immigrants, bringing diseases previously eradicated or rarely seen here. When not simply ignored by media and health officials, physicians and others sounding the alarm have been attacked as xenophobes.
Now we’re seeing these prescient predictions come true, most prominently in Germany, since 2015 when Angela Merkel began allowing more than two million migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to flood into her country.
U.S. and German citizens are put at significant risk by the politically correct acceptance of unscreened immigrants from countries with a high prevalence of infectious diseases, many difficult or impossible to treat. Yet authorities in both countries have failed to fully inform the public of the dangers.
According to the July 2017 Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Report by the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, Germany has seen a surge in chicken pox, cholera, dengue fever, tuberculosis, leprosy, measles, malaria, meningococcal diseases, hemorrhagic fevers, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, paratyphoid, rubella, shigellosis, syphilis, typhus, toxoplasmosis, tularemia, trichinellosis, whooping cough, and many fungal and parasitic infections. Here are a few striking examples:
Measles is up more than 450 percent. Hepatitis B is up 300 percent. Scabies escalated nearly 3,000 percent.HIV/AIDS increased 30 percent.Tuberculosis (TB) is at least 30 percent higher, but German and U.S. physicians suspect that the incidence of TB is actually far higher than reported, and is being downplayed to avoid causing public outrage over the influx of immigrants. In Germany, more than 40 percent of TB cases are multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). Dengue fever is up over 25 percent just from 2014.
A similar pattern has emerged in the U.S. since the massive increase in illegal border crossers and refugees beginning in 2010.
As in the U.S., many hundreds of thousands of migrants “disappear” into cities and towns across Germany, without a health screening. There is no way to monitor them for disease or to ensure adequate treatment. Citizens are exposed without their knowledge; risks are especially serious for children and the elderly.
In a briefing to the Arizona Senate in 2016, experts reported that the U.S. is suffering near “pandemic medical issues” due to the continuous influx of illegal aliens and refugees from countries where infectious diseases are widespread. As of 2016, two states were in the Catastrophic Phase and another 13 were in the Critical Phase of public health impact from these infectious diseases. Arizona was #9 of 13 states in the Critical phase, but was expected to move into the Catastrophic Phase by fall of 2016 as a result of people who are latent carriers of disease or who entered the country during the incubation period for a disease. We were unable to learn the current status from personal calls to Arizona county and state officials.
TB is one of the most serious threats. Latent TB can remain dormant for years, even decades. It is alarming that 18 percent of refugees in Arizona arrive with latent TB, while in the general Arizona population the incidence was only 4 percent. Multidrug resistant TB (MDR-TB), common in migrants, may cost more than $400,000 per patient, compared with $20,000for the drug-responsive TB that has been predominant in U.S.-born patients. Treatment of MDR-TB has serious side effects, with no guarantee of success.
U.S. taxpayers pay this cost. In addition, all who might have been exposed to an active case must be screened, followed, and possibly treated.
Even healthy immigrants burden the system with social costs, such as housing, education, and food stamps—costs borne by taxpaying workers whose own wages are depressed by competition from a glut of low-paid foreigners. Illegal immigrants are estimated to cost U.S. taxpayers $17 billion per year. That $17 billion is in addition to the costs for those allowed here legally under "refugee" status, for which we do not have reliable public estimates.
Liberal and progressive politicians like to say “America is the land of immigrants.” In the past, this meant legal immigrants who follow our screening procedures for illness and other laws, and who are coming to America to be part of our culture.
Medical screening was one of the core purposes of the Ellis Island immigration center in New York. New arrivals were examined, quarantined if needed, or sent back to their country of origin if they posed a risk to Americans.
To protect the health and safety of American citizens, we must reinstate our prior customary medical screening as outlined on our own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
For national security and medical concerns, President Trump is correct to enforce our immigration laws, with careful vetting of those seeking to come to America to live and work.
Dr. Vliet has been a leader in patient centered, individualized medical care. Since 1986, she has practiced medicine independent of insurance contracts that interfere with patient-physician relationships and decision-making. Dr. Vliet focus is medical freedom and free market approaches to healthcare. Dr. Vliet is the founder of Vive Life Center and Hormone Health Strategies with medical practices in Tucson AZ and Dallas TX, specializing in preventive and climacteric medicine with an integrated approach to evaluation and treatment of women and men with complex medical and hormonal problems from puberty to late life. Dr. Vliet is a 2014 Ellis Island Medal of Honor recipient for her national and international educational efforts in health, wellness, and endocrine aging in men and women, and is recognized in the US as a motivational speaker in health and wellness and a powerful patient advocate, proponent of free market approaches to lower healthcare costs. Dr. Vliet is the recipient of Voice of Women Award from Arizona Foundation for Women in recognition of her pioneering advocacy for the overlooked hormone connections in women’s health. Dr. Vliet's consumer health books include: It’s My Ovaries, Stupid; Screaming To Be Heard: Hormonal Connections Women Suspect-- And Doctors STILL Ignore; Women, Weight and Hormones; The Savvy Woman's Guide to PCOS, The Savvy Woman’s Guide to Great Sex, Strength, and Stamina. Dr. Vliet is a past Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a member of the AAPS Editorial Writing Team on healthcare reform, and a member of International Menopause Society and the International Society for The Study of the Aging Male (ISSAM). She received her M.D. degree and internship in Internal Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and completed specialty training at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She earned her B.S. and Master’s degrees from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Dr. Vliet has appeared on FOX NEWS, Cavuto, Stuart Varney Show, Fox and Friends, Sean Hannity and many nationally syndicated radio shows across the country as well as presented hundreds of Healthcare Town Halls addressing the economic and medical impact of the 2010 healthcare law and free market reforms, as well as seminars and radio shows on healthcare reform, Men’s Health and Women’s Health. Dr. Vliet speaks as an independent physician, not as an official spokesperson for any organization or political party. Dr. Vliet has no financial ties to any health care system or health insurance plan. Her allegiance and advocacy is to and for patients. Dr. Vliet’s medical and educational websites are www.ViveLifeCenter.com, and www.HerPlace.com.
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