An insane voice on illegal immigration

NPR's views on illegals ought to be illegal

If you ask me, there's no greater threat to the country's well being than the virus of illegal immigration. (emphasis added)

You've read my rants on this topic before. But I heard something on the radio the other day that really set me off. It was a story on NPR. Apparently, last year, the US Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) deported 20,000 illegal immigrants from El Salvador, compared to just 3,400 in 2004. If you ask me, that fact alone is cause for celebration! After all, when was the last time a government agency increased its output by more than five times! If USCIS could do the same for illegals of other national origins, our troubles would be over very quickly!

As you may have guessed, the lefties at NPR didn't see things quite the same way. Incredibly, the story focused on the "struggles" of the Salvadoran government and its economy as they wrestled with the vastly increased numbers of their own citizens being forcibly repatriated. That's right: NPR wants you to feel bad that poor little El Salvador is having a hard time dealing with this influx of its own citizens.

Well boo-hoo for El Salvador.

Typically, NPR sees the world through red-tinted, Marxist glasses; the poor and downtrodden must be helped and given every possible advantage, whether or not they legally deserve it or not. And NPR will shamelessly pluck at your heart-strings until your heart bleeds as much as theirs does. I was so incensed about this story that I went to the NPR website to find out more (glutton for punishment that I am) and discovered that the story I'd heard was actually just the first of a three-part series!

Part two of the story told of one Salvadoran deportee's "near-death trip" to the U.S. The hombre in question was "Julio," a 45-year-old diabetic. His story is littered with all the well-worn clichés you've come to expect from an illegal immigrant story. He was cheated by the smuggler he paid to get him to the States; he spent two days in the desert without food or shelter - blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm as compassionate as the next guy, but if Julio had stayed at home where he belonged, or better yet, TRIED TO ENTER THE U.S. THE LEGAL WAY, he wouldn't have experienced any of the "horrors" of his "near-death trip."

I appreciate that Julio and others like him are seeking a better life. And I hope they find it. But I refuse to believe that it's incumbent upon the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer to pick up the tab. Clearly, the immigrants that come here are not averse to hard work; I implore them to stay in their respective homelands and put their efforts into bettering the future of their native countries.

And as for the folks at NPR, all I have to say to them is, what are you thinking? You're as subtle as a sledgehammer to the head about where you stand on all this. You think only compassionless meanies would deny people like Julio their shot at the American Dream?

But then, what can I expect from a bunch of people who work on a non-profit radio station? People who've never had to compete for listenership, and who can spew their liberal tripe without even one thought to needing to make it profitable. Naturally, they believe that you should be free to do whatever you want and let the government pick up the tab: the taxpayers have been footing the bill for over a third of NPR's annual operating costs for decades.

NPR's thought process goes something like this: while you're taking out your checkbook to pay taxes to keep NPR in the black, why not include some more of your hard-earned cash so that Julio can have his insulin taken care of, decent healthcare for his family, an education for his kids, and everything else that a citizen of the United States can have. The fact that Julio isn't citizen shouldn't matter, should it?

Well, I'm here to say it should. It matters a lot. U.S. citizenship is a privilege, not a right. It's not something you give away like care packages. It's something that has to be earned. Legally.

Publicly calling out what's wrong with National Public Radio.

(If that were not enough,) with disturbing regularity, I seem to be telling you about more and more third world diseases and ailments that are popping up right here in the U.S. This is not good. I believe that these increases of tropical diseases are directly related to the increased number of illegal immigrants here in the States from all manner of unhygienic parts of the globe.

The parasitic worm disease called schistosomiasis is yet another example. Like many of these third world diseases, schistosomiasis is actually one of the most common parasitic infections in the whole world, infecting 207 million every year. Of course, the majority of these people are in the Asia, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean (and no, I don't mean Club Med).

Schistosomiasis is caused by flatworms that live in snail-infested fresh water; this water is contaminated by worm eggs when infected people urinate or defecate into it. Schistosomiasis is contracted when people swim, bathe, fish or rice farm in the contaminated water.

"This is a disease of poverty," McGarvey said. "If you had proper sewage disposal systems for humans and animals, you wouldn't be contaminating the environment with the [worm] eggs."

The good news – if there is good news in a story like this – is that the disease has merely increased worldwide; there's been no mention of a significant uptick here in the States….yet. But I wouldn't breath a sigh of relief. Researchers say we need more resources allocated to beating it back. One of the authors of the study, Steven McGarvey, director of the International Health Institute at Brown University, said, "We're basically ringing the bell; attention must be paid."

In other words, if we're not careful, this parasite could be coming to a town near you.

Yet another reason to build that fence!!

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.
http://www.douglassreport.com

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Posted May 4, 2008 03:27 PM
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