A Contagious New Neighbor.

• Author: Vliet, Elizabeth Lee
• Position: HEALTH BEAT - Illegal border crossings and infectious diseases

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 the media and health officials, physicians and others sounding the alarm have been attacked as xenophobes. Now we are seeing these prescient predictions come true, most prominently in Germany since 2015, when Angela Merkel began allowing more than 2,000,000 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 have failed to inform the public fully 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.

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 especially are serious for children and the elderly.

In a briefing to the Arizona state senate in 2016, specialists 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. 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 No. 9 of 13 states in the Critical phase, but was expected to move into the Catastrophic Phase 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...