Given the hyper-alarmism concerning “The Coronavirus” with which the public is
relentlessly besieged by both Big Government and Big Media, one would think
that no cost would be spared in the effort to defeat this Plague that is
decimating the world, correct?
But when we consider what the Chicken
Littles are not mentioning, it is fair to
ask:
How seriously do the panic-stricken genuinely take this?
Given all of the sudden talk of “social
distancing,” “self-isolation,” and “flattening the curve,” one would think that
everyone should be on board with bringing all immigration
to a grinding and, because there are always diseases and viruses that pose
threats to Americans, a permanent halt.
Americans from all walks of life,
irrespectively of their political persuasions, should be demanding this.
The
logic of “social distancing,” “self-isolating,” and “flattening the curve”
inescapably precludes allowing, to say nothing of encouraging, more people into our country.
And
it violently contradicts the logic (or illogic) of a
policy that invites people from countries with high incidences of dangerous
diseases.
The
person who supports “self-isolation” and “social distancing” while continuing
to support America’s modus operandi vis-à-vis immigration is like the person
who, for the purpose of slowing the spread of a dangerous disease, severs ties
with others by locking himself in his home. At the same time, though, he
invites into his home limitless numbers of people from
countries with conditions that make those countries breeding grounds for
infectious diseases.
The
irrationality should be seen for what it is.
So, why
no loud, unabashed calls to End Immigration NOW (or something to this effect)?
To President
Trump’s credit, he has implemented some travel bans—which his enemies in the
Democratic Party have resisted and for which they have hurled the all too
predictable accusations of “racism” and “xenophobia” at him.
But
even these travel bans are highly selective. If this is the State of
National Emergency that the President has declared it to be, and the State of
Emergency that the governors of many states have declared it to be, then, first
and foremost, one would think that all Americans, irrespectively of any other
differences that may divide them, would be unanimous in demanding that travel
from all other countries, especially travel from those
countries with Third World conditions, should be ended instantaneously.
The
United States military, which exists in order to protect America, should be stationed along our nation’s
borders, specifically along our southern border. This is the measure
that must be taken to insure that the flood of illegal
aliens that our politicians have shamelessly allowed and, particularly in the
case of Democrats, aggressively encouraged, come to
an end once and for all. In addition to violating America’s sovereignty,
these aliens who circumvent just those health-screening procedures that are
designed to protect American citizens have injected back into the body politic
numerous diseases, potentially deadly diseases,
over which America had long ago prevailed.
Not
even Trump, who, many of us have never forgotten, ran explicitly on a platform
to “build that wall” on our southern border (that wall that still hasn’t been
built), has used this as an occasion to promote stronger border security.
Nothing
less than a resounding, unanimous, unabashed call for closing America’s doors
indefinitely, until the Black Plague 2.0 has completed its sweep over the land,
is required to convince the skeptical among us that those who are screaming
loudest about it aren’t just using this a pretext for other, perhaps less
obvious, purposes.
Beyond
this—and while I don’t wish to stray too far afield—anyone who is genuinely
interested in protecting the well-being of our fellow Americans from infectious
diseases should be thinking about, at the very least,
severely restricting the numbers of people who enter the United States each
year, particularly when they are entering from underdeveloped countries.
The Open Borders crowd, the Democratic Party that is its home, and all of the
Big Con, America-Is-An-Idea types who have zealously (recklessly) been
embracing unrelenting immigration from anywhere in the world since forever
should be unceremoniously put out of business…now.
So
far, I haven’t heard anyone, neither Republican nor Democrat, neither “liberal”
nor “conservative”, make any such calls.
But if, as they claim, politicians who are now
annexing to themselves exponentially more power over the lives of Americans
than even that (awesome) amount of power that they already exercised are doing
so for the sake of protecting Americans from this infectious
disease, then not only should they be of one mind and will when it comes to
stopping all entry into America for present purposes;
they should recognize the need for upending our current immigration system and
stopping entry into America always so as to
protect citizens from all infectious
diseases that are known to be carried by immigrants.
Especially telling about the conspicuous,
virtually unanimous silence on this subject is that Hispanics, i.e., the
members of just that group that is disproportionately represented among those
aliens that have been illegally crossing our southern border for decades, are
also disproportionately represented among Tuberculosis (TB) carriers.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even though TB, which “was once a
leading cause of death in the United States,” has been declining “in almost all
racial and ethnic groups” over the decades, it nevertheless remains the case that
“Hispanics/Latinos continue to have a disproportionately higher burden of TB.”
The numbers are stunning. In
2015, the CDC reports that 28% of all people with TB within the United States
were Hispanic. Among foreign-born TB patients, nearly one-third were Hispanic. With 4.8 cases per
100,000 population, Hispanics carry TB at a rate eight times that of “white, non-Hispanic people”
(who carry it at a rate of .6 cases per 100,000 population).
In
2017, TB killed 1.6 million human beings
globally.
Back
in the mid-1990s, Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation supplied
readers with facts that virtually no one else dared to talk about until fairly
recently (and even now, in the thick of the Apocalypse that Big Media and Big
Government would have us think is upon us, far too few people are willing to
reckon with ((politically incorrect))reality).
For
starters, the resurgence of TB in America, Brimelow wrote, is “largely…because
of immigration from regions like Latin America where the disease is endemic
(foreign-born cases accounted for nearly two thirds of the increase in the last
decade….).” Elaborating, the author shares some staggering figures: “In
1991, some 27 percent of U.S. cases were foreign born; over 60 percent of
California’s cases, and 30 to 80 percent of the cases in some immigrant-heavy
Washington suburbs.”
Brimelow
continues:
“Leprosy: of the six thousand patients in the United States in 1987, 90
percent were refugees or immigrants from Southeast Asia or Mexico;
“Measles: virtually eliminated in the United States during the 1980s,
measles is flaring up—in Hispanic areas, particularly among recent arrivals
from Latin America.
“Cholera,
malaria, dengue fever [similar to the “Yellow Fever”]: all are widespread in Latin America, and all have been reported in
the United States recently.”
Though
Brimelow penned these words decades ago, his essential point remains as
accurate today as it was a quarter of a century ago. And that point is
that immigration does indeed pose health risks for Americans.
So,
then, shouldn’t the country “self-isolate” or “self-quarantine” from the rest
of the world, or at least from the countless foreigners who, by hook or by
crook, seek to enter America every day? If
not, why not? How is “social distancing” from those who would aspire to enter
the United States not the only morally viable course of action with respect to
“flattening the curve” of, not just the spread of COVID-19, but any and all
potentially dangerous viruses?
Don’t expect things to change
significantly, if at all, with either our immigration policy or that of any other
Western country. That no one in either Big Government or Big Media is
advocating these measures—massive and indefinite immigration restriction in
order to protect citizens not just from the latest coronavirus, but from
dangerous viruses of all kinds—suggests what some of us suspect:
Those in
Big Government and Big Media spreading the panic are powered by motives other
than what appears on the surface, for if their professed intentions were
sincere and they favored this massive contraction of our civil society to
protect us from oneinfectious disease, then they
should have long ago favored immigration restrictions so as to protect us from
infectious diseases of various kinds carried
disproportionately by foreigners seeking to enter our land.
In the
next installment of this series on Coronavirus hysteria, I will show how and
why the reasonable can’t but conclude that this is indeed a manufactured hysteria that has possessed the
country—and the world.
Jack Kerwick [send him mail] received his doctoral degree in
philosophy from Temple University. His area of specialization is ethics and
political philosophy. He is a professor of philosophy at several colleges and
universities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Jack blogs at Beliefnet.com:
At the Intersection of Faith & Culture.
