Report: Influx of unscreened immigrants bring polio, tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria, and other diseases into the U.S. with them

Over 6.85 million illegal aliens have come into the U.S. since President Joe Biden took office, with even more entering undetected. This ongoing incursion, largely by single adults, comes at a hefty price.

While numerical values can be assigned to the cost of illegal immigration — an estimated $451 billion annually just to house the migrants who've entered under Biden's watch and another $3 billion in federal welfare benefits for every million parolees released into the U.S. — it can also be observed under microscopes, in hospital waiting rooms, and occasionally in morgues.

Diseases once thought eradicated or controlled in the U.S. have made a comeback, in part due to the influx of unscreened illegal aliens from a growing list of countries in recent years. 

Leprosy and polio

CNN reported that leprosy was rare in the U.S. for many years, with most cases affecting travelers to distant countries with high disease rates. The World Health Organization's Global Health Observatory data shows that in 2022, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Brazil led the world in leprosy cases.

Now, this likely import may be endemic in Florida.

Polio, a debilitating and potentially deadly disease, turned up in New York last year. America hadn't seen a case in over a decade, largely because the supermajority of American citizens are vaccinated against the virus during childhood. The New York State Department of Health indicated the unnamed Rockland County resident, left paralyzed by the disease, caught the virus "in a location outside of the U.S."

Not only did polio find its way back into the country, it made its way into the water supply. In August 2022, New York City health authorities indicated that they found polio circulating in the city's wastewater after Rockland and Orange Counties had similarly announced the once-eradicated virus had been found in wastewater samples, reported the New York Times.

New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan warned in an April 11 letter that around 50% of the migrants pouring into the sanctuary city were not vaccinated against the poliovirus.

"The recent polio and leprosy cases are almost certainly imported to the U.S.," Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and scientist at Stanford University.

Whereas legal migrants and travelers must be vaccinated to enter the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that neither so-called refugees or asylees are required to meet vaccination requirements before coming to the United States.
 
Real Clear Investigations (RCI) reported that the Biden administration has admitted to lacking vaccination records for the millions of illegal aliens who've entered the country since January 2021.

Chickenpox, tuberculosis, and syphilis

NYC Health Commissioner Vasan indicated in his April letter that extra to a glaring polio vulnerability among illegal aliens and a breakout of chickenpox — a problem similarly observed this month in migrant shelters by the Chicago Department of Public Health — there was also cause for concern because many migrants "lived in or traveled through countries with high rates of [tuberculosis]."

New York City's tuberculosis rate, 6.1 cases per 100,000, was double last year’s national rate. According to the city, 88% of TB cases were among people born outside the U.S.

The New York Post stated that Texas border counties overwhelmed by migrants were worse off, facing a TB rate triple the national average. In 2022, 6,009 of the 8,300 people with TB were foreign-born, according to the CDC.

The CDC revealed in March, "TB disease cases in the U.S. have continued to rise, with concerning increases among young children and other groups at increased risk for TB disease."

In addition, syphilis appears to be another imported disease left unscreened at the border.

The CDC mentioned in November that "congenital syphilis cases in the United States increased 755% during 2012–2021."

Center Square highlighted a Journal of Immigration and Minority Health analysis that found the "highest overall age-adjusted prevalence rates of syphilis seropositivity were observed among refugees from Africa (1340 cases per 100,000), followed by East Asia and the Pacific (397 cases per 100,000)."

Diversity and disease at the border

The Biden administration has observed unprecedented diversity among the nationalities represented among those stealing into the country. A 2022 Congressional Research Service report noted that while historically, migrants apprehended at the southern border primarily came from Mexico, last year, migrants from so-called atypical countries "constituted 40% of total encounters or nearly 1 million in absolute terms." 

Atypical countries include those in Africa and the Middle East. Hence, RCI suggested the increasing entry of atypical illegal aliens is especially problematic because countries like Senegal and Nigeria, represented at the informal U.N. general assembly at the border, don't do a great job vaccinating for polio, hepatitis, measles, malaria, and other diseases.

Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies stated, "It's not like there is some Typhoid Mary out there, but this is something people are seeing and thinking about, even if they don’t want to discuss it publicly.”

RCI indicated that the Biden administration was more or less silent when pressed about the link between the re-emergence of once-controlled or defeated diseases and the porous southern border, adding that neither the CDC nor the Department of Homeland Security would comment.