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Tuesday, June 27, 2006

NY Times: Mexican border "a hotbed of contagion"

In bashing Bush, the New York Times makes a compelling case for closing the border. NY Times, April 11, 2000: Bush and Texas Have Not Set High Priority on Health Care, by Adam Clymer (emphasis mine)...

Texas has had one of the nation's worst public health records for decades. More than a quarter of its residents have no health insurance. Its Mexican border is a hotbed of contagion. The state ranks near the top in the nation in rates of AIDS, diabetes, tuberculosis and teenage pregnancy, and near the bottom in immunizations, mammograms and access to physicians.

That's something I haven't heard from even the most strident border-control advocates.

More, from page 3, same article, emphasis again mine:

As primitive as some conditions are on the United States side of the border, they are worse on the south. Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.6 million people across from El Paso, is just building its first two sewage treatment plants. Until now, a 17-mile open trench has been used for sewage disposal, and it pollutes the groundwater on both sides of the border.

Dr. Archer said Governor Bush had persuaded Mexican authorities to put money into tuberculosis control, a move they had resisted because the border states in Mexico are not nearly its poorest.

El Paso alone sees about 65 million legal border crossings a year. ''With this kind of a rate of crossings,'' Dr. Nickey said, ''you don't keep measles on one side of the border and chicken pox on the other.''

''We share the same air. We share the same water. We share the same pollution. We share the same hazardous waste.'' And because the border counties are a gateway to the rest of Texas and the rest of the country, he said, ''It's not just a border issue. it involves the whole United States.''

HT: John Leo, Townhall

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Update: Fixed my botched quotes in the title. Sorry!

Blunder #2: Oops! I mis-read "...65 million legal border crossings a year..." That's not quite the same statement about disease and the border I originally thought they were making.


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