When the latest efforts to reform the US health care system were being formulated very few, if any, expected the issue of undocumented immigrants to play a major role. Well, welcome to American politics 101 where the fear of alienating some voters leads to the adoption of hybrid positions that are impossible to explain. What better illustration of the above than the fact that both sides of the aisle are willing to see the US withhold offering vaccination against swine flu to undocumented population.
I was flabbergasted when I watched our president, Barak Obama, a Peace Nobel laureate nonetheless, get himself tied up in knots when he was attempting to explain the administrations policy regarding the H1N1 flu shot. He tried to explain with a straight face that the US must consider making an exception in this case since the children of the illegal immigrants will inevitably get in contact with our own toddlers.
Yes, you heard it right, we should inoculate undocumented children, not because the vaccine could spare them from catching influenza and possibly death but we should allow them to get vaccinated only because not to do so might infect our precious children. To make things even worse, no one has raised an objection to this monstrosity of a policy.
I have a better solution Mr. President, maybe we should make it illegal for these children to be seen within say thirty feet of a legal US resident. That way we will not have to worry about providing this expensive service of vaccination when the annual deficit is only 1.4 trillion dollars. You know what they say, every penny counts.
And what about the parents of these children? If they are not permitted to get the vaccine then is it acceptable to have them suffer the ill effects of the virus that they might transmit to their children who are not in contact with other US kids? If a sizable number of the illegal population gets sick then what happens to the various businesses that depend on their cheap uninsured labour?
Oh, the webs that we weave when we try to justify the unjustifiable.
