BORDER WINGNUTTIA

I saw this article in my local paper and it looks like Dean was right in predicting that the GOP will use illegal immigration as a wedge issue. Of course, there will lies and misrepresentations to forward their agenda.

Group says entrants adversely affect kids
By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona Published: 02.19.2006

Michelle Dallacroce's quest to protect her children brought her Saturday to the foot of the Huachuca Mountains near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Wearing a black Stetson, black coat and white long-sleeved T-shirt with the logo for her newly founded group, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, Dallacroce stood with 10 others holding signs on the side of Highway 92 to protest what she says is the negative effect of illegal immigration on U.S. children.

The group's goal is to spread the message to mothers across the country that illegal entrants are making it unsafe to raise children in the United States. "Whatever is coming from over there and crosses this street is coming to my town and I've seen them in my neighborhood," Dallacroce of Phoenix said, pointing south toward the border.

The group claims that illegal entrants bring diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy into the country, negatively impact public schools and endanger U.S. children.

According to the David Engelthaler, state epidemiologist with the Arizona Department of Health Services, the state has averaged fewer than one case of leprosy, or Hansen's disease, a year over the past five years. Tuberculosis rates in Arizona decreased by 35 percent from 1995-2004 but foreign-born accounted for 57 percent of the 272 total cases in 2004, up from 41 percent in 1999. Tuberculosis victims from Mexico accounted for 64 percent of the foreign-born cases in 2004, he said.

Here's a bit of what the NIH has about TB:

It usually takes lengthy contact with someone with active TB before a person can become infected. On average, people have a 50 percent chance of becoming infected with M. tuberculosis if they spend eight hours a day for six months or 24 hours a day for two months working or living with someone with active TB. However, people with TB who have been treated with appropriate drugs for at least two weeks are no longer contagious and do not spread the germ to others.

And a bit from the American Lung Association:

Children do not usually contract tuberculosis from other children or transmit it themselves.

And here's the real hysteria from Dallacroce's website:

Our beautiful Nation has been turned into a jungle by the mass invasion of illegal aliens - the streets of America; the neighborhoods and communities where we live; the malls and stores where we shop; the schools where our LEGAL children attend - and yes, even the churches where we worship - are now the Citadels of fear, bigotry, racism, physical danger and hate! The LEGAL children of America's 21st century have become the scapegoats and the victims of this invasion of illegal aliens. They have become - the get behind, the left behind, the back of the class, the back of the bus, the get off the playground, the get out of my way - pawns and victims of peer abuse and societal indifference.