Mass Migration Ignites U.S. Tuberculosis Resurgence, Foreigners Account for 76% of Last Year’s Cases

Besides compromising the safety of Americans by releasing over half a million illegal immigrants with criminal records in communities throughout the United States, the Biden administration has ignited yet another crisis by failing to properly screen migrants for contagious diseases. Judicial Watch has long reported on the serious health threat presented by illegal aliens and a decade ago exposed that tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors (Unaccompanied Alien Children—UAC) under Obama fueled a deadly respiratory virus epidemic that struck American kids across the country and killed at least nine. Months earlier a U.S. Congressman, who is also a medical doctor, had confirmed that UAC were bringing in serious diseases including swine flu, dengue fever, tuberculosis, and Ebola virus. In a letter to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Georgia lawmaker, Phil Gingrey, warned of a “severe and dangerous” crisis because the young migrants were importing infectious diseases from Central America that are considered to be largely eradicated in the U.S.

That was over a decade ago under Obama’s weak border policies and, predictably, the problem has worsened significantly during the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis that has gripped the nation under Biden and his laughable border czar, Kamala Harris. Besides the detrimental impact on national security, civilian safety, and taxpayer-funded programs (among others), mass migration is compromising health. Specifically, tuberculosis (TB), a deadly infectious disease that attacks the lungs and was once considered to be eradicated in the U.S., is on the rise. A report published by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a nonprofit dedicated to researching immigration issues, reveals that after decades of decline TB is resurfacing in the United States. “One key factor of the resurgence of TB in the U.S. is open borders and mass immigration,” FAIR researchers found. “The massive, unregulated influx of migrants from countries with higher TB rates than the United States has helped spread the disease. Even legal immigrants and refugees—who are required to undergo medical screenings before arriving in the United States—may have latent TB which then progresses to active TB and becomes transmissible once inside the United States.”

TB cases in the U.S. increased by 34% between 2020 and 2023 and the number of TB cases is now higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to figures in the report. Nationally, 76% of TB cases in 2023 occurred in foreign-born patients and counties, states as well as metropolitan areas with high foreign-born populations have larger rates of TB than those with lower foreign-born populations. “Some countries of origin for both legal and illegal aliens have TB rates as high as 60 times the U.S. rate,” the FAIR report states, adding that “the government’s health screening for TB in potential immigrants is deficient” and that some categories of illegal immigrants do not undergo any type of health screening. Besides, latent TB is not grounds for inadmissibility even though some U.S. border regions have “TB rates exceeding rates in high-risk countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon,” researchers found. It is important to note that the cost of treating each case of TB is more than $20,000 and can reach over $500,000 if it is drug-resistant, FAIR points out.

“Data clearly indicate that the prevalence of tuberculosis is, in part, a function of immigration,” FAIR researchers write. “Medical experts have long acknowledged this connection.” For example, in 1990 the CDC wrote that many TB cases in the U.S. occur among foreign-born people with asymptomatic infection when they entered the United States. More recently, research published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) determined that for countries with low TB rates, “immigration is an important factor in TB epidemiology, where migrants may originate from countries with substantially higher TB burden.” Incredibly, screening procedures for illegal immigrants entering the U.S. do not adequately guard against the spread of TB even though federal law states that aliens with communicable diseases “of public significance” are inadmissible. “However, the vast majority of aliens granted visas or who otherwise enter the U.S. are never medically screened,” FAIR researchers found. “Even for those who are medically screened, the standard for admission is lax, as it only excludes active TB and allows individuals with latent TB to enter the country, resulting in the importation of latent TB into the U.S.”