Opinion: Health Care for Illegal Immigrants a Moral Issue
By Robert Waddell, December 8, 2009
 In the health care debate, nickels and dimes are adjusted and qualified as millions of Americans go without health insurance. The issue has become one of dollars and cents and not of common sense and the moral concept that everyone should have the right to health care in this country goes by the way side.
The United States, a professed Christian nation, needs to look after the least of us, as the country slips into the drug induced daze and frenzy of bright light overstuffed platitudes like "Peace on Earth" and "Good Will to All" this month.
Those least of us are illegal aliens who are blamed for breaking the law because they come to the United States in search of the freedom America has offered the rest of the world for over 200 years. Immigrants today are treated as criminals but not the employers who exploit their labor and use illegals to bolster the failing U.S. economy. Many illegal aliens are not the back bone of the American workforce but they're certainly the wish bone, easily broken.
At a recent meeting with The New York Immigration Coalition and the New York Community Media Alliance, immigrant journalists and activists discussed the health care debate and its effect on the immigrant and illegal community.
NYIC Executive Director Chung-Wha Hong, Mark Hannay, Director, Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign; Jenny Rejeske, Health Advocacy Coordinator, NY Immigration Coalition; Ayaz Ahmad, Director South Asian Council for Social Services; Lana Khrapunskaya, Intake Coordinator and Case Worker, Shorefront YM-YWHA of Brighton-Manhattan Beach; Noilyn Abesamis-Mendoza, Manager of Health Policy, Coalition for Asian-American Children and Families and Theo Oshiro, Director of Health Advocacy, Make the Road NY all spoke at the press briefing attended by over 50 members of the immigrant press.
Speakers stressed that the Affordable Health Care for America Act, HR3962, the health care reform bill passed by the House of Representatives on November 7, "the adverse impact of five-year bar on permanent residents to get Medicaid, saying it denies critical health coverage to 358,000 people across the nation. It may be pointed out that the House bill does not restore federal Medicaid eligibility for the recently arrived, lawful permanent residents," read a NYIC release.
"In her remarks, Chung-Wha Hong highlighted," read in part the release, "Some of the concerns of the immigrant communities about the health care reform. She called for making immigrants part of the solution when fixing the country's broken health delivery system. She said legal immigrants who paid the same amount of taxes as the US citizens should have equal access to health insurance programs, referring to the present five-year wait imposed on documented immigrants before getting access to Medicaid. She also opposed denial of health insurance to undocumented immigrants."
 This is a critical time for involvement and not just watching from the sidelines. The demonization of immigrants, most especially Mexicans and other Latinos, and exploitation of labor creates a second-tier system of semi-slavery in this country. The xenophobia that some how immigrants are a glut on the system is ludicrous when they in fact work at jobs no other American is willing to do. To be sure, illegal immigrants hold up a huge pillar of the American economy, so they deserve equal treatment, fairness and health care.
As woven into the American fabric, immigrants and illegal immigrants make up a significant part of daily life in America. For sure, U.S. borders must be protected from enemies and terrorists but that's not the case here.
In his new book "Justice/What's the Right Thing to Do?” Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel writes "From the standpoint of helping the least advantaged, a case could be made for open immigration....Is there a moral basis for this reluctance? Yes, but only if you accept that we have a special obligation for the welfare of our fellow citizens by virtue of the common life and history we share."
And yet, the maids, gardeners, nannies, delivery persons, day laborers, construction workers, house keepers, fast food workers, beef and poultry industry workers, etc. all have a stake in America, and America has a stake in them. The forces of Reaction can do one of 4 things: Close all borders, heavily restrict immigration, enslave illegal immigrants or send every illegal back to their country of origin.
Thanksgiving celebrated the first illegal immigrants and how the United States was built on the posterity and tradition of immigration. Health care for all Americans, especially those weakest and least amongst us, is the least America could provide that with our gratitude.
This story was developed through the Education Beat Writing Fellowship at the New York Community Alliance. |
