Once the dreaded scourge of Biblical times, leprosy is now a manageable pathogen. Miracles of modern medicine afford control of the otherwise disfiguring Hansen’s disease. This requires, however, that incipient cases be identified and treated. Left unchecked, leprosy is still a dangerous and communicable threat.

Legal immigrants to our country are routinely screened for disease when they arrive at our shores and borders. However, illegal immigrants flood through our porous boundaries with a host of ailments that were once almost eradicated in civilized society (see Tapeworms and Tuberculosis). And now leprosy is notably on the rise in the United States.

In 2003, the New York Times reported that the number of active cases, reduced to 900 forty years ago, had risen to seven thousand.

Leprosy, a Synonym for a Stigma, Returns
By SHARON LERNER | February 18, 2003

….In the United States, leprosy is usually regarded as a plague of the past, a disease relegated to biblical times or, perhaps, to poor and distant countries. But, in fact, as cases of leprosy have been declining worldwide in recent years, the infection has actually been on the rise in the United States.

While there were some 900 recorded cases in the United States 40 years ago, today more than 7,000 people have leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, as it is now called. “And those are the ones we know about,” said Dr. William Levis, attending physician at Bellevue Hospital’s Hansen’s Disease Clinic. “There are probably many, many more.”

Recasting leprosy as an American disease is critical to helping doctors identify those other undetected cases, but drawing attention to a condition that has become synonymous with stigma has proved to be challenging.

The disease, even with its sanitized name, can still confer pariah status on the victim….

Most of those infected in this country are immigrants from global leprosy hot spots, like Brazil, India and the Caribbean.

But, in the past six years, Dr. Levis and his colleagues have proved that a handful of his patients … have contracted leprosy here.

As a result, the disease is now officially endemic to the Northeastern United States for the first time ever…. And leprosy experts think that even some foreign-born people with the infection may have acquired it in immigrant communities here….

The estimate of 7000 reported four years ago represented just the known cases, identified and being treated. Illegal immigrants are less likely to have the education to recognize when they have the disease. Even when they know they have a problem, they are less likely to seek treatment, both because of the stigma of the disease and due to their concerns about remaining “under the radar” because they are in our country unlawfully.

An article from Americans for Legal Immigration highlights a particularly dangerous aspect of illegal immigration:

….Because illegal … immigrants are hired into food service, dish washing, cooking, hotels and day care–leprosy finds speedy access across the country….

In an interview with the Columbia School of Journalism in 2005, Dr. Levis expressed his increasing concerns:

Leprosy in America: new cause for concern
By Ben Whitford | Mar. 15, 2005

….“It’s creeping into the U.S.,” said Dr. William Levis, head of the New York Hansen’s Disease Clinic. “This is a real phenomenon. It’s a public health threat. New York is endemic now, and nobody’s noticed.”

Tracking leprosy among immigrants can be difficult, but leprosy is already endemic in Texas, and numbers are rising in New York and California–all states with high immigrant populations. Dr. Levis said he believes America could be on the brink of an epidemic similar to those that swept Brazil and led to the country becoming a global leprosy hotspot.

“We just don’t know when these epidemics are going to occur,” he said. “But we’re on the cusp of it here, because we’re starting to see endemic cases that we didn’t see 25 years ago.”….

In a stunning indictment of our government’s permissiveness toward illegal immigration, many lepers are entering unlawfully to take advantage of the free medical care they know that they will receive courtesy of the American taxpayers:

….Dr. Terry Williams, who runs a Houston-based clinic serving leprosy patients across southern Texas, said that the bulk of the cases treated by his clinic were immigrants. “A lot of our cases are imported,” he said. “We see patients from everywhere–Africa, the Philippines, China, South America.”

And at least some of those patients, he confirmed, were coming to the U.S. specifically to seek treatment. “Certainly we do see some of that,” he said. “We’ve had even a couple of patients from Cuba who were put on a boat by Castro just to get them out of the country–they made their way here through Mexico and Central America basically just to get treated.”

“We treat them; our job isn’t to be immigration police,” he added….

We must control our borders. We must permit only legal, and consequently health-screened, immigration. It is not a question of meeting labor force requirements. It is not about being compassionate to foreigners who seek opportunity. It is a medical issue of life or death, of survival for our own legal citizens.