Saturday, October 17, 2009

Undocumented Immigrants and Health Care

by Emile Schepers, Political Affairs
September 13, 2009

The way the issue of undocumented immigrants has been wielded as a weapon in the health care debate is an indicator of how far this country has backslid on the immigration issue since the giant immigrants’ rights marches of 2006 and 2007. All we hear and see is the Republicans claiming that undocumented immigrants will, too, be covered by the Democrats’ health insurance plans, and the Democrats responding that, no, they will not be covered.

Who is standing up for sick immigrant workers and their families?

There is an unstated subtext of agreement on both sides that undocumented immigrants do not deserve, and should not have, health insurance. Even some progressive commentators, eager to defend the Obama administration’s health care reform from the attacks of the paranoid ultra-right, get a little too enthusiastic in their celebration of the fact that sick undocumented immigrants won’t be covered unless they somehow have the money to pay for private insurance out of their own pockets.

They talk and write as if not covering the undocumented were a self-evidently a good thing. [...]

Read the full article:
http://politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8995/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's so sad, I think that if Undocumented Immigrants are not going to receive Health Care then they shouldn't pay taxes on anything they purchase, they are also contributing, they are also keeping criminals in jail and feeding them, but yet they are not going to receive Health Care. What a joke?