Yes. Break the news to your teapublican friends. The recent children refugees to Texas from Central America are better immunized than US citizen children living in Texas.
Thanks Rick Perry! Ooops. We forgot to vaccinate our own children! Especially the poor ones. But that doesn't stop us from running around screeching about "immigrant children spreading disease"!
From the Texas Observer:
Before demonizing undocumented children, we should look at the facts: The vast majority of Central Americans are vaccinated against all these diseases. Governments concerned about health, and good parents investing in their kids, have made Central American kids better-vaccinated than Texan kids. We fear them not because they are actually sick, but because of powerful anti-immigration narratives that link foreigners to disease.
Consider, for example, Guatemala. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Guatemalan kids are more likely than Texans to be immunized for most infectious diseases. Guatemala has universal health care. Vaccines are 100 percent funded by the government.
By comparison, one in six kids in Texas is uninsured, and even insured families often must pay for vaccination. That means that many Texas kids fall behind on vaccinations, or miss them altogether when their family can’t afford a doctor’s visit. Other families refuse vaccination.
Interestingly, [Fox News contributor Marc] Siegel is the author of three books—Swine Flu: The New Pandemic, Bird Flu: Everything you Need to Know about the Next Pandemic and False Alarm: Profiting from the Epidemic of Fear. That last title must be a memoir.
Raw Story:
Texas Representative Louie Gohmert spoke to conservative news outlet Newsmax recently, claiming that “we don’t even know what diseases [these immigrants] have. Our health care systems can’t withstand this influx.”
The most dangerous threat to American citizens is tuberculosis, against which very few Americans are vaccinated. However, more than 90 percent of Central Americans are vaccinated against the disease, and it is highly unlikely that those suffering the contagious, multi-drug-resistant form of it would be able to make the arduous trip across the Texas border — especially if the patient stricken with it were a child.
Fox News commentator Cal Thomas demanded to know whether these undocumented children had papers proving that they had been vaccinated for “mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus and diphtheria.”
But as The Texas Observer‘s Rachel Pearson noted, children from Guatemala — where vaccines are provided free of charge by the government’s universal health care system — are more likely to be vaccinated against those diseases than children in Texas, where the rate of parents who “opt out” of vaccinations citing “reasons of conscience” has increased every year since 2003.
Yes, anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists and anti-science loons, spreading disease in the US right now with their unvaccinated children, are claiming to fear disease from immigrant children. It doesn't have to make sense! It's tea party logic! Laced with a healthy dose of ignorance, fear and bigotry.