Monday, September 14, 2009
Why I'll Never Be Hired As A Minute (Wo)Man
This op-ed by E.J. Dionne makes a good point. Why was the most offensive part of Obama's health care speech the part related to illegal immigrants' possibly benefiting from whatever program is put in place? This view sums up my view of immigration issues in general. Yes, illegal immigration creates serious problems, but surely the best way to address those problems is by having some sort of (dare I say it?) empathy for people who often risk their lives to come here. I might even suggest that immigrants have a better understanding of the American Dream than most of us do, so why don't we want to alleviate problems in the most feasibly compassionate way?
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Well, I understand (and somewhat agree) that, on principle, those who haven't paid the appropriate taxes should not be beneficiaries of various publicly-funded social services. But even the financial argument is fuzzy, because of this Kenan-Flagler study and many others like it: http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/KI/reports/2006_HispanicStudy/. In sum, illegal immigrant populations contribute substantially to the economy, even without paying income taxes.
ReplyDeleteMoral obligations or not, even Dionne misses the point. To be sure, most physicians would not deny treatment to illegal immigrants if they had the choice. But EMTALA prevents an emergency room from turning away anyone who needs stabilizing medical treatment (emergency and active labor). The costs to emergency medicine that stem from the uninsured using the ER will not increase (or decrease, with respect to illegal immigrant populations) as a result of expanded coverage to the legal population. The same people who are here illegally will be treated at the ER with or without expanded health care options for citizens. And this isn't going to change, unless we're willing to waste precious minutes to ID every trauma patient to ensure they are "entitled" to be treated under EMTALA.