Anti-immigrant activist and all-around terrible person Sandy Rios declared on her American Family Radio program that we should quarantine the undocumented children coming across the border just like we used to quarantine lepers.
Apparently there’s nothing wrong with “wanting to separate your children” which in this case means someone else’s children.
Rios suggested that the child refugees should be quarantined like lepers used to be. “I think of biblical times, the lepers were separated — right or wrong — they were separated,” she said. “It was understood that leprosy was so contagious. So there’s nothing wrong with wanting to separate your children. We used to quarantine people when they had diseases.”
“We’re such a healthy people that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be diseased and die from those diseases in huge numbers,” she said, “but we’re going to learn, I think, again.”
As we’ve pointed out several times over the past few days, it’s entirely possible that the average undocumented child coming across the border is in better general health than an average American child. The immigrant children come from nations with universal healthcare where vaccinations are provided to everyone free of charge.
Furthermore, the children will remain in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services until they are either deported or granted asylum.
An outbreak of disease from these children is less likely than your chances of contracting a disease during your next trip to the salad bar or your favorite fast food restaurant.
The Anti-Immigrant Racist Freakout of 2014 shows so signs abating. This freakout has been propelled foward and incited by sitting Republican congressmen, congressional candidates, mayors, governors, and local sheriffs; each with their own variations of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories and doomsday predictions.
This isn’t isolated, fringe sentiment. The Republican party is the party of Steve King on immigration.
Comprehensive immigration reform will not pass until a Democratic majority has control of both houses of Congress or until the Republican party is purged of racists and those who pander to racists.