The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act , (EMTALA), also known as the patient anti-dumping law, plus the non-enforcement of legal immigration law, is literally draining the life out of Social Security disability beneficiaries, as well as taxpayers, making them sacrificial animals to the state.
EMTALA dictates that emergency room staff must treat patients who show up on their doorsteps, regardless of their ability to pay. Enacted in 1985, this edict is an unfunded mandate, meaning no federal or state taxes are allocated to compensate medical centers for their expertise and time expended on treating those who are not able to pay for those services. Heavy fines are imposed on medical organizations who do not comply.
As evidenced by the 60 California hospital bankruptcies between 1993 and 2003, any medical treatment facility offering emergency treatment enters into a suicide pact with the state because of the huge impact of between 8.7 and 11 million illegal aliens who have been allowed to cross our borders, set up housekeeping, and have babies. 24 more hospitals were on the verge of closing their doors after 2003.
The Los Angeles County Trauma Care Network consisted of 22 hospitals, state-of-the-art equipment, superior emergency physicians, surgeons, specialists, nurses, and technicians. It offered 365-day, round-the-clock emergency care for people suffering life-threatening car crashes, industrial accidents, urban crime, natural disasters such as earthquake and wildfire, or terrorism. Now, most trauma hospitals have left the network, and so have many emergency physicians and surgeons. EMTALA ontributed to the Trauma Care Network’s loss of focus and loss of money.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates that between 287,000 and 363,000 children are born to illegal aliens each year. In 1994, California paid for 74,987 deliveries to illegal alien mothers, at a total cost of $215.2 million (an average of $2,842 per delivery). Illegal alien mothers accounted for 36 percent of all MediCal funded births in California that year.
Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq., a medical lawyer who has taught medical students at the City University of New York, cites in her piece, “Illegal Aliens and American Medicine”, the Silverio family, receives benefits for 2 anchor babies, Flor and Christian. In 2003, they were paid $12,000. Flor gets $600 per month for her asthma; Christian gets $400. Christobal and Felipa earn $18,000 a year picking fruit. This family of illegal aliens has a total income of over $30,000.
Anchor babies are those children born to illegal aliens through a misinterpretation of immigration law, which anoints those babies American citizens. FAIR explains, “Each year, thousands of women enter the United States illegally to give birth, knowing that their child will thus have U.S. citizenship. Their children immediately qualify for a slew of federal, state, and local benefit programs. In addition, when the children turn 21, they can sponsor the immigration of other relatives, becoming ‘anchor babies’ for an entire clan.”
Says Cosman: “When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, its purpose was to assure rights of freedom and citizenship to newly emancipated Negro citizens. American Indians, however, were excluded from American citizenship because of their tribal jurisdiction. Also not subject to American jurisdiction were foreign visitors, ambassadors, consuls, and their babies born here. For citizenship, the person was required to submit to complete, exclusive American jurisdiction, owing allegiance to no other nation.
“Long ago the Supreme Court correctly confirmed this restricted interpretation of citizenship in the so-called .Slaughter-House cases. [83 US 36 (1873)] and in Elk v. Wilkins [112 US 94 (1884)]. In Slaughter-House the phrase ’subject to its jurisdiction’ excluded from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens of foreign states born within the United States.. In Elk, the American Indian claimant was born in America, but considered not an American citizen because the law required him to be .not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. To obtain citizenship, an American Indian had to separate from his tribe and be accepted by the United States as a citizen. A special act of Congress was needed to grant full citizenship to American Indians.
“The Citizens Act of 1924, codified in 8USCS§1401, provides that: The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(a) a person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;
(b) a person born in the United States to a member of an Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other aboriginal tribe.
“Congress, by legislation, has the right to create uniform rules on naturalization, and to create dual citizenship and similar variations upon jurisdiction. We must be vigilant against congressmen voting to extend the list of those born here to include illegal aliens or other lawbreakers, conferring American citizenship and its generous social and medical benefits on babies born to criminals. It is irrelevant that some lawbreakers are hard-working women willing to do hard jobs for low pay, or that they are wives, daughters, cousins, lovers, or concubines of men willing to do America’s hard work. Gravid wombs should not guarantee free medical care and instant infant citizenship in America. We must reestablish the original limits on citizenship, and remove incentives for indigent Mexicans and others to break America’s immigration law. Proud legal immigrants applaud order, reason, and law.”
The result of this misinterpretation of immigration law is that the finest medical care in the world is denied Social Security disability recipients (those who have a solid work record and have paid FICA taxes) and SSI (disability benefits paid out of the general fund of taxpayer revenue to those who have not paid FICA taxes, are basically broke and suffer from medical conditions which are so severe they preclude all work in a competitive job market.).
Says Cosman, “Immigrants on SSI, including legal aliens, refugees, and illegals with fraudulent Social Security cards, numbered a mere 127,900 aliens (3.3 percent of recipients) in 1982. By 1992 the numbers expanded to 601,430 entitled (10.9 percent of recipients). In 2003, this figure was several million (about 25 percent of recipients).”
By law, Social Security disability and SSI beneficiaries are evaluated every 2 years to determine if they continue to suffer from medical conditions which would make it impossible for them to perform any work in the economy.
On average, 150,000 disability recipients are terminated because of death every year, 300,000 are converted from disability status to retirement status, and 400,000 are terminated because they recovered enough to be able to work.
After 1995, there has been a noticeable decline in the death rate, especially among males, due to the rapidly diminishing impact of HIV-related impairments and the elimination of drug-addiction and alcoholism as material causes for disability. However, major reviews of the disability rolls were initiated during the Reagan administration, which found that a “large number of cases in which it was determined that recovery had occurred.”
What Cosman does not mention is that an inability to speak and write English radically diminishes the work capacity of a disability claimant under SSA disability law. Thus, two claimants with the same impairment and age – one who has been educated in America, the other who was educated in Mexico, get radically different outcomes: The English-speaking patient is denied, and the Spanish speaking patient is paid disability benefits. Legal representatives of those who claim disability, and are not able to speak English have built huge practices based on invoking this SSA disability rule.
What Cosman does point out is that many illegal aliens who pass our borders carry with them fatal diseases which are unknown to American citizens, or have been largely eradicated by our superior medical technology. They include drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease.
Dr. Cosman explains, “The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) proudly announced that it garnered for immigrants expensive cancer treatments, prenatal care, and critical health services by means of its litigation. Sometimes NILC worked in collaboration with lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Though the 1996 Welfare Reform Legislation reduced all welfare payments to all recipients nationwide, NILC cleverly managed to restore to its constituency of legal and illegal immigrants: $12 billion in Supplemental Security Income, and more than $800 million in food stamps. For many illegal aliens, America is land of the victim and home of the entitled.”
This entitlement injustice is being accomplished with the point of a gun at the taxpayer’s head. The failure to enforce federal immigration law, plus enforced medical treatment rules, are simultaneously draining the life out of Social Security disability patients who might recover with the application of our top notch medical technology, and become productive again.
All American taxpayers have been turned into sacrificial lambs at the hands of the federal government, whose primary responsibility and duty is to protect us from foreign invaders. The fact that these invaders carry no guns makes them no less a threat to our security since economic strength is a major component of a nation’s ability to protect its citizens through control of its borders.
The facts lead to the inescapable conclusion that we must close our borders, grant no new amnesties, and rescind citizenship to those who have not complied with immigration law after giving them sufficient time to do so, and punish those who have aided and abetted those who choose not to comply with our immigration laws.
