Illegal immigration brings new public health problem to North Carolina

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Heavy illegal immigration to North Carolina for the first time during the past decade has created many first-ever public-health problems in the state - especially in the restaurant industry. Burlington, North Carolina, USA, 18/09/2010.

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in Society, on the 18th of September 2010

Heavy illegal immigration to North Carolina for the first time during the past decade has created many first-ever public-health problems in the state - especially in the restaurant industry. Burlington, North Carolina, USA, 18/09/2010.

Restroom sign warning restaurant workers to wash hands before going back to handling food now is in Spanish as well as English in North Carolina at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Burlington, where the additional Spanish sign was put up in past day.

ID: 446181

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Many of the hundreds of thousands illegal immigrants who came to North Carolina in the past decade in which this state first got a large illegal-immigrant population work in food-handling jobs in restaurants - bringing major new public-health problems that the state is finding difficulty in managing.
During the past 24 hours, the traditional sign in all restaurant restrooms warning employees that they must wash their hands before returning to handling food has been supplemented by an additional sign in Spanish at the Cracker Barrel restaurant on Huffman Mill Rd. in Burlington.
So many new-to-America disease problems have arrived with illegal immigrants working restaurant jobs in North Carolina that the federal Centers for Disease Control has numerous reports on the problem; see http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00015878.htm for an article on one such disease - endemic in Mexico and Central America - now introduced into North Carolina by illegal immigrants handling food here on the job.

Tags Asylum Seeker, Illegal Immigration, immigration, north carolina, public health, restaurants, Immigration, Business, Society

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Here in North Carolina -

Submitted by Matt Maggio on Sat, 16/10/2010 - 03:10.

Here in North Carolina - where that photo was taken - health departments have had well-publicized problems with "immigrants" in recent years, and invariably the "immigrants" involved are described in local newspaper reports as illegal.

Your earlier piece was not

Submitted by metta on Sat, 16/10/2010 - 02:45.

Your earlier piece was not about rubella or hepatitis A. If there is scientific proof that immigrants (and why are you characterizing all immigrants as "illegal"?) are bringing these diseases to NC, share that. What you wrote earlier is not good journalism or good science.

The CDC has a term,

Submitted by Matt Maggio on Sat, 02/10/2010 - 00:02.

The CDC has a term, "immigrant disease," it uses for diseases either never before in America or long gone from America being introduced to the U.S. by immigration or other travel by aliens - and plenty of articles on its Web site about such diseases.
North Carolina - in the past decade - has had outbreaks of diseases ranging from rubella to hepatitis A spread by illegal immigrants, with those ill concentrated among fellow illegal immigrants.
As for the argument that most illegals in North Carolina came in the 1990s, that is (partly) true - as nearly none lived here semipermanently before - but it doesn't get past the continuing health problems involving them here, as anyone daily reading the newspapers here is well aware.

It's hard to take this piece

Submitted by metta on Fri, 01/10/2010 - 18:33.

It's hard to take this piece seriously. The article you include from the CDC is dated (1989), and it doesn't link the rare disease it discusses to immigration. (Most Latino immigrants came to the Southeast in the late 1990s anyway). This is much like the fear mongering that appeared in this country with the arrival of Italians and Irish immigrants in the early 20th century.

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