A tent city at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center is not the answer to the migrant crisis any more than is a migrant shelter on Randall’s Island that will cost New York taxpayers $20 million a month.
The only way for politicians to approach this mess is the way we approach every national disaster, both natural and manmade: We must accept this as the national security problem it is and officially declare it a public health emergency.
We need all hands on deck. A public-health disaster for New York City is by definition a public-health disaster for New York state.
The governor needs to recognize this immediately and pony up some state-owned land for temporary residences.
We are talking about sanitation and hydration and communicable diseases.
After months of complaints about poor access to showers at many shelters, the city just awarded a Florida company a $20 million contract for shower trailers.
In fact, the migrant-health crisis is a public health crisis for the entire country.
Where are President Joe Biden, the National Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must be involved, too, because one of its primary functions is to ensure public health and safety throughout the country.
Down at the border, Pinal County, Ariz., Sheriff Mark Lamb told one of us that Border Patrol and local agencies have seen everything from tuberculosis, hepatitis and COVID to dengue fever, chicken pox and sexually transmitted infections.
There is emerging evidence we will see a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases including measles and polio from migrants who are unvaccinated.
And measles vaccination rates have already been declining.
Multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections are also on the rise, and migrants represent a source of these infections.
Pair the migrant influx with partial treatment of tuberculosis with over-the-counter antibiotics in Mexico, and prepare for even more drug-resistant cases.
Chagas disease has been found in at least 4% of migrants traveling from Central America to Europe, and though this disease is not generally contagious from person to person, it can cause significant heart and other complications that put a further strain on our healthcare system.
What about Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer? Is he doing enough?
The answer is no.
Meeting with officials in upstate Orleans County recently, Schumer certainly talked a good game, saying he’s trying to secure more funds to help New York City and state deal with the influx of migrants.
“Ultimately we need some kind of answer at the border and the real answer is bipartisanship,” he said, insisting he’s going to use his clout among senators to “make them do what they have to do as opposed to just verbiage.”
Actually, his statements sounded all too much like more verbiage — especially when you consider Schumer also said that some solutions must come at the administrative rather than legislative level and he’s against reassigning Custom and Border Protection agents from the northern to the southern border.
We don’t agree with the senator and feel that some of our trusted CBP agents in the north should be moved to the dire southern border.
But whether they come from the Canadian border or not, one thing’s certain: We need more security, more federal agents, more skilled and courageous border agents of some kind to help secure the border. Did someone say build a wall?
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced recently that FEMA will send $104 million of additional funds to “asylum seekers” in New York City.
This is just another Band-Aid on the problem when the real issue remains that politicians should not use American kindness as an excuse to undermine national security and ultimately extend public-health risks.
Bickering and hyperventilating over the use of the word “asylum” obfuscate the truth. This is Schumer’s and others’ political reality.
But the people of New York and America at large are interested in a more fundamental truth: that people bringing contagious diseases into our country put themselves and others at risk, straining a health-care system that is still battered from the COVID pandemic beyond its capacity to cope.
Marc Siegel, MD, is a clinical professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health and a Fox News medical analyst. Andrew Stein, a Democrat, served as New York City Council president, 1986-94.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
