Health Care and Immigration

Illegal immigrants do not qualify for public services, such as food stamps, or health care, but why ? The moral question is, is right to prevent someone the means to sustain their health simply because they are from another country? If the answer to this question is yes, then consider how that may reflect on the country supporting laws that prevent immigrants from receiving health care. The humanitarian element is of great importance, even if supporting immigrants cost more. A cost basis argument, gives the impression, that budgets take precedents over human welfare.

Immigrants who seek public services are a cost consideration, but if the intention is to focus on money and not to provide aid that may help a person with a sickness, essentially this what is being conveyed, " it is costing money, so let the immigrants be sick ". This is not the sort of values the United States wishes to be known for. Understandably, the cost of caring for immigrants should not be be ignored, but if someone is sick, and a nation chooses not to help that person simply on the basis of being from another country, accusations of systemic racism may start to fly. The laws are a byproduct of the values of the law-makers. If law-makers decide, immigrants will be turned away for something as basic as health care, then the law-makers could be described as racists using the law to disguise their racist values.

Being fair in this instance to immigrants and the Americans who are likely to pay the taxes that would support such public services is not an easy task, on the one hand there are budgetary considerations that have to be taken into account, but there are human rights considerations that have to be taken into account as well. Where does one find the balance? Are we a country of finance or compassion? I do not know if the issue of health care and immigration enables us to be both, for compassion alone will not sway the hearts of hard-line contenders of illegal immigration, and this includes the " if they are not suppose to be here send them back to their country" attitude.