Undocumented Alien Emergency Medical Assistance Amendments of 2004

UNDOCUMENTED ALIEN EMERGENCY MEDICAL ASSISTANCE AMENDMENTS OF 2004 -- (House of Representatives - May 17, 2004)

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, our border communities face some tremendous health care challenges. This bill would simply add to their burdens. It seems to confuse TV shows, trying to merge "ER" with "NYPD Blue." It would involve our health care workers, our physicians, and instead of being physicians, it would turn them into Homeland Security deputies. When a doctor asks the nurse for a patient's vital signs, it ought not to mean fingerprints and a visa entry number.

Think of it. A parent who is rushing a child to the emergency room with an excessively high fever, with a rattlesnake bite, with an accidental-fall injury is thinking, "can I get my child to the doctor on time?", not "did I bring my employment history, my immigration status, my financial status?" Some of our border physicians face such immense burdens. That physician is thinking, "how can I take care and save the life and the future of this young person?" Involving doctors and nurses in the red tape of the federal bureaucracy jeopardizes all of us, because these viruses and bacteria are equal opportunity pathogens. Tuberculosis, typhus and hepatitis do not ask for your immigration status. All of us could be adversely affected if fear forces people not to seek treatment at a medical facility.

It is also important to consider that, finally, there is a small amount of relief for our border communities. Starr County, one of the poorest counties in the entire country, ought not to have to bear all of the cost of our federal immigration policy, nor should physicians in Mission or McAllen bear the entire cost of a policy that is federal in nature. Finally, there is some assistance on the way under legislation approved last year. Let us not destroy it with this bill. The Border Health Caucus has been leading the way in trying to find solutions to address the care of all the people in the border region.

As we discuss immigrants, some here see numbers, but these are real live human beings that face crisis every bit as real as that of someone like myself who has lived here forever. This is a chance for groups to come together to stop bad legislation and start us on the way to solving our health care problems along the border.