Somewhere around 13,500 citizens from the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea currently hold visas to enter the United States as they wish, according to official government statistics.
But the stats don’t account for how many people are already currently in the United States, Neil Munro of the Daily Caller reports.
Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies commented on the government statistics. She said: “It would be reasonable [for the president] to designate Ebola as a communicable disease of public health significant. That would enable the State Department to impose tighter restrictions on visitors” from Ebola-stricken countries.
The Daily Caller reports that current US government policy entails that only those with easily recognizable Ebola symptoms are to be forbidden access into the United States. However, someone infected with the virus may not show any symptoms whatsoever for three weeks.
President Obama has decided recently to send some 3,000 soldiers to west Africa with hopes to stop the spread of the disease. Many have warned that the president’s executive action has put our troops in grave danger of being overly exposed to the deadly virus.
According to State Department statistics, some 3,673 Liberians were given US visas in 2013. Liberia has been the hardest hit by Ebola, with more than half of the cases coming from the west African state.
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed the first case of Ebola on American soil. CDC Director Thomas Frieden said confidently: “There is no doubt in my mind that we will stop it here.”
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