CNN contributor Ruben Navarrette admitted that he was wrong to have dismissed fears that illegal immigrants from Central America could bring over dangerous and deadly diseases.
“Here’s something you don’t hear a journalist say very often: I blew it. I was wrong,” he wrote in the Daily Beast. “I dismissed out of hand the suggestion by anti-immigration activists and right-wing pundits that among the worries associated with the ‘border kids’–the estimated 52,000 children and teenagers who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the last year or so–was that they carried communicable diseases.”
He acknowledged that at least two children have been confirmed to have Swine Flu, as Breitbart News has been reporting.
Breitbart News has also reported “that medical specialists and doctors are concerned about other virulent diseases like tuberculosis and the Norovirus. Dr. Jane Orient, “an internal medicine specialist and the Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS),” said the country is “one outbreak” away from “an overwhelming public health crisis.”
Navarrette has not been a firebrand on the amnesty issue and has been fair in dealing with it. For instance, he called out ethnic groups and labor unions who tried to assert that Cesar Chavez would have supported amnesty, saying that the historical record shows that the late labor leader “was a fierce opponent of illegal immigration” and, “it’s unlikely that he’d have looked favorably on a plan to legalize millions of illegal immigrants.”