News and views from the award-winning author of the novels The Skinny Years, America Libre, House Divided and Pancho Land

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The undocumented are 50% less likely to visit emergency rooms

Much of the vitriol against undocumented workers lately has centered on dollars and cents issues. “The illegal immigrants are flooding our emergency rooms,” the nativists love to chant. However, a new UCLA study refutes this claim. An excerpt from the 11/27/07 issue of the Los Angeles Times

“Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries are 50% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms in California, according to a study published Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.”

Sadly, I doubt this study will have much effect on the xenophobic paranoia spreading throughout the country. Facts have little impact on bigotry.

Raul Ramos y Sanchez