Unhealthy sentiments

Will we reach the point where resentment of illegal immigrants is so feverish that they will be denied services at public health departments? It appears that point may be faintly visible, and the distance to clear focus may be shortening.

Some doctors, who rightly view the physician-patient relationship as sacred and confidential, fear that if pressure is brought to bear in health departments to use medical records to detect and prosecute immigrants who lack proper documentation, those people will quit seeking medical help. If that happens, the consequences -- for everyone -- could be dire.

Many illegal immigrants have no health insurance and no money to pay for doctors' visits, and certainly not hospital stays. Some are pregnant and in need of prenatal care. Some are children and need immunizations. Yet some counties in North Carolina are beginning to ponder whether they ought to limit public health services offered to people who can't afford to pay for their care and are in the country illegally. The argument in favor of such a position is that if people are outside the law and have no legal status in the country, they have no right to the care accessible to citizens.

Yet doctors rightly point out that if people have infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, and they are not treated, those illnesses could spread.

The lack of a clear national policy to more effectively deal with the 12 million to 14 million illegal immigrants now in the country is glaring. But the situation is not improved when individual localities adopt harsh and varied measures to try to address the problem within their borders.

The immigration issue, and the health care debate that is part of it, is not as black-and-white as some candidates in this election of 2008, at all levels, would have us believe. And they know it. Increasingly, more of the people know it, too.