Just Alka-Seltzer and Prayer

More from the immigration files today, friends, because stories like this keep coming and they keep shocking. Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals:

“Eight years ago, Mr. Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million.

What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later be declared invalid, Martin Memorial leased an air ambulance for $30,000 and “forcibly returned him to his home country,” as one hospital administrator described it.

Since being hoisted in his wheelchair up a steep slope to his remote home, Mr. Jiménez, who sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, has received no medical care or medication — just Alka-Seltzer and prayer, his 72-year-old mother said.”

First of all, is it really worth $30,000 to return this man to his home country? Is that the best use of our money? I grant you that it’s cheaper than the cost of continuing to house him, based on the $1.5 Million they’ve already spent. Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but I’m guessing that setting a precedent for renting private flights for the purposes of deportation is going to make it through the health insurance costs and into our pocketbooks.

Secondly, from a writing perspective, how great is the line about Alka-Seltzer and prayer?

Thirdly, and most importantly, the ethics involved are the most shocking element:

“Repatriation is pretty much a death sentence in some of these cases,” said Dr. Steven Larson, an expert on migrant health and an emergency room physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “I’ve seen patients bundled onto the plane and out of the country, and once that person is out of sight, he’s out of mind.”

Back in Arizona, as you can imagine, there are quite a few cases in Tucson and Phoenix:

In a case this spring that outraged Phoenix’s Hispanic community, St. Joseph’s planned to send a comatose, uninsured legal immigrant back to Honduras, until community leaders got lawyers involved. While they were negotiating with the hospital, the patient, Sonia del Cid Iscoa, 34, who has been in the United States for half her life and has seven American-born children, came out of her coma. She is now back in her Phoenix home.

“I can think of three different scenarios that would have led to a fatal outcome if they had moved her,” John M. Curtin, her lawyer, said. “The good outcome today is due to the treatment that the hospital provided — reluctantly, and, sadly enough, only in response to legal and public pressure.”

Mr. President: Tear down this wall! Let’s create a civil immigration policy that recognizes our leadership role in the world community, our geographic position in the North American continent, and our need for these immigrant workers in our diverse economy.

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