The idea of “disease infected migrants” has become something of a saying promoted by the nationalists in Europe, and to a lesser extent in the US. However, such language is coming here after a USA Today reported that migrants on the US-Mexican border have an increased chance of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Thousands of asylum seekers crammed in border towns near the Texas-Mexico border awaiting U.S. immigration hearings are at risk of dying from coronavirus because of poor health access and unsafe conditions, advocates say.
In Matamoros, where around 2,000 migrants live in a sprawling outdoor camp where they sleep in tents and share portable bathrooms and sinks, health advocates warned the coronavirus could spread rampantly. The camp is located across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.
Last week, Global Response Management, the nonprofit that operates the only health clinic in the camp, launched plans to erect a two-tent, 20-bed field hospital in the camp to house coronavirus patients if and when the virus arrives, said Helen Perry, the group’s executive director. (source)
According to the government, people gathering into any group of people are at elevated risk levels for this virus.
However, one must ask why people are continuing to go to bars, restaurants, and other social gathering still without concern for this.
Trump has continued to refer to COVID-19 as a “Chinese virus”, and while there is truth that it came from China and there is very strong indications from many independent sources that it is a military weapon, there is a reason for the use of such politicized terms. They are meant to sow division, to anger people, and ultimately, to continue tossing the “migration football” as a political toy like how it has been used in the US and other nations for a long time.
The US is not looking to solve this COVID-19 crisis. Rather, it is being exploited, from what it appears, to drive down the stock market and force a “natural” decline in the global economy in order to possibly blame it on China, institute new domestic and foreign economic and social policies, and to get people to support them without opposition.
The virus is political before it is a real danger, and the migrants are not the problem. Rather, it is the same actors as always.
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