| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Flights Posing Ebola Risk To U.S. Continue
Obama administration unwilling to ban travel from West Africa
WND
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s unwillingness to ban air travel from the West African nations hit by the Ebola outbreak leaves the U.S. vulnerable to the disease, warns a top immigration expert.
Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are the focus of the unprecedented outbreak, which has already taken 2,800 lives and could kill as many as 1.4 million by the end of January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
“Until it’s clear that the outbreak has stopped, no one from those three countries should be permitted to enter the U.S. and all visa issuance should be suspended,” contended Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.
“This matters, because there are well over 10,000 people from those countries who have visitor visas for the United States, some of them already here but many not,” he said.
As WND reported, the United Nations World Health Organization has argued vigorously that cutting commercial airline service to the affected West African nations would only intensify the severity of the Ebola epidemic by restricting the ability of international health organizations to send qualified health professionals and supplies to the region to help combat the disease.
WND has also reported Air France pilots and aircrews have pushed through their flight unions for the right to refuse to fly to West Africa while the Ebola epidemic continues to rage.
The strain of Ebola affecting West Africa has an incubation period as long as 21 days, meaning an infected person not showing symptoms of the disease could be allowed to board a flight.
“Protecting the nation from epidemics would seem to be covered by even the narrowest interpretation of the Constitution’s goal to ‘promote the general welfare.’” Krikorian argued.
“To that end, federal law bars the admission of foreigners found to have ‘a communicable disease of public health significance,’” he pointed out.
Reposted with permission
