Despite claims to the contrary from some of the loudest anti-immigration reform voices in the Republican Party, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stressed on Monday that undocumented immigrants are not bringing measles into the United States.
Dr. Anne Schuchat, director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, dismissed claims tying undocumented immigrants to the recent measles outbreak that has afflicted individual communities and sparked a broader national debate about vaccination policy.
“We don’t have evidence to support that,” Schuchat said during a webinar hosted by the National Press Foundation.
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Brooks isn’t the only Republican to point to undocumented immigrants as a cause of the resurgence of measles. Earlier this month, potential 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson also implied that such a connection exists.
“We have to account for the fact that we now have people coming into the country, sometimes undocumented people, who perhaps have diseases that we had under control,” Carson told CNN. “So now we need to be doubly vigilant about making sure that we immunize our people to keep them from getting diseases that once were under control.”
Some conservative lawmakers have claimed that undocumented immigrants are to blame for several other disease outbreaks. In his 2015 State of the State address, Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said that “illegal aliens” brought hepatitis C, HIV and tuberculosis into the state. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) recently warned that the surge of undocumented children over the summer could have exposed Americans to Ebola and tuberculosis.
