By Tom Tancredo                                                                             

World Health Organization officials have raised the alert level to 4, only one level short of calling it a pandemic. The disease could potentially kill up to 2% of the world’s population if it is as lethal as the 1918 epidemic that killed 50 million people worldwide. Suspected cases are now reported in New Zealand, Brazil, Spain, France, Israel, Scotland and South Korea, in addition to the three nations of North America.

The question any rational American citizen must be asking is—why have we not closed the border with Mexico or at least called out the National Guard to help halt all illegal entry? If over 80% of Americans supported halting illegal border crossings before this epidemic, what greater urgency can there be to get the White House and Congress to act? 

What is the response of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano? She will talk only about the “verbal screening” of legal visitors at airports and legal ports of entry to ask about flu symptoms. She is not sending the National Guard – or God forbid, the Marines -- to help the understaffed Border Patrol. Apparently, Napolitano expects illegal trespassers crossing the Arizona-Sonora desert to self-report any flu symptoms to the nearest Border Patrol station.

It is obviously necessary to check persons entering our country legally, at airports and all ports of entry, but Napolitano has not said one word about the 500,000 Mexican nationals who cross our border illegally each year. Another 300,000 from Central America and elsewhere pass through Mexico on their trek to our southwest border. Needless to add, none of these illegal trespassers have had any health check that could detect swine flu or other contagious diseases.

President Obama said on Monday that there is “cause for concern, but no cause for alarm.” Then why did the Center for Disease Control declare a “public health emergency”? The CDC declaration called for “greater vigilance at border crossings and airports.” That sounds great, but what about the 1,500 persons who cross the southwest border from Mexico each day between ports of entry?

Napolitano’s “prudent response” stands in marked contrast to the actions of other nations threatened by the swine flu epidemic—nations thousands of miles distant from Mexico. The European Union has put out a travel advisory urging people not to travel to Mexico. The governments of China, Japan, Hong Kong and New Zealand have done the same and have instituted close screening of all arriving passengers from Mexico.

In Mexico itself, the government of President Calderon has closed all public schools and cancelled sports events and concerts, and the mayor of Mexico City is considering shutting down all public transportation.

We should all hope that Mexico succeeds in controlling the epidemic. But some observers have noticed that Mexico was slow in notifying the U.S. of the epidemic, which was first detected in Mexico City on April 12. Did that delay have anything to do with President Obama’s visit to Mexico City on April 16? Did the urgency of having Obama declare “comprehensive immigration reform” a top U.S. priority delay giving attention to a public health crisis?

Some Mexican officials appear more concerned with protecting its tourism industry than protecting the world’s public health. One official in Mexico City even went so far as to imply the disease may have originated in California, not Mexico.  It seems that public relations – in other words, politics – takes precedence over public health in the minds of many government leaders in both Mexico and the United States.

This would be consistent with a 2007 U.S. Department of State document published by the Security and Prosperity Partnership, North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza. Nowhere in chapter five, “Border Monitoring and Control Measures,” is there any mention of closing the borders to prevent the spread of the disease. The focus of the report is to prevent spread outside of North America, not preventing the spread within any member nation of the three-nation “partnership.”

The 2007 SPP plan notwithstanding, Americans should not have to wait weeks or months for the swine flu epidemic to reach dangerous levels in the United States before our borders are secured against unauthorized entry. Moreover, the eventual scope of swine flu deaths in the U.S. should not be the real issue. The potential for infectious diseases crossing our borders has been known for years.

Do we need to invoke White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s axiom—“Never let a serious crisis go to waste” --- to get Obama’s attention for border security? Any alert citizen not blinded by political correctness understands the need for border security. Should we expect less from elected leaders who took an oath to defend the United States “against all enemies, foreign and domestic”?