A powerful immigration lobby and weak, rudderless government officials are endangering the health of Canadians, a Vancouver doctor charges. "Immigrant and refugee lawyers are fuelling this corrupt system. All they want to do is line their pockets. They think nothing of protecting the health of Canadians," she says.

"We out here in the Vancouver emergency departments, are still reeling from the social toll taken by your recent tragic lack of screening of the Honduran refugees who entered the country in August, 1998," Dr. Maria Hugi told Immigration Minister Lucienne Robillard in a February 4 letter.

The Swiss-born, Vancouver-raised doctor knows what she's talking about. She herself caught TB while resuscitating a Burmese refugee. "If I was so easily infected with 30 minutes or less exposure, then almost anyone he was in contact with could have had it with no idea that they had been exposed. This is truly a public health nightmare," she told the Canadian Medical Association Journal (April 20, 1999) Unlike the all-too-typical Canadian who takes his lumps from an uncaring system and slinks away silently, Dr. Hugi chose to speak up.

In her letter, the spirited 40-ish doctor explained the health chaos caused by allowing in a horde of self-styled Honduran "refugees." "The other day, one of my colleagues treated a Canadian woman whose jaw had been broken by a Honduran refugee. Last week, I treated a young 19-year old Honduran refugee, 36 weeks pregnant who would have been admitted to Canada on August 5, 1998 and who had received no prenatal care until I saw her. Needless to say, she had to be admitted to hospital (her blood count was dangerously low) and, after calling three hospitals, I finally managed to find her a bed. Through an interpreter, she kept insisting that she was 20 weeks pregnant and that her last menstrual period occurred after she entered Canada. In addition to screening refugees for communicable diseases, pregnancy screening might be warranted for young refugees so that we can offer them good prenatal care, so vital to the well-being of the mother and baby."

Illegals First; Taxpaying Canadians Last

This Honduran peasant girl who spoke no English, thus, got a scarce bed and some lady who was a third generation Canadian, with an injured back, was sent home. In an interview with the Canadian Immigration Hotline, Dr. Hugi charged: "People who've paid into the system are turned aside in this irrational system in favour of people who've never paid a dime."

Dr. Angus Rae is a neurologist at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, Dr. Hugi explains. He has complained about desperately ill foreigners being put on dialysis which is "hideously expensive." Because of the urgency of their need, "they jump the queue, even though they've never paid taxes here."

"When they let in drug-running gangsters from Honduras, there's a social cost," Dr. Hugi emphasizes. "If I need my hip replaced, I mightn't get it because some drug addict needs his valves replaced."

TB: We've Let Our Guard Down

Dr. Hugi tells of an immigrant student at Simon Fraser University with full-blown tuberculosis. The costs of this lapse of government screening was that "they had to check 450 people the student had come into contact with." Foreign "students are not screened very well," she observes.

"The best thing ever to happen to TB is AIDS. We've let down our guard. TB is the number one killer in the world," and, thanks to lax screening and an indifferent government, it's heading our way.

The doctor illustrates the problem of the lax screening of immigrant students with the story of a doctor friend of hers who treated an infant from sub-Saharan Africa who had rampant AIDS. "The parents refused to be HIV-tested," says Dr.Hugi. "They were visa students."

"When we think of AIDS, we think of TB," says Dr. Hugi. the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in Third World countries has led to drug resistant TB. "Southeast Asia and the Philippines is where TB became drug resistant."

Russia is another medical timebomb. "They're not immunizing people for diphtheria anymore in Russia. They really need to screen those Russian immigrants," she warns. Health Checks Penalize First World Immigrants

Ironically, says Dr. Hugi, health checks penalize First World would-be immigrants. "If you're an immigrant from Sweden, the U.S., or Switzerland and you have hypertension or high blood pressure, your detailed medical history will document it. Forget about getting in here."

On the other hand, in Third World lands, she explains,. "there's a black market in chest x-rays and clean bills of health. We should send Canadian doctors who can't be bought to test would-be immigrants," she advises.

"There are just no teeth to refugee health checks in Canada," she charged. "Those who come without documents to the U.S. are put into holding tanks and sent back!"

Those Who Take In Refugees Put Their Own Families At Risk

"Magnanimous Canadians who take refugees into their homes aren't told that many refugees have contagious diseases. These people are putting their families at risk," Dr. Hugi warns.

Mother Nature is Ruthless

"I'm looking at this in a very practical, scientific way. The only reason we don't have Gypsy Moth infestation here is we have very strict screening of plants and fruit." It's the same with heartworm in pets. There's a very strict regime of quarantine of pets coming in, she explains. "We're ruthless with trees, livestock, or pets, but we're muddled when it comes to humans."

"Mother Nature is ruthless. She'll infect you with TB, if you get in the way," she warns. "AIDS has set us back 100 years in terms of good public health practices. Do you think Mother Nature gives a damn about the AIDS lobby?" she asks.

The situation of the Honduran "refugees" is a farce. Dr. Hugi explains that since 1996, when the U.S. began detaining illegal refugees, the numbers of Hondurans dropped from 100,000 a year to 25,000. When the Hondurans started pouring across the Texas border, the Americans set up detention tents, and the influx stopped. Now illegals are detained for 10 days, If their claim seems credible, they're released on bond. In Canada, in most cases, they're just released until their hearings.

Other dread diseases are making a comeback in part, thanks to lax immigration screening. "Syphilis is coming in from Southeast Asia," says Dr. Hugi, "carried by people coming back from Southeast Asian sex trips. The Thais really sell their young -- sacrificing their kids to the sex trade."

Little Sympathy from the Government

Dr. Hugi has had to submit to an intense regime of drug treatment for the TB she contracted. She counts herself lucky that it was not the drug-resistant strain.

However, she received scant sympathy from officials at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. She sent two letters about her concerns on June 20 and October 1, 1998 to the Immigration Department. Not until December 2, nearly six months after the first letter, did Joan Atkinson Director General of the Selection Branch of the department bestir herself to reply.

Clearing away the tangled verbiage, Atkinson essentially said that emergency room work is a high risk profession: 'them's the breaks' and, anyway, refugees and immigrants are not to blame. "Health risks ... are an essential element of such work and are not posed by one particular client group."

"Canada is, I believe, justifiably proud of its stance with regards to providing a safe haven for persons at risk of persecution. All immigrants, including overseas refugees selected abroad, and certain visitors are required to undergo an immigration medical examination prior to entering Canada. ... All in-Canada refugee claimants [illegals who designate themselves are 'refugees' once they're here] are required to undergo an immigration medical examination and requested to do so within sixty days of such a claim. Furthermore, there are provisions for not only the immigration medical examination fees to be paid by this department, but also any required emergency and essential health care for those in-Canada claimants who lack the financial resources to pay for same."

Atkinson used the obfuscating dodge of "privacy" to thwart Dr. Hugi's inquiries into the exact status of the Burmese AIDS patient who had infected her with TB and subsequently died. "If your patient was an in-Canada refugee claimant, then he would have been referred for medical examination after making his refugee claim. If, as a result of this medical examination, tuberculosis was suspected, appropriate referral for investigation and treatment would have followed. ... Medical confidentiality prevents the identification of the individual about whom you write. Without specific knowledge of this person it is impossible to determine his immigration status." [Other than the fact that he is currently dead, and, presumably, no longer entitled to privacy!]

The letter illustrates Dr. Hugi's complaints about Canada's toothless policies. A self-proclaimed refugee may be asked and advised to go for a health check, but failure to do so does not result in removal. A desperately ill person may be "referred" for treatment, which the Canadian taxpayers pay for, but this costly and often contagious person is not removed and no consequences follow his not taking the treatment that is advised.