Michael Conlon/Reuters misleads about misleading Alexander Ortega/UC illegal alien healthcare "study"

Michael Conlon of Reuters offers "Illegal immigrants not U.S. health care burden: study". The study in question (from Alexander Ortega of the University of California's School of Public Health) was derived from thousands of phone calls in 2003 with Latino illegal aliens or their family members.

Thus we see the first issue with the study: not all of those may have been telling the truth. The second is that they may have been unaware of the costs of their care and related issues; if Ortega had gone the extra step and contacted those from whom the illegal aliens had sought their care that would probably be mentioned. The article only mentions "doctor visits" as the metric that was used. And, 2003 was four years ago.

The other issues should be clear to even a hack like Conlon:

Illegal Latino immigrants do not cause a drag on the U.S. health care system as some critics have contended and in fact get less care than Latinos in the country legally, researchers said on Monday.

1. That begs the question: how much care do "Latinos in the country legally" get? Since we're comparing, we need to know what's being compared. Oddly enough, Conlon doesn't mention that.

2. And, most obviously, illegal aliens aren't supposed to be here. If they weren't here, we wouldn't have to spend any healthcare dollars on them. Thus, Conlon can't say they aren't a drag; the most he could say (if he were an honest reporter) would be that according to the flawed study they're less of a drag than others.

In addition, articles like this promote illegal immigration as a worthy model: not only do illegal aliens have job-related upsides like working cheaper and with less safety restrictions, but they use less healthcare as well. Only serfs would be better.

And, the mainstream media refuses to look into the non-financial costs of illegal immigration, such as the costs of massive government corruption. By presenting flawed studies such as this, they give an inaccurate portrait of the issue.

Immigration2007b · Tue, 11/27/2007 - 09:41 · · Importance: 1