What Causes The Whooping Cough Epidemic To Spread: Inconsistent and Uncoherent Religious Beliefs or Illegal Immigrants?

      Right now there is a whooping cough epidemic spreading across our state of California and many other states in our nation. The many reason why this epidemic exists is that parents are choosing not to immunize their children which puts them and all the other children around them at a higher risk of contracting the disease. All of the whooping cough-related deaths in California occurred in babies too young to be fully immunized against the illness which makes it hard to rationalize parents not vaccinating there older children  to protect these youngsters. Many district courts have found, however, that parents have an option, interpreted from the constitution, to not immunize their children. But how can something which is causing deaths be constitutional?
   
      The first 16 words of the First Amendment give people the right to not vaccinate their kids thus putting most if not all of the children in their society at risk. It states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." This right has also been extended to include personal religious beliefs, which in our country could be almost anything. These beliefs, both institutional and personal, do not have to be consistent, coherent, or even understandable to other, as said by one of the lawyers who won the cases, James Filenbaum. This makes absolutely no sense to me, but as the courts found, it does not have to.

      Many of these people who believe that they should not have to vaccinate their children also believe that it is not their children that are causing this whooping cough epidemic in our country; they believe that it is the illegal immigrants in this country, and this claim is being supported by many people outside of their group. A concerned reader recently asked the Los Angeles Times what role illegal immigrants play in starting and spreading the epidemic. Although state officials are attempting to assure people that illegal immigrants play no significant part in this epidemic, many people continue to use illegal immigrants as their scapegoats. Just a fun fact: immunizations are among the highest in Hispanic children and are lowest in Caucasian children.  I am baffled by people's reasons for doing and believing what they do, because they are not rational at all and can potentially harm the weakest in our society, but I guess that is one of the risks of living in a country that encourages freedom in its people.

       
     

All Other Persons...

     "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included in this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons" (Constitution of The United States Article I Section 2).

     I, being a product of the 1990s, find it so strange that at one point people of another race could be counted as anything less than equal. I am not naive; I know that even 50 years ago this was still the case, but, like most people of today, I write it off, saying that those people were just ignorant and just did not know better. This is a much harder thing to accept as true, when it is the people who created my government that are those people. One would think and at least hope that the framers of the constitution would have a more open mindset, but then on the other hand they did have to get the states to ratify the Constitution so they might have just sacrificed their true beliefs. But if history is any indication as to what a people feel or believe, than the framers of the constitution, along with many Americans past, did not find these minorities equal. What is so sad is that they still do not today.

      Even now, the minorities so discriminated against in the original constitution are being exploited. Although we have an African American for a president, African Americans, as a whole, are a minority ridden by poverty and unequal education. African American households make a little over half the national average and their poverty rate is nearly triple that of whites. These disturbing inequalities are nothing compared to the social and political discrimination that their race has experienced over this nation's long and arduous history. The reasons for these statistics and events are linked directly to the exploitation that they experienced in early America and in the constitution. Although Native Americans are discriminated against in our current society as well, I believe they are more exploited and used than anything else. Just recall the many times that they were forced to move farther away from their ancestral land, because the government wanted the land that they had previously promised the Native Americans would be their new home. When our nation has no more use for them, they are simply forgotten, left to struggle in poverty. If an individual makes less than $9,000 a year or a family of four makes less than $18,000 a year they are in poverty. The nation poverty rate is 13.1%, as of 2000.According to the 2000 census, for the 25 most populous tribes, the lowest poverty rate was 20.1% (Iroquois) and the highest was 48.8% (Navajo). With their poverty being so deep and their struggles so large, one must ask, why them? Why are we as a nation allowing the real first Americans to be living in this way? Why do we keep discriminating against African Americans when it is so clear that they are equal to us. Afterall, "Ho! Mitakuye Oyasin!" We are all related!  

Illegal Immigrants Consuming Our Nation??

         In a recent article from Newsweek, the idea that illegal immigrants are rushing into our nation in record breaking number, destroying our economy, and threatening our values were deemed and proven untrue. With all the hype about illegal immigration that is present in almost every single candidate's campaign, it can become difficult for citizens to keep a level head on and purely examine the facts. That is what needs to be done, because the facts could change how much of the population views illegal immigrants.
         Most of the claims that have been and are being made by the candidates and citizens are false. The truth is that illegal immigrants are not harming this country and are actually doing things that are benefiting the country, many if them things that the average legal citizen would not do.... but that is a whole other can of worms. The number of illegal immigrants entering this country is declining for the first time in two decades, not increasing. Also there are about 1 million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States than there were 3 years ago. There is little evidence to support the claim that those that are still in this country are taking away employment opportunities from our citizens. It has been proven by a study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that, "Immigrants expand the economy's productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization. This produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker." A different study by the Center For American Progress found that  the "immigrants today are integrating just as rapidly as their predecessors in past decades." So, it is easy to infer, they are not posing any more of a threat to our society's values than they were, say, twenty years ago..... So much for those on-rushing hordes of criminals. But with all the evidence, one logically has to ask the question, then, why are these political candidates still making these ridiculous claims?
     As with almost anything that politicians say, I do not think we will ever know.