[cbeach]

Studies show that immigration, sadly, is linked to the spread of antibiotic-resistant diseases.

Example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25418572/

Immigrant hotspots in London now have tuberculosis rates higher than Iraq and Rwanda. 80% of cases are people born abroad, and some are antibiotic-resistant. This is a disease we thought we'd erradicated:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-34637968

The U.K. has seen unprecedented inflows in the last year (640K immigrants), and since then the rate has risen further - to the point where the government has refused to publish official immigration figures because it would be "unhelpful" to our negotiation with the EU, and upcoming referendum on EU membership

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/1205...

I know how alarmist this comment sounds, and I fully expect it to be downvoted because it contradicts the politically-correct utopian vision of immigration that we're all expected to hold.

But I hope lefties realise that it's their suppression of debate that frustrates people and leads them supporting reactionary leaders like Trump.

We need to start discussing immigration without the stifling constraints of political correctness.

[gjulianm]

Your comment sounds alarmist because it is narrow minded, as it implies that the solution is to stop immigration instead of fighting antibiotic-resistant diseases. If we just stop immigration, we are just delaying the arrival of the problem to our first-world countries (and that supposing we could stop illegal immigration, which is far from trivial). In the meanwhile, anti-immigration policies could mean that sick people don't get a treatment and thus diseases such as tuberculosis are left untreated and spread further.

Immigration cannot be stopped, and that supposing that stopping it is desirable (by the way, as a complete lockdown is probably crazy, which kind of immigration do we restrict? Only from the poor, letting other people from rich countries in? Or should we screen and only let in healthy people?). Any measure taken to "stop" immigration will lead to people being out of the system and thus not able to receive necessary health care and education that could stop infections.

PS: Your last three phrases are what you are getting downvoted for: you take for granted that not being anti-immigration is an hipocrisy, or that it just comes from political-correctness and is not a valid idea-theory-whatever.

[vacri]

> But I hope lefties realise that it's their suppression of debate that frustrates people and leads them supporting reactionary leaders like Trump.

This has to be the biggest pile of horseshit I've read on HN recently. It's cool if you're not a left-winger yourself, but don't make shit up and then subsequently complain that people aren't treating you fairly because you provide a link elsewhere in your comment and are therefore 'sourced'.

Similarly, the "this is going to be downvoted" is a very adolescent way of debating. If you're upvoted, you 'win', because you scored well, and if you're downvoted, you 'win', because 'I called it; you're all a bunch of reactionaries'.

If you actually want a proper discussion, don't pre-shame your opponents.

[cup]

Bringing up immigration in a conversation about antibiotic resistance, knowing what we know about animal farming practices is ridiculous.

An analogy is like complaining about one leaking faucet in a conversation about drought when everyone is watering their garden.

[prebrov]

I think his argument was that poorly supervised mass migration, specifically from places with poor healthcare and agriculture practices spreads readily available drug-resistant bacteria to places where otherwise there'd be none or little of them.

And that is a fair point, imo.

We enforce strict border control to protect ourselves from Ebola, SARS and other infectious diseases we can't treat.

I would assume poster expects to see that actions to help refugees and other less lucky people of the world are thoroughly weighed against health risks. Again, fair point, even if the poster is a Trump supporter.

[arethuza]

See, you managed to put the same point in a reasonable way without raving about political correctness, liberals/lefties and invoking Trump. Which is the kind of comment I expect from HN... :-)

So have an upvote.

[cbeach]

I see you didn't read even the abstract of the study I posted, then?

[arethuza]

Out of interest, what proportion of the problems with antibiotic resistance do you think are are caused by immigrants?

[NB I did read the abstract, skimmed the paper with aid of Google Translate and I am, at least by the standards of HN, a raging leftie].

[morsch]

That study -- which is merely a meta-study of 26 selected other studies -- just summarizes the incidence rates of resistant strains in migrant populations vs. local populations. It seems unsurprising to me that immigrants from countries with poor public health systems tend to be sicker than we are and we should probably intensify our efforts to aid them in that regard.

It makes no claim with respects to how relevant any of this is with respect to the overall increase in the occurrence of resistant strains. I'm not a doctor, I don't know how relevant this is, if at all. Clearly, being able to claim that immigrants spread disease fits a certain political agenda.

The U.K. has seen unprecedented inflows in the last year (640K immigrants)

With approximately 310k leaving, in other words, net migration is 330k[0]. But it sure is fun to quote the higher number! Of the ~640k, ~300k are coming to work (2/3 of them with a job offer), and 180k are coming to study. Since EU citizens are free to move around, unsurprisingly most of the immigrants (and, I presume, the emigrants) are from other EU countries.

On the other hand, the UK is doing comparatively little in terms of letting asylum seekers enter the country, despite being one of the richest countries on the planet in the middle of one of a humanitarian crisis: With almost a million people having crossed the Mediterranean as refugees and migrants so far this year, and conflicts in Syria and elsewhere continuing to generate staggering levels of human suffering, 2015 is likely to exceed all previous records for global forced displacement, the UN Refugee Agency warned in a new report today.[1]

[0] The number is "unprecedented" in so far as that it's 10k or 3% higher than the one in 2005, which as we all know left Britain reeling in anarchy and destitution. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/27/net-migration...

[1] Staggering levels of human suffering. http://www.unhcr.org/5672c2576.html

[panic]

The BBC article you linked contradicts your argument:

The rate of infection among UK-born Londoners has risen, while among the non-UK-born it has fallen - and the report said it would be wrong to assume TB was a disease of migrants.

[leohutson]

The abstract of paper you shared was interesting, but the reason you are being down voted is probably because of the tabloid level of political spin you have forced on it, and the crank-like way that you have tried to make yourself out as a victim because of intolerance for the "controversial" synthesis you have presented.

Migration in the context of epidemiology has nothing to do with your political status in that country, and has everything to do with your physical presence, and contact with other people in that location.

Sure, shut the UK's boarders to all international travel. Perhaps you'll manage to stop sex tourists from bringing back super-gonorrhoea from the third world.

[stefantalpalaru]

> This is a disease we thought we'd erradicated

You can't eradicate tuberculosis, but you can prevent the active form rather easily by making sure the population is well fed.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs104/en/ :

> About one-third of the world's population has latent TB, which means people have been infected by TB bacteria but are not (yet) ill with the disease and cannot transmit the disease.

[cbeach]

The post went from 1, 2, then 3 votes, down to 1, zero and then -1. Interesting.

I thought Hacker News might be the kind of forum where an argument backed with facts and sources (including peer reviewed papers) might be enough to break through tribal leftwing suppression of politically incorrect opinions. Evidently not.

[function_seven]

A lot of readers reflexively downvote comments that have lines such as:

> I know how alarmist this comment sounds, and I fully expect it to be downvoted because it contradicts the politically-correct utopian vision of immigration that we're all expected to hold.

(Emphasis mine)

From the HN Guidelines[1]:

> Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or declare that you'll probably get downvoted.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[dools]

I downvoted because of the use of the word "lefties"