Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

At Least Virginians Don’t Discriminate against Fat Immigrants

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by

James A. Bacon
in

You thought Virginians were tough when it comes to illegal immigration? New Zealanders are even tougher with would-be legal immigrants, especially those that might impose an extra burden on the social safety net.

New Zealand has just nixed an immigration request by a Welsh woman on the grounds that she is too fat. Welchman Richie Trezise, a submarine cable specialist, managed to lose enough weight to gain permission from the health-conscious Kiwis to enter the country. But his wife Rowan didn’t make the cut. If he wants to take the job, he’ll have to go to New Zealand without her.

The (London) Telegraph quotes Robyn Toomath, an endocrinologist and spokesman for Fight the Obesity Epidemic, as saying she opposes the stigmatizing of obese people. “However, the immigration department’s focus is different. It cannot afford to import people into the country who are going to be a significant drain on our health resources. You can see the logic in assessing if there is a significant health cost associated with this individual and that would be a reason for them not coming in.”

A “significant drain on our health resources”… Where have we heard that before?

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6 responses to “At Least Virginians Don’t Discriminate against Fat Immigrants”

  1. ambivalent richmonder Avatar
    ambivalent richmonder

    A main difference between NZ and the US is that NZ offers insurance to all its residents, so they’ve got to consider health concerns while they consider immigration applications.

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I suppose the same logic applies to Marylands increase in the cigarette tax from $1.00 to $2.00 per pack.

    I wonder if they considered nicotine crazed robberies in their health effects scenarios.

  3. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Ambivalent Richmonder, I don’t think the situation is really so different. One of the few areas in which illegal immigrants can be documented to pose a burden on the U.S. social safety net is medical treatment in hospitals. Hospitals can’t turn away patients, regardless of their inability to pay.

  4. Not Ed Risse Avatar
    Not Ed Risse

    Imagine what the TRILO-G will look like when it includes gravitational variable costs.

    If Hillary gets her way and all medical costs are socialized, why should I subsidize your waistline?

    Socialism destroys freedom, including the freedom to be fat and drive an SUV a long way to work each day.

    Fat users should pay.

  5. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Not Ed, let me pose a question. Would you do away with publicly funded education. On the grounds that each family ought to bear the responsibility of educating their children, just as they’re responsible for feeding and clothing them. If they can’t do so, either through home schooling or paying for access to a privately run school, then that’s their problem. Why should the rest of us pay? Would you agree?

  6. NER Avatar
    NER

    Anonymous at 3:41

    You are setting up a straw man and you come off as very heartless.

    In a world without publicly funded education, there would be numerous foundations providing scholarship help for the poor, and most private schools would offer free or reduced tuition to the neediest, as most private colleges do today.

    All entitlements are theft and should be humanely phased out.

    But society has to evolve freedom. You can’t replace something with nothing.

    By way of example, Presidential candidate Ron Paul knows social security entitlements are theft and unconstitutional, but even he says you have to transition out by first letting younger workers opt out and put their savings into real private sector investments.

    Age segregated group classrooms, public or private, may soon become as obsolete as newsprint. Most home-schooled children find classroom education boring, wasteful of their time, and an impediment to real learning.

    You can now buy a complete home school course on CD’s for all 12 grades for less than $200.

    http://robinsoncurriculum.com/

    Money is no longer an excuse for not getting an education in a world where the Internet has made information virtually free. It still comes down to individual self-motivation.

    Ed Risse might find interesting the fact that publicly funded education is one of the main motivations behind the housing affordability crisis and government mandated dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

    How so?

    Most localities now compete to get rid of or minimize the education burden, particularly from poorer families. They do this by zoning out cheaper housing, and by giving zoning preference to age restricted communities for older adults with fewer school age children at home. They also try to shift the burden entirely, by zoning large areas for commercial and industrial development where the employees with children will commute in from another jurisdiction. Loudoun County is now a bedroom community for Fairfax County’s commercial corridors, and bears a disproportionate education cost.

    Google something like “only houses worth” in quotes and you will start to come up with some interesting discussion on this issue.

    Here is an interesting report:
    http://www.curp.neu.edu/pdfs/SchoolsHousingFINALrev.pdf

    Apparently in Massachusetts, efforts to encourage smart growth and more affordable housing hit resistance from communities concerned about the fiscal impact of more school children.

    Quoting from the report:

    “This analysis demonstrates that many
    communities will face significant increases
    in school costs not covered by increased
    property and excise taxes if Chapter 40R
    Smart Growth District zoning results
    in the development of moderately priced
    housing in which public school children
    live.
    As a result, there is expected to be
    substantial resistance to passing Smart
    Growth Districts in many communities,
    particularly those that would allow
    modest single family homes on small lots.
    Thus, absent change, the ongoing shortage
    of such housing will continue, as will the
    escalation of house prices.”

    Socialism sounds humane, but it ends up causing one distortion after another that in the end makes life more difficult for the working poor.

    I’ll extend the debate one step further.

    America has public schools, but America does not want to pay the socialist costs of educating really poor kids whose parents work hard mowing lawns, changing sheets, serving food, building houses, etc.

    The immigration debate is nothing more than middle class socialist hypocrisy. Socialism is great as long as we don’t have to include real poor people living to our south. So we build a fence and keep the working poor out of our country trapped in their own third world dictatorship.

    So we pay trillions for a war to impose freedom in Iraq, and billions for a fence to prevent freedom for Latin Americans.

    Or we could let them come work and educate their own kids, but that would show how bankrupt socialism really is.

    Migration for a job is a human right; education at someone else’s expense is not.

    Happy Thanksgiving.

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