Who pays for this again?

First the background:

VANCOUVER -- Immigrants with HIV account for a large portion of new infections of the disease in Canada and they're slipping between the health-care cracks, warns a recent report.

Although Citizenship and Immigration Canada is considering making HIV a reportable disease, currently it is not,meaning it is not considered a public health risk and it is not mandatory to report infections to public health officials.

The recent report by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control found that about 16 per cent of all new infections in Canada are linked to people from countries where HIV is prevalent, yet they make up only 1.5 per cent of the Canadian population.

The 2005 figure means the infection rate was almost 13 times greater for immigrants - or those connected to them - from HIV-endemic countries than for Canadians.

It's not the Black Death or anything, but I think we can all agree that HIV leads (in most cases) to AIDS, and that is both terminal, transmissible and a drain on our health care system. For the record, there is some dispute about the inevitability of the HIV-AIDS link but I include that only in the interest of balance. HIV remains a reliable predictor of AIDS, if nothing else.

The article continues:

Michael Battista, a Toronto lawyer who focuses on immigration and refugee law, said people are counselled about the dangers of spreading the disease.

"Citizenship and Immigration Canada wisely decided that people with HIV do not pose a danger to public health or safety," Battista said.

"And so I think it's on that basis that Citizenship and Immigration Canada doesn't have a strong connection to provincial health authorities in terms of reporting newcomers with HIV."

Battista believes the follow up from provincial health officials is an intrusion.

"I think there are huge privacy concerns that are raised when people with HIV go through the system, particularly given the fact that HIV is not something that is easily spread," said Battista.

Between 2002 and 2006 there were 2,567 immigration applicants who tested positive for HIV during their medical examinations among the 1.2 million immigrants to Canada accepted during the same period.

Of those HIV-positive applicants, 89 per cent were determined to be medically admissible to the country.

A person with HIV has an added burden compared to other Canadian immigrants getting into the country.A person with HIV is not inadmissable outright, but it is very difficult for HIV-positive immigrants or refugees to gain admission.

That last bit first. With the volume of people who would like into Canada, I see no reason to admit people with any serious disease, hard to get or otherwise. As well, 89% is MOST of those who try, suggesting to me that it's not as hard for them to get in as that last sentence would have us believe.

I don't personally think that anyone not a Canadian citizen has any entitlement to our health care system, and I certainly don't want waves of medical refugees fetching up on our shores, but the numbers don't seem to suggest that is happening. I am also not so concerned with privacy issues as they relate to would-be immigrants carrying a deadly infectious disease. Then again, I'm not a lawyer who makes his money from those people, so I would like to think my position is hardly surprising.

This is not all about level of physical risk from a given disease; there are financial costs associated with treatment of any of these things, and people who haven't paid into the system are an undue drain upon it. It's very nice for Citizenship and Immigration Canada to "wisely" decide who is entitled to our taxpayer money, but last I checked those bureaucrats hadn't been elected. And there is the law on the matter as well:

A foreign national can be considered inadmissible on health grounds if they're likely to be a danger to public health or safety or could be expected to cause excessive demands on health or social services.

I was reading something yesterday about the reality of the costs of things and the dangers of deciding that those costs don't exist or are irrelevant. The Gods of the Copybook Headings will tell you "If you don't work you die." but it seems that a passing familiarity with the basic economics of the world, let alone our taxpayer-funded system are of little import to our "elites".