If President Donald Trump is reelected, 15,000 refugees could enter the nation in 2021 without being tested, according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies.
During the pandemic, the Trump administration has sought to restrict the flow of immigrants—including asylum-seekers—from across the southern US border.
However, activist left-wing judges have, in turn, tried to block those efforts by ordering injunctions to prevent immigration authorities from implementing the policy changes.
Regardless of what the courts decide, few of those seeking refugee status have been tested for the coronavirus, even though positive tests for severe acute respiratory syndromes would legally prevent them from entering.
Nor has Trump yet ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test incoming refugees, said the CIS analysis.
Yet, lock-down restrictions imposed by pro-open-border, sanctuary-state Democrats like California Gov. Gavin Newsom continued to subject many legal American citizens to constant testing for the privilege of going to work, church or school.
Making mattes worse, if Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden were to become president, he has signaled his intention to multiply refugee resettlement by eight times, to 125,000, in 2021.
“Thousands of refugees from countries with floundering health care systems, delayed government responses, and, more often than not, deep political and economic crises, are being resettled here without prior testing for Covid-19,” said Nayla Rush, a senior CIS researcher who authored the study.
“This is puzzling to say the least; by U.S. law, screening refugees (and other immigrants) for ‘quarantinable communicable diseases’ is mandatory,” Rush wrote.
The Immigration and Nationality Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC to conduct a medical examination on all refugees.
Refugees who are found to have “communicable diseases of public health significance” or who have not had proper vaccinations cannot be admitted into the nation.
HHS said in an order that “COVID-19 meets the definition of a severe acute respiratory syndrome” and is “a quarantinable communicable disease.”
This means that a negative test for COVID-19 is a legal requirement for admission into the United States, but the “CDC does not currently recommend routine pre-departure COVID-19 testing for refugees,” according to a State Department spokesperson.
The CDC analysis concluded that Trump could remedy this lapse by issuing an executive order directing the CDC to test all refugees for COVID-19 prior to arrival.
