Exactly nobody is satisfied with the compromise language of the package of immigration laws proposed in the U.S. Senate last week.
On one side, represented prominently by Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo, are those who consider the measures sniveling amnesty.
On the other, where Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar less comfortably resides, are those who are disappointed with provisions that would prevent families divided by borders from being reunited.
What happens next is utterly predictable.
A storm of demagoguery will rip through the media, followed by political strong-arming, bickering and petty name-calling.
The most likely outcome is that the clumsy compromise will disintegrate, and Congress will return to the comfortable stalemate that allows members to keep campaigning on the immigration problem without ever having to demonstrate the kind of leadership necessary to solve it.
While this political sideshow dances on, casualties of the country’s long-standing don’t-ask, don’t-tell attitudes toward illegal immigrants keep mounting.
The latest is a little boy I’ll call Jorge.
Jorge and his mother live in Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s 7th Congressional District. A couple of weeks ago a social worker contacted the congressman’s office seeking help.
Jorge, she said, is dying.
The 7-year-old has reached the limit of what doctors can do to keep him alive with his congenital heart condition.
His cardiologist at The Children’s Hospital in Denver told them that the best option for saving his life is for Jorge to undergo a heart transplant. But because he is not a legal resident of the U.S. and ineligible for Medicaid or other long-term health-care coverage, Children’s won’t place him on the transplant waiting list.
“The social worker asked if there was anything we could do to help,” said Leslie Oliver, spokesman for Perlmutter. “But there’s not much the federal government can do. It’s one of these Catch-22 situations.”
Perlmutter’s office recommended she contact the American Heart Association, the Mexican consulate and a variety of nonprofit groups that might intervene.
It wasn’t much help, Oliver admitted, but it was the best they could do.
The days slip away as the social worker keeps calling. Most of her messages go unanswered.
Joel Newman, assistant director for communications for the United Network for Organ Sharing, said that cases like Jorge’s have emerged a few times across the country in recent years. As long as there are millions of illegal immigrants living in the U.S., there will be life-and-death dilemmas about their health care.
UNOS doesn’t investigate the immigration status of potential organ recipients or donors, Newman said. “It’s up to the individual transplant center to decide whether it wants to accept or list anyone. We don’t have any particular prohibition against transplanting organs into nonresident foreign nationals here legally or illegally.”
While hard data on immigration status aren’t available, anecdotal evidence suggests that donations and transplants of illegal immigrants’ organs occur at about the same rate. Nonresident foreign nationals represent “roughly 2 to 3 percent of the organ donors and recipients,” Newman said. Their immigration status is unknown.
When a brain-dead victim of a motorcycle wreck shows up in the ER and his spouse gives consent to donate his organs, immigrant status is never an issue. Illegal status can prevent a desperate patient from getting an organ transplant, however.
The UNOS registry lists 39 people on the waiting list for heart transplants in Colorado. For each one, the experience is stressful. It’s still common for people to die waiting for donor organs. There are never enough.
For Jorge, the chances of Congress taking action, his family achieving legal status and a donor heart that’s the right match becoming available in time to save his life are infinitesimal. His mother, who smuggled him across the border five years ago in search of a miracle, knows this.
Still, she refuses to give up.
“It’s an awful situation,” Oliver said. “It’s horrible to see a sick child caught up in this fierce debate, but he is. That’s the tragic reality.”
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, the percentage of organ donors and recipients who are illegal immigrants was incorrect. The 2 to 3 percent figure given by The United Network for Organ Sharing applies to all nonresident foreign nationals. Their immigration status isn’t known.
